by Mark Tufo
“How can you go from wise-ass to wise in a matter of moments, Michael?”
“It’s a talent,” I told him with a lopsided grin.
“There will be much blood spilled today I believe, in the name of freedom.”
“Better than in the name of religion I suppose. Paul, how long until the shuttles get here?”
“Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours.”
“Sure wish I had a deck of cards or something.”
“When do you wish me to make my attempt?” Dee asked.
“Let’s wait until the shuttles arrive so that they can at least have a safe haven should they decide to join with us.”
The intercom crackled and then harsh alien speak came through. Dee’s features immediately changed to extreme anger. I looked over to the Genos who were with us. They were looking around at each other. Some displayed anger but most looked absolutely terrified.
“Dee?”
He stood, flipping over the console, sheering heavy bolts in half as he did so. He roared. I’d not seen him so enraged since he’d been trying to kill me and I was just as nervous now as I was then.
“Dee, talk to me, man.” I made sure not to get too close lest he lash out. He could break me in half without even trying.
“They have rounded up the Genogerians, Mike!” he raged. “They plan on slaughtering them like cattle unless we leave this area.”
“Paul, you hearing this?”
“Loud and unfortunately clear,” he acknowledged.
“We have got to help them!” Dee demanded, his eyes wild.
“Dee, I get it, I do, but we can’t get out of here and even if we did, what then? Forfeiting our lives will do them no good.”
“Would you be so cavalier if it was your people?” he demanded.
“That’s not fair, Dee. We’re in a no-win situation right now.”
“I will tear this ship in two!” he said in English then louder in his native tongue.
He was rewarded with the sound coming over the speaker of a plasma gun being discharged. I had to imagine it was at the kneeling form of a Genogerian. Dee moved quickly to the door and began to hammer on it.
He did this for a few moments, his fists turning bloody and then he leaned his head up against the metal.
“Michael.” He turned to me.
I had the distinct impression he was recanting all he had sworn to me and was now going back over to the dark side so that he could save his brethren.
“Whoa, buddy. Hold on, man. I’m really not liking the way you’re looking at me.” I had my rifle at my side and was thinking about pulling it up so I could get an accurate shot off if the need arose. Would I be able to get twenty clean shots off though? As soon as I hit Dee, the shaky alliance I had with the Cruiser Genos would be off. I’d never be able to convey a message to them to save my ass.
He advanced, I gripped my rifle tighter. When he spoke I wished he’d just killed me because it would have been easier and cleaner.
“You will fit through the hole.”
I let go of my rifle. “What?” I asked, standing straight and cocking my head to the side like a confused dog.
“You can fit through the hole,” he reiterated.
“The fuck you say?”
“You can help them!” he said excitedly.
“Dee, by myself?”
“You honestly can’t be thinking about this, Mike?” Paul asked.
“What in my tone even remotely conveyed the idea that I want to go out there on my own, Paul?”
“Because I know you, Mike. It’s not that you want to; it’s that you’ll feel compelled to. Drababan just played the hell out of you and now you are going to feel compelled to prove his words.”
“Mike, they’re big crocodiles! You cannot risk yourself for them!” Beth shrieked.
“Get her off the bridge,” Paul said, pained.
“She didn’t mean it,” I told Dee.
“I care little for what the deceptive one said. Will you help?”
“Dee, you are asking me to single-handedly take on a Battle Cruiser.”
“It is only one less than when you originally set out.”
“Well, you’ve got me on that one. Shit, why do I have to befriend a smart croc?”
“Mike? Come on man, you can’t do this.”
“Aw hell, Paul. I threw my life away the second I stepped on that Breacher. I’ve just been waiting for the end to come since. I’ve already said my goodbye to Tracy, what more could I ask for? My only regret is not eating a bigger breakfast. I’m fucking hungry now.”
“At least wait for the shuttles, Mike. They’re on the way.”
“The Genos don’t have the time and I’m pretty sure they’ll be the first to go.” I turned to Dee. “Okay, let’s play pretend now. Let’s say I somehow get the Genos free. How am I going to tell them what the hell is going on?”
“Word of this has already reached them. They will know who you are.” Dee was pointing to the intercom.
I’d been wondering why Dee kept repeating everything twice.
“Great, give me a map back to the Genogerian wing and then to the bridge.”
“Mike I will demote your ass if you disobey my orders!”
“You never gave me any,” I told him resignedly.
“I told you to sit tight until reinforcements come. You can’t go running around that ship on a suicide mission to save captives that for all we know are already dead.”
“Paul, I get it. You need me to perform your suicide mission to take hold of a ship that is destined to explode in space. Either way, buddy, I end up with a twenty-one-gun salute and a hero’s funeral. Unfortunately I won’t get to have my ashes spread over the Rockies but I guess all over space is pretty cool, too.”
“Michael, there will be no ashes. Perhaps some of your tissue will survive the explosion though, to forever roam the vast cold area of space.”
“Well, that’s much better Dee. Thank you for that.”
“You are most welcome.”
I stood on my toes to look out the hole. I didn’t see anything. “Help me up. If I die, Dee, I’m going to haunt your ass in perpetuity.”
“I look forward to it,” he said as he lifted me up easily. I caught a couple of times on the jagged metal but as luck would have it not enough to impede my progress.
“Maybe if I’d eaten more breakfast I wouldn’t have fit.”
“Fuck the breakfast Mike, come back here alive and I’ll buy you an IHOP.”
“You heard him, right Dee? He promised me a restaurant. I’m going to hold him to that.”
Dee deposited me gently enough on the ground outside before handing me my rifle. I immediately got down on my haunches, although if anyone had been out here watching they could have shot me a half dozen times by now.
“I sure wish you could come as well, Dee. Maybe if you didn’t like Tracy’s meatloaf so well you could.”
“It is indeed a delicious meal. Be safe, Michael and go with your God.”
“I’ll take yours as well, no sense in not doubling up. Cover me for as long as you can, please. Wait…give me your knife, too. What the hell is this thing? Looks like a damn broadsword,” I said as I strapped it to my leg and then began to gingerly make my way down the hallway, doing my best not to slip in the remains of the Mutes. The stink was fierce and I could only hope it was the worst I would have to deal with for the day.
I looked back just before I took my first turn. Dee had stuck his hand through and waved. I don’t think I’d ever felt so acutely alone as I did the moment I was in that new corridor. “This is insane. What can I possibly do?” I muttered to myself. I was tempted to kill a Prog, take his eye, and access a boiler room or something and just wait until the shuttles came. I could tell Dee that it was too late. But he’d know—he’d be able to smell it on me. Stupid pheromones. I wish I knew what the markings on the doors meant. I wanted to go splash some water on my face, take a deep breath and maybe a whizz or sev
en. Odds were I’d open up the Mute barracks instead.
Yeah, it was going to be better to just stick to the corridors. Didn’t really need the map, just needed to follow the bloodstains back, either from those we’d killed or those of us that had been killed or wounded. I could hear running footsteps and the labored breathing of something moving fast down an intersecting hallway. I got as close to the wall of approach as I could and got low to make a smaller target of myself.
A battered and bloodied Genogerian ran past, his eyes widening as he got sight of me, but whatever was chasing him scared him more than me. Mutes, it had to be, and they would not run past. I waited until they were completely in the intersection. They were so entirely focused on their prey they did not see me. I waited as long as I could, trying to ascertain if there was more than two. When I was fairly confident there wasn’t, I fired. My first shot caught the mute behind the knee, almost completely severing the bottom of his leg from the rest of him. He fell over, crashing hard to the wall on his right. The second mute turned and was firing before he’d even acquired a target.
I had to roll away as the thick red bolt slammed into the wall, barely over my head. I shot wildly, more instinctually than anything. The round spun the alien; I’d caught it across its broad back, splitting the skin wide open but more importantly severing its spinal column. I could have almost felt bad for it as it slammed to the floor, its legs unmoving. It did little to stop the murderous rage in its eyes, for some twist of fate had allowed its upper body to still work as it attempted to swivel around and get a lock on me.
“You’re kidding, right? Who thinks about killing someone when they have just become a cripple?” I was firing while I asked my questions aloud. One or two nailed it in its shoulders and the one that finally stopped him was the one that hit him in the top of the skull. Funny, of all the shots that I thought would do the most damage, hitting it in the head seemed the least likely. Because there was no way this thing had a fucking brain housed in there.
I’d been so intent on killing the Mute that for some unfathomable reason didn’t like me that I’d not been keeping track of the other one. I needn’t have worried. The Geno they’d been chasing had at some point turned and lodged a three-foot piece of something sharp through the side of the mute’s neck. It had not quite come out the far side but was bulging like the beast had swallowed a baseball bat sideways.
“Bedark narr,” the Geno said to me.
I was pretty sure that translated to, “You look tasty”. I spun my gun on him. He eyed me warily, leaned over slowly and grabbed one of the Mute’s weapons and then stood. Calmly he walked over to the other, grabbing that one’s discarded weapon as well. The whole time the muzzle of my rifle followed. Never once did he make an overt gesture of hostility, but you’ll have to excuse my lack of manners in that particular moment in time. It was when both of us realized neither was going to shoot, the Geno began heading down the hallway. It had taken a few strides before looking back at me as if to ask, “Are you coming?”
“Fine,” I said as I got in line behind him. It was as we were walking that I noticed the amount of damage he’d taken. A fair amount of the skin that was showing was a deep purplish color, signifying some serious bruising. There were heavy abrasions and some fairly significant cuts all over its body. It looked more like a situation in which torture was involved rather than a fight. So when he began to stagger I reached out to steady him, which was about as effective as a child trying to keep a tree from falling over in high winds.
He marshaled his reserves and we pressed on. He needed a doctor but I had a feeling we would have a hard time finding quality healthcare at this particular moment. Something needed to happen, though. The beast was leaving a blood trail, and as of yet I wasn’t entirely sure where we were going, because, thanks to the crude map one of the Geno’s had drawn out, I was pretty sure it wasn’t to the bridge and it wasn’t towards the Geno quarters. Although, I’d sort of lost track. It was difficult to hear much of anything with the Cruiser’s alarms still blazing so I was constantly turning around to make sure something wasn’t coming. I quickly realized my mistake when I felt a large meaty paw wrap around my shoulder and lift me off the ground like so much chaff.
I had just enough time to wonder what it would feel like to have my body bounce off a hard metal wall when I found myself thrust into a small room. With my new friend/ally/potential killer right behind me, the confines shrunk down immensely when he was all the way in and the door closed. A soft glow came on as the door shut. It was as if a sensor realized we were in there and illuminated the room, although in fairness it was more like a closet. Well, technically it was a closet; it was filled with rows of Devastator armor and uniforms. But once you got past the push of the nearest uniforms the “closet” (for lack of a better term) was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred square feet.
The Geno urged me further into the tangle of clothing. For a moment I smiled as I thought of donning one of the uniforms and trying to blend in. Even this Geno as big as he was would look like a kid trying to wear his father’s clothing. I’d be lucky if I could even hoist the damn stuff. The Geno waited until we got to the far wall before slumping against the hull. I grabbed a pair of Mute pants, placed my rifle down and grabbed my knife. I cut the material into thick swaths. I wished I had some water or antibacterial cream, something, but that was going to have to wait as I wrapped some of his more serious wounds. I’d just finished tying off the second one when we heard the door open. I grabbed my rifle and spun quickly. I again felt the Geno grab my shoulder, though this time was much gentler.
I turned. His eyes were half closed and he did not have such a great hue going on. He shook his head from side to side. “Is that a universal gesture? How do I know you’re not telling me to get up and run or maybe dance? Yeah, my dancing would definitely scare the hell out of them.”
I shut up so that I could hear whoever was approaching but as of yet I could not see them. The only thing that was not making sense was how quietly they were coming. Devastators aren’t much on stealth. A large foot stepped no more than a few inches from my location. The beast was looking down at me. I think I actually caught a momentary pang of surprise course through its features. And then it quickly went by me to look at its fallen comrade. I was watching the new Geno fumble around in a small pack when I about released my bladder and colon. In the same instant, another Geno had come up behind me as silent as a cat, another reason to hate the vermin. The cats, I mean. The Genos could be useful.
The Geno on the ground and the one helping were talking quickly, and occasionally my traveling companion would point over to me, probably discussing how I would complement a red wine or something. The Geno administering to the hurt one looked over at me a couple of times with large eyes. It could have been in disbelief that I’d killed a Mute or maybe it thought I stunk to high heaven—it was like looking at a lizard and trying to know what it was thinking. Give it a go sometime and you’ll know what I mean. The first new Geno (whom I’m going to call ‘Doc’) undid my makeshift bandage and applied some sticky salve it had pulled from its little pack. Had to have been the same stuff I’d literally been bathed in to heal my wounds when I was doing my gladiatorial battles.
Normally I was too wounded to take much notice of how well the stuff worked but being able to watch it was like special effects in a movie where the wound just immediately begins to knit itself up. I knew now because of the studies Earth scientists had done on the stuff that it combined with the DNA of the injured party and threw the repair process into over-drive. It used the body’s own healing process but just sped it up to speeds it wasn’t used to. It was generally best to include a lot of sleep and a lot of fluid intake to maximize the results. The color came back quickly to the Geno, and that unexpectedly made me feel better. I’m not entirely sure why, I guess maybe it had to do with we’d already saved each other once. It’s a distinct possibility.
The whole process only took a
few minutes; it was just that I was under a very restrictive clock. Would they just let me leave? Could I somehow convince them to help with just hand gestures?
Then I saw it, the inner ship communication device. Okay, intercom. It just sounds way cooler calling it the former and because it looks very little like the latter. I went towards it when the third (I’ll call him ‘Chaplin’ because he was so damn silent) growled at me. Yeah that pretty much ratcheted up the fear factor. I stepped away. The injured Geno looked angrily at Chaplin and then at me.
He made a rectangular outline on the floor with a large finger and then pointed to a spot within the large rectangle. Made absolutely no sense to me. Then he pointed to the inner ship communication device. The light came on after the third or so time, from him pointing to the intercom and back to that same single spot on the floor. I had to believe my alien guide was thinking I was a little thick by this point, probably trying to figure out how we had taken over one of Prog ships.
“Oh, I get it now. If we use the intercom they’ll be able to tell where we are.” Chaplin looked a little anxious when I pointed to the intercom as if I might try to get past him and push on it anyway. “Well that sucks. I’d really like to talk to Drababan.”
“Drababan?” And then a bunch of alien speak came from the rapidly healing Geno. “Drababan?” he asked again.
I just nodded, but he really could have been asking if Drababan was dead and I was merely confirming it.
“Stirrix,” the alien said as he stood, pointing to his chest. Doc didn’t seem all that thrilled that his patient was getting up just now.
“Hello, Stirrix. I’m Michael,” I said, pointing to myself.
I’m pretty sure Stirrix butchered my name more than I did his. “Immichel,” he said, pointing at me.
“Close enough, now what?”
Stirrix tilted his head.
“You almost look cute for a six hundred pound, chew-my-face-off type of behemoth. We need to find the Genogerians.”
That word perked them up but it had no context.
Chaplin grunted something and Doc replied. The way they looked around I could only assume they wanted to go to wherever they had been planning on going before I arrived. Doc turned to me and I could tell he was thinking about something. Then he did something I wasn’t expecting; he picked me up just as Chaplin turned around. Chaplin grunted, snarled and spat as Doc placed me on Chaplin’s back. It looked like I was going for a piggyback ride. Doc grabbed some parts of uniforms off the racks and then began covering me up.
