Silhouette

by Arthur McMahon

She could not approach her brother at the moment, so she decided to find a place to sequester herself. After thorough searching the only empty room she could find was a large auditorium. How strange, she thought, who would have guessed that Burmin enjoy the theater? The room was setup like a semicircular amphitheater with many levels of seating and balconies, all focused upon one large stage with red curtains and golden tassels. The domed ceiling was ornate with angular designs, though they were difficult for Silhouette to see with most of the lighting switched off. A massive chandelier hung high in the center of the room, sparkling despite the minimal light. The whole shebang, Silhouette thought. Impressive.

  The stairs stage right led her backstage where Silhouette climbed up to the catwalks and discovered a dusty pile of props, mostly damaged caricatures of humans, Burmin, and other various alien beings. The plethora of bodies was substantial and appeared to have been untouched for quite some time. The props were stored upon a separate platform from the catwalk which had a solid floor. Silhouette burrowed through the multitude of arms, legs, and other limbs and made herself a cozy den in which to hide. It was a quiet space and well out of the way. She closed her eyes and rested.

  When she woke she recoiled in a panic as hands with broken fingers reached out to her and dozens of dead eyes stared at her from all directions. “My fucking god,” she muttered to herself between fast, heavy breaths. “Dolls. Shit, these things are creepy.” She turned off her heightened night vision. The pitch darkness was more comforting and she fell right back to sleep.

  * * *

  “Aahhh!” screamed a woman. Silhouette bolted awake and heard a Burmin grunt in frustration. “Yes, yes. Okay!” replied the woman.

  Silhouette crawled out from behind the pile of props, seeing that the stage lights were on and a young woman lay on the floor of the platform below. “Sorry,” said the woman as she tried to stand. A large Burmin stood over her, its ears wrapped up on top of its head and plastered flat, their tips hanging over its forehead. The woman stood up and started mock-fighting the Burmin and it yelled at her again. The woman cried out and started attacking more ferociously, but she was not making any real contact. The Burmin growled and looked behind itself as two men joined the battle, attacking the Burmin from behind with imitation weapons. The Burmin deftly kicked them off stage and then turned back around, smacking the woman down to the ground with its large hand, laughing as it did.

  Silhouette moved to get a closer look at what was going on. There were eight humans, and she recognized them as prisoners from the compound. Davi was one of them.

  The Burmin called over to the other five humans and they all began to attack him at once. Most of the punches were feeble attempts, but Davi’s had a strength to them. The humans were easily brushed aside and thrown down by the single Burmin, except for Davi. The Burmin paid special attention to Silhouette’s brother, blocking his attacks, but Davi landed a strong punch, a real punch, to the Burmin’s gut and it winced— from pain or shock or acting, she did not know. The Burmin went into a frenzy and slammed down the other combatants with fierce strikes, and then turned back to Davi. The young man took several steps back. The Burmin yelled at Davi, but he shook his head and waved his arms in protest. The Burmin yelled again, louder, and Davi went tense, then he ran forward and renewed his assault. He threw several punches, but the Burmin blocked them all and then grabbed Davi’s waist with both hands and hurled him across the stage.

  Silhouette nearly cried out for her brother.

  Davi stood up and returned to his position on the side of the stage just as the other humans had. The young woman moved back beside the Burmin and she was knocked to the ground by the beast. “Aahhh!” she screamed and the two men with weapons came at the Burmin from behind. It had all started over again.

  A mixture of humiliation and relief pooled in Silhouette’s heart, but emotions were a distraction and she had to set them aside until another time. If they were going to put on a performance, that meant that she had some time until her brother would be shipped away to planet Burm.

  Silhouette watched as the group rehearsed several different scenes. Davi was represented as the hero for the humans, which also meant that he was the bad guy of the story. There was a scene where all of the other humans lay dead on stage except for Davi, and he had a few minutes off stage while a couple of Burmin shared some dialogue. The third time they ran through the scene Silhouette crept down a back stairway and approached Davi from behind.

  “I am here,” she whispered.

  “Thank God,” he replied. “I didn’t know if you made it to the ship or not.”

  “Are you well?”

  “Yeah, minus some bruises.”

  “Do you know how long until the slaves leave for Burm?”

  “No idea.”

  “When is the performance?”

  “What?”

  “This play. When will you perform it?”

  “I’m pretty sure they said two nights from now.”

  Silhouette froze as one of the Burmin glanced over to their side of the stage. Davi tensed and met the Burmin’s gaze. Its eyes darted backstage and searched for a moment, then, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, the Burmin returned its focus to its fellow actor. “That’s not much time,” she said. “I’ll get back to you when I have a plan. If you have any trouble or they try to move you to a transport ship, run to the theater. I’ll be here.”

  “Okay,” said Davi.

  “Stay strong.”

  “You, uh… too. Good luck.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silhouette slipped away as the Burmin on stage grunted and Davi walked out to meet them.

  * * *

  After months of pondering Silhouette could only generate two viable options for taking down the massive alien ship. She could head across the vast craft to the bridge, kill everyone there, take over the alien controls that she would not know how to operate, and somehow keep other Burmin from entering the control room while she piloted the ship and shut down its shields, preparing it for some sort of destruction. She would find herself far away from any feasible escape for her and Davi before the Erdian forces came in to blow the Juggernaut to smithereens.

  Her other option was to head further into the tail of the ship, find the energy core, and disable it or destroy it— somehow. With the Juggernaut’s main source of power offline, the ship should lose its shields and be left floating aimlessly, unable to propel itself forward. She would have to shut down the power and the run back to grab Davi, fleeing in an escape pod or something else before it all went kablooey. This seemed to be the more practical option of the two, though still insane.

  Silhouette left the theater and moved through the quiet hallways toward the energy core, traveling through passageways that were not as well lit or maintained as the more public locations of the ship. The air was dusty, warmed as she closed in on the core, and smelled like exhaust fumes. The few Burmin she had seen in the halls were sluggish, apathy weighing down their faces. This was a working area of the ship, and a place left somewhat neglected and forgotten except by the few who spent their days in the squalid conditions.

  Doors and locks continued to be scarce in these Burmin places, which Silhouette appreciated. She turned down a hallway which she followed to the entrance of the core room where a grated metal landing split into two sets of stairs. She followed the path to the left, descending down to the room’s floor. The room was nearly as large as the theater, though the slanted ceiling showed the shape of the hull as the tail end of the ship shrank to its end point. The energy core was encapsulated in thick metal, shielding the ship from its wild energies, and numerous ventilation tubes encircled the core, likely for cooling purposes. A few Burmin moved about the room, checking instruments and recording data. Silhouette skulked around the edges of the room, her Ocu recording everything it saw.

  After scouting the core room, she returned to her theater loft to study what she had seen. The actors had gone away, the stage was quiet, a
nd her prop pile had been left undisturbed. She brought the core room into her vision and used her Ocu to help identify the room’s machinery and instruments. Back on Erde she had studied everything the Presider knew about the Burmin, as well as every other species out there. The Burmin technologies remained a mystery for the most part, but this energy core system was a universal technology throughout much of the galaxy, only much bigger than she had ever witnessed before. She understood its design and knew how to dismantle it, at least in theory.

  The time to act was now. The Presider required a forty-eight hour notice for the Erdian forces to prepare, and Silhouette could not wait any longer. The Burmin could haul Davi onto a Burm bound ship and take him away right after his performance for all she knew. She could only hope that the Presider was able to accomplish all she had intended and that everything was still going according to the plan.

  Silhouette’s message would certainly be intercepted by the Burmin, but it was well encrypted and they did not know that she existed. They’ll assume it was one of the slaves, she thought, or maybe another Burmin sending a love message home or something equally ridiculous, if Burmin even do those kinds of things.

  Her message read simply the date and time of when she requested the Erdian fleet to arrive. It was a coded system known only by herself and the Presider. She sent the message knowing that there would be no response.

  * * *

  She slept fitfully that night. There was too much left unknown, too much of the plan not in her own control. The Presider always pulled through, but this time Sue had more than her own life at stake. Davi could be killed, or worse, sent to the other end of the galaxy as a slave for God knows what kind of alien beings. She thought about Davi, her father, and her mother, reliving the handful of vivid memories with her entire family that she retained. She never thought of herself as a vengeful person, but this adventure had proved otherwise and she believed that the Burmin deserved what was coming to them. They all have earned an early death, each and every one of them that has had anything to do with enslaving planet Nye and its people. She imagined herself running through Vix’s city streets, killing every last Burmin she saw, each in a unique and beautiful way. Excitement traveled in tremors through her muscles, overpowering the repulsion she also felt about her thoughts. Her mind ran wild, leaking emotions that attacked in waves, releasing tears and laughter. She was losing control. It was too much, the stress. She needed to breath. Not now, she thought. Calm down and breathe.

  * * *

  Silhouette woke to footsteps as the theater crew arrived for their morning rehearsals. She again watched as the collective of humans and Burmin worked through the same scenes over and over again, but now there was more cohesion in the performances and things ran a bit more smoothly. The humans knew exactly what they were supposed to do and where they should be, and in return the Burmin behaved less like taskmasters and more like big bullying divas, not wanting to waste their time with the plebeian human sideshows.

  Silhouette approached Davi when he had a moment alone.

  “Tomorrow night,” she said, “whatever happens, I need you to be near this stage.”

  “I’ll be on it, mostly.”

  “That works.” She took in a deep breath and released it slowly before continuing. “I’m going to take down this ship and, after I set things in motion, I am going to come for you. You will need to follow my lead without any hesitation. We will only have a few moments to escape, if we’re lucky enough to have that.”

  Davi slowly nodded as his sister spoke. “Anything else I can do to help?”

  “Put on a good show.”

  “What?”

  “Keep the crowd entertained. The more butts in the seats means the less Burmin I have to worry about wandering the nearby halls.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Sue.”

  “I love you, Davi. See you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Silhouette waited until the ship’s night cycle to retrace her steps back toward the energy core. She needed a couple of specific items to get the job done and on her previous journey she noticed a room nearby the core that was like a library of tools and gadgets. All sorts of mechanical instruments lined the rows of shelves, some were familiar to Silhouette, and some were very strange, but the one thing they all had in common was that they made her feel like a tiny child. She grabbed a utility knife that looked more like a butcher’s blade in her small human hands.

  The most crucial item she needed was a strong epoxy, incredibly strong. One shelf held numerous tubes and jars filled with various glues, but it was impossible for her to read the packaging, so she had to test them out. One by one, Silhouette opened the containers and applied them to the underside of the shelf. She was searching for a specific vulcanization silicone that was a durable, instant-drying glue that could withstand extreme temperatures and physical stress. If it could work for adjustable heat shields, it might work for what she had planned. The Presider was vigilant about Sue’s studies, and it was a good thing that she did not skimp on the spacecraft lessons. The correct silicone would dry as it was applied, be free of any trapped air bubbles, and secrete a slight amount of acid as it hardened. She found a heavy-duty goop that seemed to fit the bill and she wrapped it with the knife in a shop rag, tucking the package up and under the back of her headpiece, stretching the fabric so that it encased the items in the shadowsuit along with herself. It was awkward, but it worked.

  Silhouette approached the core room and saw a lone Burmin monitoring the main terminal. She crept down the stairway to the opposite end of the room and moved with silent steps along the outer wall. Tucked between the wall and a large set of pipes, Silhouette watched the Burmin’s actions, zooming with her Ocu to get a close look at the terminal’s screen. The Burmin scrolled through different gauges and meters, and every so often it would get up from its seat to adjust a dial or valve along the shell of the core. Silhouette noticed that before and after the Burmin adjusted anything, there was always a loud clunk and numerous security covers retracted from the core’s valves and hatches, meaning that the adjustments to the core could only be made after it was unlocked. The Burmin drew a symbol on the terminal’s screen with its finger every time it stood up and approached the core, a detail she had not noticed on her previous visit to the room. She visually recorded the key the next time the Burmin used it.

  Silhouette considered hiding in the core room until it was time for action, but there was no place in the room she felt would conceal her for the time required. More Burmin would arrive during the day cycle and make her life more difficult, so she decided it was best to return to her safe spot in the theater.

  * * *

  Silhouette tried to rest during the day, but there were too many bodies making too much noise all throughout the theater. She was exhausted; the lack of sleep was getting to her, and the months of scrounging for food scraps and sleeping in dusty corners in these alien places had depleted her strength, both physical and mental. She did not care all too much if she survived the mission; she only wanted to rest. The heartache of knowing her father had passed on was devastating, a blow to her decade-long hope of saving her family, but her brother Davi was a bright light in the darkness. She could still save him, and still enact revenge upon the Burmin menace which plagued her home world. Her life was not important, but this was about everyone else. The Presider had planned for years in anticipation of this day. Silhouette used her cognitive training. She meditated and pushed her weariness aside. Her mental strength was wearing thin, but she only had to hold it together for one more day. She had a mission to complete.

  Silhouette watched her brother act out his performance in final rehearsals, watched as he was beaten, ridiculed, and barked at in scene after scene. He, too, was tired. Davi continued to stand and fight as he was supposed to, but his shoulders sank and his head drooped between scenes, showing his fatigue. His body would not hold out for much longer. The other humans barely managed to stand and speak, only fear keep
ing them from collapsing to the ground.

  Final preparations were made and the auditorium’s seats began to fill, the theater grumbling with deep Burmin voices as thousands of them piled into the room. The lights dimmed to quiet the crowd as the host appeared on stage. Silhouette used the darkness to creep down the back stairway and sneak past the backstage crew. It was time.

  With every Burmin in the auditorium seated and the performance ready to begin, Silhouette found the rear corridors empty of hulking bodies and prying eyes. She could have sprinted down the halls and no one would have noticed her, but still her nerves made her muscles twitch and stomach flutter.

  Silhouette hoped that the core room would be unmanned during the performance, but three Burmin remained on duty; two of them chatted while sitting at the main terminal and one inspected some piping on the opposite side of the room. She moved just as she had the nights before, down the same set of stairs and along the same wall, not only hidden in the shadows but one with them.

  The lone Burmin never saw her coming. The alien sensed something cool at its throat and touched its neck with its fingers, feeling a warm wetness as it did. Its eyes widened in shock as it felt its breath pass through the gaping wound below its jaw, and it turned to see the shadowy figure that had done the deed. Silhouette faced the creature, seeing the sad, accepting look that had taken over its eyes. The Burmin seemed to be thinking of something, or someone, and a few moments later it fell to its side.

  The two Burmin across the room were unaware of their fallen friend. Silhouette noticed that one of the two Burmin had no protruding ears at all, like they were chopped off, and the other had its long ears rolled up into a knot on the top of its head. They continued to chat as Silhouette slunk up from behind and, just as with the first, she slit the throat of the earless Burmin with a quick, deep gash from the utility blade. No-Ears jumped from its seat and swung wildly around with one arm while it grabbed at its neck with the other. Silhouette crouched low and moved behind the seat of the remaining Burmin. The Burmin with the topknot saw her and stood up in a panic, not knowing how to react. Silhouette leapt from her crouch and went to slice at Topknot’s throat.