by Geoff Brown
“Listen Sir Ferrari,” I began, but he interrupted.
“I’m not surprised you know me. I have a certain amount of fame.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. This douche bag was more of a nut job than most of the folks under Mother’s care.
I lowered my M4 to low ready and looked at the two men in chain mail. “You guys enjoying your game? Look at Sir Porsche over there. It could have been you.”
The man on the left looked scared, but the one on the right took issue with my comment.
“You live how you want to live, pal. Let us live how we want to live. We ain’t hurting none but ourselves.” Then he raised his voice. “What do you want us to do, my liege?”
“Let the mercenary pass,” boomed the voice. “We’ll seek a beast elsewhere.”
I began to walk away, just as one of the men cried out. As I turned, I saw a Cray hurtling toward the ground, foot and hand claws out. The crossbowman fired, but this time missed, and paid for it with his life as the beast landed on him with four sets of claws, ripping and tearing, everything a blur.
Sir Ferrari backed away.
His two liegemen got in front of him, halberds out.
Before I could do anything, the man who’d spoken to me was mowed down by a whirlwind of claws and spikes, his chainmail as effective as papier mâché. The other turned and ran, and was soon followed by the knight who clanked as he ran past.
…leaving me the sole target for the Cray.
I’d faced them down in EXO suits. I’d faced them down without suits in the bowels of Kilimanjaro. I’d even faced them down in Dodger Stadium. I’d survived every encounter yet, so to be fodder for some half-baked knight named after an Italian racing car seemed like the perfect fuck you the Universe had been planning for me, and I was damned if I was going to let that happen.
I began backing away. I raised my M4 and put five rounds into its left eye, or tried at least. It turned at the last moment, and the rounds ricocheted off the tough skin of its head.
Then it dove toward me. I ran left and dove to the ground myself, feeling the impact of the asphalt all the way through my teeth. I rolled sideways as I emptied a full magazine of 5.56 mm rounds into the alien’s torso.
That slowed it down, but it kept coming.
I scooted backwards and then was on my feet, snapping free the empty, and slamming home a full magazine.
I heard the crack of two 9mms firing from behind the Cray.
The alien spun, crouching to take off.
I fired into its back, letting the magazine drain to nothing even as smoke poured from the barrel.
The Cray turned its head to see me and I felt an alien presence in there watching me. Was it one of the masters? My brain tickled as something tried to find a home. Then it took flight, wings moving weakly but effectively.
Strange. I’d never known a Cray not to fight to the death. It made me wonder if maybe it was not under its own control.
Crefloe came up to me, holstering his pistols.
“You okay, boss?”
“Peachy,” I said, sliding in a fresh magazine in case the Cray decided to return. “Just fucking peachy.”
In the distance, Sir Ferrari and his men stood beneath a palm tree, watching.
I shook my head. A few moments later we returned to our gear. As we put it back on, I became aware of Suzie humming and singing something. I leaned in close to listen, and smiled at what I heard.
“Brave brave Sir Robin, brave Sir Robin ran away.”
* * *
We hugged the mountain ridges until midnight, then turned west. We reached Calabasas shortly before dawn. Crefloe directed us to an empty field just off Mulholland Highway at the end of a cul-de-sac. He cursed under his breath when he saw the house.
“It was empty last time I was here, say six months ago.”
“It looks like someone’s moved in,” I said.
A dull light burned in one of the second floor windows. Something a candle might make.
We found a copse of trees to camp a football field’s length away.
I ordered Crefloe and Suzie to stay put while I conducted a three-sixty-degree recon of the area. A lone horse stood on one edge of the field. It appeared to be in good health, which made me wonder if it wasn’t being cared for. I never saw any other evidence of habitation, either nearby or over at the house. I returned to our hide and pulled out my binos.
Crefloe had curled into a ball, hugging his pack, a blanket drawn over him, instantly asleep.
Suzie lay on her side, her eyes wide, unsleeping.
I saw movement at nine through my binos.
A girl. She couldn’t have been older then eleven or twelve. She climbed out of a basement window of the main ranch house. Her hair was pulled back into pigtails. She wore a soiled shirt, shorts, and sneakers with no socks. She remained on all fours for a long minute, turning her head left and right like an animal. Then she suddenly straightened, stretching her back when she came to full height. With one fearful look back at the house, she headed toward the corral.
I ignored her a moment and instead trained my binos on the main ranch house. I went from one upper window to the other. It took a few minutes, but then I saw it. A hand on a curtain, pulling it back. I never saw a face, but one was undoubtedly there in shadow. Watching the girl, or watching for something else.
I looked toward the girl, who was petting the neck of the horse. She seemed to be whispering to it, saying something only they could know.
Suzie rose to her knees and peered out from between a branch.
I switched my gaze to the window. The hand was gone. I searched the front of the house and noted that where before the house had seemed empty, now it seemed full. Windows stared back at me, no… not at me… at the girl and the horse.
Suddenly the front door burst open.
A narrow man with a scarred face filled the doorway, the heat of his gaze so hot that the girl felt it, turning toward the man.
Her face lit with fear.
The horse felt it. It snorted, shook its head, and danced a few feet away from the girl, as if to say, you’re on your own.
I noted suddenly that Suzie was by my side, watching.
The man turned and went back in the house, leaving the door open.
The girl bolted, running pell mell toward the house. She dove on the grass and skidded in front of the window. She clawed at the latch, then hauled herself inside.
Suzie gasped.
I switched back to the door. Still open. Still empty.
Then I heard a thin peal of scream from somewhere inside.
Crefloe was instantly awake and by my side.
“What was that?” he said.
Suzie covered her face and wrapped herself into a ball.
I thought about what I’d seen and what it might mean. Then eventually I said, “None of our business.”
Suzie cried beside me.
We waited four more hours during which time two men and a woman left the building and headed into the barn presumably to take care of the horses. I had Crefloe do a three-sixty on our hide sight to make sure there wasn’t any counter surveillance. I didn’t like being so close to this place. Whatever was going on inside, as unsavory as it seemed, could probably be explained if those inside felt the need to explain, which I doubted they did. When Crefloe returned, he pointed to a route that would keep us concealed until we were far enough away to move with purpose.
Suzie didn’t want to move. I spent ten minutes cajoling her, trying to get her to get up, but try as I might she wouldn’t have any of it.
Crefloe gave me an eye as if to say, we gotta get out of here.
I shrugged. What was I to do? We suddenly had a hundred and thirty-pound anchor that wasn’t going to let us move.
Then I grinned sadly.
WWWSD?
What would William Shatner do?
I scrolled through my list of his love conquests and tried to find logic within.
Miramanee appeared first – a dark haired woman from a tribe of space Indians who believed Captain Kirk to be their god Kirok. Although he had amnesia at the time, Kirk successfully convinced her that he was a god, proceeded to impregnate her, then watched helplessly as both her and his unborn child got stoned to death by her people when he couldn’t figure out how to use the magic obelisk.
No lesson learned there.
Sheesh. I’d forgotten how harsh the original episodes could be after the politically correct Next Generation series.
Then I remembered Shayna who was his flirtatious love during the episode The Gamemasters of Triskilion. She didn’t understand the feelings that were butterflying inside of her and didn’t understand this strange thing called love. In the end, he taught her that she didn’t have to fight, but instead, surrender. It wasn’t lost on me that surrendering to Kirk in the arena was a metaphor for surrendering oneself to their emotions. Michelle was the one who’d pointed that out back when we were in our cells… back when everyone was much more innocent.
No help there either.
Then of course there was Rayna Kapec from the third season episode Requiem for Methuselah. Although she turned out to be an android created by a human who was born in Mesopotamia in 3834 BC and couldn’t die, Kirk fell so hard in love that he couldn’t live without her. His love was so all-consuming that Spock had to wipe her from his memory with a Vulcan mind meld.
I sighed.
I know what William Shatner would do, but it wasn’t helping. And then an idea struck me. Unless, the solution was an amalgam of all the three women. Miramanee, Shayne and Rayna and how Kirk approached each of them.
I knelt beside Suzie and asked, “What would William Shatner do?”
She ignored me, staring instead at the ground and sobbing.
I prodded her with my right hand. “I’m asking you a question, what would William Shatner do?”
She made a noise and rolled away.
I couldn’t believe I was on a mission where one of my people was on the ground throwing a tantrum and wouldn’t get up. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t a tantrum. It was a symptom of something larger. I already knew she was having nightmares. She also continuously fell into fugue states where she was reliving the circumstances that most affected her. This avoidance and reluctance to leave was something new altogether. As if part of her didn’t want to see what was going on, but the other didn’t want to leave without doing something. And I had no one to blame but myself. Knowing I never should have brought her wasn’t helpful. I could stare at the past with 20/20 glasses all day long and make the perfect decision, but that wasn’t how life worked.
“Hey, Suz. Come on, talk to me. What would William Shatner do, huh?”
“Fuck William Shatner,” she mumbled.
I laughed. “From what I hear, you’ll have to stand in line for that.”
I thought she’d rise to the comment, but instead, she buried her head in her hands.
“Mase?” Crefloe asked, coming up beside me. “What’s the ‘what would William Shatner do’ mean?”
I sighed. “It’s an old game Suzie and I had before the invasion. We’d see something that needed to be done and ask, what would William Shatner do?”
“You mean that old actor used to be on Star Trek?”
“He’s not just an old actor, Crefloe. He’s the heart and soul of Star Trek. There wouldn’t have been a Jean Luc Picard or a Katheryn Janeway without him.”
Crefloe shook his head. “I’m not understanding what you’re saying. It was a TV show, right? You do know there’s no more TV much less Hollywood.”
“I know about Hollywood because I was the one who blew it up.” I sighed, staring at Suzie. “And I know there’s no more TV but that doesn’t change the lasting effect they have on us.” I turned back to Crefloe. “Let’s take you for example. What shows did you watch?”
“Brother, I didn’t watch television. I was on the street selling poppers by the time I was seven.” Seeing my look, he added, “Call it the family business or whatever. When you grew up where I grew up, there was one way to survive. But my Auntie watched television. Montel, Oprah, Sanford and Sons, that sort of thing.”
“Do you mean that you never watched TV?” I asked. “Never?”
“Well, there was football and basketball.”
“Who was your favorite basketball player?”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
“Jordan. Smooth as can be.”
“Remember his Nike motto?”
“Just do it?”
“You ever thought about not doing something and then remembered Jordan’s motto?”
Crefloe nodded.
“And did that change your mind?”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it did. Others it didn’t”
“And that’s what I’m talking about. It’s the same thing with William Shatner. For good or bad, he had an effect on people. You see, there’s this thing where he’s ultra-heroic and wants to help anyone in need, except when he does, he does it so dramatically.”
Crefloe nodded. “I think I get it. But shouldn’t your game be what would Captain Kirk do? After all, it’s the character not the actor you’re talking about.”
I blinked at the amazingly lucid and super logical statement, realizing that Crefloe was actually right. What had Suzie and I been thinking? Still, we’d been playing it for so long you couldn’t change the name of the game. “But that’s what everyone thinks about when they think of William Shatner. They think Captain Kirk.” Then I stepped forward and pointed a finger at his chest. “And don’t even think for a moment about mentioning TJ Hooker because that show doesn’t count.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” He looked long at Suzie, then glanced toward the barn where two men exited, riding horses, heading away from them. “So when are we leaving? I mean there’s those aliens we need to investigate and we’re so close to these people that they’re going to eventually find us if we don’t move.”
“I totally get that and you’re right. The longer we stay here the greater the chance we’ll be caught.” I stared meaningfully at Suzie who was watching me with her right eye. “But it’s not up to me.”
After exactly one hundred and thirty-six seconds of staring at her, Suzie said from her place on the ground, “You do realize you’re being juvenile.”
“This coming from a girl who won’t get up.”
“I have a syndrome. I can’t help myself sometimes.”
“Are you about over your syndrome?”
“It’s not like that, you should know.”
“Can you at least get up, maybe wipe the grass off of you?”
She pulled herself to a sitting position and drew her knees up, but that’s as far as she got.
Another scream came from the house.
All three of us looked in that direction.
Worry chainsawed through me as I measured the weight of the problem against the three of us and our ability to deal with it.
“You want me to do something about this, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, her voice no louder than a breath.
“If I do that then you need to share your origin story.”
“No,” she said with equal power.
“Then this is where the rock meets the hard place.” I sat on the ground, but didn’t look at her. Instead, I picked up a piece of straw and began to pick at it. “I stuck my neck out for you. Black Johnson said you’d destroy the mission. He said you shouldn’t come. But I argued for you. I fought to get you on the mission. Did part of me think we might have an event or two?” I nodded. “Yes. Definitely. But that same part of me felt you wouldn’t want to hold up the mission and would find a way to figure it out.”
Now, I did look at her, and saw her face redden and her eyebrows buckle. Her lips got tight like they do when she’s getting pissed.
“Did that same part of you think that holding people hostage just to find out
what some fucked up people did to me was a rational and sane idea?”
“That’s the spirit,” I said, smiling probably a little too maniacally. “I knew you’d buck up. So tell me, darling Suz, how is it you managed to lose your arm and eye. Was it a card game?”
“Fuck you.”
“Or was it a horse race?”
“Double fuck you.”
“Not something William Shatner would do, I don’t think.” I snapped my fingers. “I know. You’d just gotten done watching a rerun of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and decided to pit praying mantids against each other.”
“You’re not funny.”
“To some I might be. Crefloe?”
She held up a hand. “Don’t answer him if you want to live, Cref.”
Crefloe looked at me, then turned away, surely wishing he was anywhere else but here.
“Come on, Suz. Origin story. Every super hero and super villain has one. What’s yours? What made you into the person you are today?”
She continued staring at me, but something inside broke. Her anger faded to sadness. “You did Benjamin Carter Mason. You’re the one who made me into the hot killer bitch I am today.”
I felt my grin slip, but laughed just the same. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” she said in a frigid voice.
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
She sighed, grabbed the piece of straw from my hand and rubbed it between her fingers. Finally, she said, “I loved you so much. We were so good together. Then you left and went back to Afghanistan.”
I’d had two weeks of mandatory pre-deployment leave they’d just given me. I’d attached another twenty-five days of personal leave onto it giving me almost forty days. I’d met Suzie the third day and we’d been inseparable. It had been an awesome time. But she had to have known I had to return. I know I told her.
“But you knew. I told you.”
She shook her head.
“Seriously, Suzie. This isn’t funny. I know what I did. I’m absolutely fucking certain I told you and you said that was okay because it was just a fun fling. You said that. Fun fling. Are you saying you don’t remember that? At all?”
She shook her head again, but I could see worry lines form at the top of her nose between her eyes.
