United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  She was so occupied looking back at the ship, that she didn’t notice a bear, sitting right in front of her. It had brown fur and looked fully grown. It was just sitting there, sniffing the corpse of a dead deer, that the wolves had most likely already gotten to. The bear saw the blinding light, roared, and stumbled away, quickly, on all fours. Abigail watched as it ran off, panting.

  She turned back around, towards the ship that was chasing her. It landed, sloppily, and lowered down a cargo ramp. She could hear the loud murmurs of the ship’s crew, echoing from the ramp entrance.

  “It’s too early man; the six’s have already hit this place… if we get spotted by more Prims…” Someone started. The voice sounded, mechanical.

  “What? You think we’d get hit by, Intersystemary Law? Ha!” Another voice butted back. He had a deep, gritty voice, “There ain’t no, official, rules on a Demon occupied planet, especially a prim planet, besides, Lore’s got bigger things to deal with than care bout’ ‘interference laws’ anymore, and the Kels? They don’t give a shit no more since they ain’t getting’ paid.”

  The two men walked down the boarding ramp, the one on the left, a robot, who was wearing a black and orange jacket, that made him look like some kind of biker. And the other on the right, humanoid. He was wearing a jacket/cloak getup, with scrap metal sewed to it in some areas. He looked like a post-apocalyptic survivor. His skin was orange, and he had an orange gem attached to his forehead.

  He whistled at Abigail, in a flirty way, “Well, well, well, look what we’ve got here…” He smirked, “Lil’ prim never seen an alien before huh? Don’t worry. Soon you’ll be able to see em ‘all’ over.”

  “Heveir, I still don’t think this is a good idea, we should’ve at least waited for the six’s to clear this place before we interfered with the prim world,” Said the Robot.

  “Shut up Gundum,” Heveir grunted, “If we did that we would’ve missed out on this score ya’ idiot, that right there,” He pointed at Abigail, “That’s money, folks in the Avens are gonna pay a fortune to clone her… finally get to scrap the 8.9s.” He grabbed a laser pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at Abigail.

  “Yer probably gonna hate life… forever, but ey, you get to make so many other people, just so, so happy…” He fired, and a burst of electricity shot out at Abigail.

  “Auugghhzzz… ugh…” The surge of energy hit Abigail in the stomach, and she fell to the ground, on her face. Her body twitched everywhere like she was tazed.

  Heveir looked at her for a second, grinning, then said, “Load her up, once we reach the Lore, we board an intergalaxy transport, n’ smuggler er’ to the Avens.”

  ‘Gundum’ nodded, solemnly, but complied. He picked up Abigail, and put her on his shoulder, then boarded the cargo ship.

  Inside, there was a small looking armory area, filled with supplies, that looked specified for kidnapping. In the back of the ship, was a cell. It was cramped, meant to be uncomfortable. Gundum crammed Abigail into it, and looked at her for a second, then walked away. Heveir walked in and sat down at the control board.

  “Oh, I am so ready for this score…” he said.

  Gundum didn’t say anything.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Heveir asked, rudely.

  “The Avens… are you sure their methods are, by any means… moral?” Gundum asked.

  Heveir laughed, “Hell no, it’s literally torture, but don’t think about the girl, you get weak that way, just think about that sweet, sweet reward… we’ll be out of E6 space; we’ll be free! We can start up that bar, by the Ghourse capital, I’ll find someone that can live with this crazy muck, and you’ll be able to recharge all the fusion cells you want.”

  “Right,” Gundum said.

  “Alright alright, enough with the sentiment, we got a long way to go, buckle up.”

  The two of them sat at the control board, seats next to each other. They flew out of the forest, through the atmosphere, and made it past Earth. The duo was almost past Mars, ready to activate a Hypotonic jump, until…

  Chrch! The entire ship shook, violently.

  “What the hell was that?!” Heveir panicked.

  A claw. A metal claw, that grabbed the cargo ship. It was from a rogue, Martian flying saucer. The real Martians. The cargo ship was lifted up towards the saucer, quickly.

  “Activate the main thrusters, full power!” Heveir said.

  Gundum was pressing buttons on the control pad, frantically. The claw to the Martian saucer inverted itself into its own hull, and a metallic force connected the cargo ship with the flying saucer. Then, a hole was cut through the roof of the cargo ship, and down came three, ‘little green men.’ They chattered furiously, vaporizing Heveir and Gundum before they could even yell.

  The Martians looked around and found what they had come for. Abigail. They approached the cage and blew the locked door open with their tiny, high tech, energy pistols. They’re shots vaporized the door. They dragged Abigail out of the cage and stared at her. They wanted to get her to the Avens as well, to claim a bounty that could jumpstart their civilization again. Heveir and Gundum didn’t know it, but the Martians had abducted Abigail in 1943. She was cryogenically frozen for seventy-seven years, and had a unique genetic code that if cloned, would prove to be very valuable to intergalactic corporations outside of the Milky Way, like the Avens, for… shady practices.

  The rouge Martian convoy dragged her to their own ship and locked her away in another cryogenic pod. They didn’t want to mess up any of her features… their employers were very, eloquent.

  The Martians, although advanced, never developed an I-Hypotonic system or any super speed function at all. They didn’t use Heveir’s ship because they had accidentally damaged the control pad and tore a hole through the top of the vessel. It was obsolete now, and they were forced to take their own, slow flying saucer.

  They roamed through space, on the same path, for fourteen years. The Martians put themselves in Cryogenic pods and set the saucer to auto-pilot, but one day, when they were mere weeks away from the Lore, the system piloted them through a battle. A battle, between the last remaining rebel forces... and two hundred Jupitain warships.

  Click click click, booom! The sound of Ion cannons firing echoed through space. One of the Martian’s cryo-pods woke its inhabitant up and opened. The Martian started murmuring frantically and looked out of the viewport. It was chaos. He began speaking more gibberish and veered the ship to the left. Suddenly, another Martian’s pod opened, and that Martian walked over to the one who was piloting the vessel, angry.

  He talked to him in gibberish, and the alien that was piloting the ship butted back. He had clearly said something offensive because then the Martian that had just woken up hit him over the head. In seconds, the two were squabbling with each other, fighting back and forth.

  Every rebel ship in the battlefield looked different and was unique, but they were getting outgunned and swarmed by Jupitain fighters too fast to launch many counter attacks. Rebel ships exploded, one by one, getting blown up by Ion cannons or a swarm of fighters.

  One ship, with a curved rectangular like hull, and four engines on it, two on either side, escaped through the hangar of another ship, that was in the process of blowing up. It was dragging another spacecraft with it, an escape pod, via a metallic cable.

  “Uliski, grab every single ship you can, we have to make sure we have enough people to regroup!” Heavy shouted. They were in the cockpit of their ship, maneuvering through the rubble of destroyed rebel fighters.

  “How many cables do we have left?” Telli asked.

  “Three… oh, three and a half…” Uliski confirmed. Booom! An explosion ruptured from the outside of the ship.

  “We just lost Jamison’s crew!” Another alien shouted. He had a hoarse voice and burn marks all over. A humanoid body, but his eyes were charred and squinted from immense burn damage.

  “Auugh!” Heavy yelled, “Hatch the frigate over there; I think that’s Sunny’s b
ucket!” Before they could launch a cable to attach to the frigate they saw, it was blown in half by a laser cannon burst. One half went flying, while the other slammed into the Martian’s flying saucer.

  The saucer spun around wildly. It's systems offline.

  “Grab that; I think it's one of ours!” Heavy yelled.

  Uliski slammed a button on his control pad, and a metallic cable shot out towards the saucer. It connected, with a loud churp!

  A blinding explosion came from a remote area of the battlefield. A Titan-class Rebel warship blew up, and pieces of it started to hit both sides of the battle.

  “Get us out of here, right now!!” Heavy ordered.

  “Woah woah, don’t do Hypotonic!” Telli yelled, “That’ll cause the cable to break, just put the engines at max power, now!”

  Uliski nodded vigorously and cranked one of the levers on the control board up, and the ship sped into empty space. After two minutes, they were far enough to not even see the battle anymore. The massacre. They piloted the ship behind a small asteroid, just to be safe.

  Heavy slammed the control board with his fist, then wiped a tear, “Check the crew,” He told Uliski.

  Uliski nodded and grabbed a high-tech space suit from the hangar, that had a jetpack on it as well. It was specially made by the Rebels. He walked out of the airlock and glided toward the flying saucer. He immediately didn’t recognize the ship, even though there were hundreds of designs that the Rebels used.

  Uliski knocked on the main door, “You guys good in there? Hello? You wearing Oxy-suits?” His response was a series of laser bolts, shot from the inside of the saucer.

  “What the…” Uliski had to swing himself away from the ship to avoid the volley of laser bolts. He grabbed hold of the top of the ship and looked at the door, upside down. He could hear frantic chattering, and then… nothing.

  The Martians had killed themselves, accidentally.

  “What’s going on over there?” Heavy asked, through a commlink between their ship’s control board and the suit.

  “Um… the people in there, they just shot at me, making holes in their ship, and um… killing themselves,” Uliski said, confusing even himself.

  “What?” Heavy asked.

  “I’m gonna check it out,” Uliski said.

  “What? I thought you said they shot at you?” Heavy asked.

  “Yeah, but… they’re dead now, probably.”

  “Uliski wait…” Telli started.

  Uliski shot the door open, and the bodies of the two Martians floated out of the ship. Uliski gagged and climbed into the ship, gliding. He looked at all the cryo-pods but saw one that stood out. It was the one in the center.

  Uliski got closer to it and peeked in. It was a human girl, with red hair, and a tattered white outfit. Her hands were restrained to the interior of the pod via two thick metal cuffs. She was frozen and hadn’t aged a day since 2027.

  “Uh, Heavy, I think I found something…” Uliski started.

  CHAPTER 13

  “You really think we can get back to Earth at this rate?” Mark asked.

  “No,” James replied.

  “Woah, our fearless Captain… has given up,” Mark said.

  “You think I expected this to happen? You think it’s my fault we’re lost out here?!” James asked, frustrated.

  “No, I was just being… never mind, I’m sorry; it’s been rough today,” Mark replied, regretting what he had just said.

  “Didn’t notice,” James grumbled.

  Then a light shined through the glass viewport of the pod.

  “Jupitains?” Mark asked.

  “No, doesn’t look like it,” James squinted, “It’s not red.”

  The pod was pulled by an invisible force, closer to the source of the light.

  “Dude it’s pulling us in!” Mark shouted.

  “Grab the first aid kit,” James said.

  “Why?” Mark asked.

  “There might be a knife in it.”

  “You think a puny little knife is gonna do anything against a laser rifle?!”

  “Better than a fist.”

  Mark grabbed it and pulled a small knife out. It was black, and sleek, a red edge on it. “This thing is barely any sharper than a butter knife.”

  “What else is in there?”

  “It’s a first aid kit. What do you think’s in here?”

  “But it’s an alien first aid kit.”

  The pod entered the small hangar of a cargo ship, hitting the roof with a clang.

  Mark hit his head against the low pod roof, “Augh.”

  The bottom doors of the hangar closed, and the pod hit the ground. James grabbed the knife he found in the first aid kit, and kicked the pod door open, scaring the alien who was outside it.

  “Gauugh!” It cried, trying not to fall over from its surprise. He had a pear-shaped body, and a face that looked half human, and half ogre, “Garr, I thought it was empty,” he said, anxiously.

  James looked relieved, “You, this ship! Can you take us back to Earth?”

  The alien shook his head, “That’s a no-fly zone, just like the rest of the Galaxy. I have one job, fly to Stratus, carrying cargo, then fly back to whatever base they tell me to go to, then repeat.”

  James winced, “Then smuggle us there or something! An empire controlling the entire Milky Way couldn’t possibly notice a small cargo ship slip through their defenses.”

  Mark looked confused, “Wait, I thought the United Worlds controlled the Outer asteroid belt.”

  “Well, they did,” The alien said, “Before the Demons blew it into infinity.”

  “Wait what?!” James said, “That’s impossible! The Kuiper Belt is one of the most heavily fortified points in the system besides the inner belt. Nothing gets through!”

  “Well… something got through, and rumor has it that they’re going to attack the inner belt soon, and make their way to destroy the entire ‘United’ organization thing, or whatever it’s called, besides, I’ve seen dozens of United whatchamacallits fall all the time, nothing new, just a bunch of idiots who don’t know when to quit.”

  “So, you're saying, that the entire United Worlds is going to be destroyed? Everything we’ve built,” James asked, distraught.

  “Yeah,” The alien replied simply.

  “Well then, let’s go to the Lore,” Mark said.

  “You don’t voluntarily enter the Safe Quadrant,” The alien said, “All have tried, all have died.”

  “That’s not too motivational,” Mark sighed.

  “So what do we do then? We’ll have no home, and nowhere else to go,” James said.

  “I have an idea,” The alien said, “You two can come with me to a small cargo port. There are a bunch of cargo ship pilots who would be glad to smuggle you into the system, but Jupiter is as far as they would be able to get, then you’re on your own.”

  “Any other options?” Mark asked.

  “That’s all,” The alien replied.

  “We’ll take it,” James said.

  “Good… good,” The alien said, “We’ll begin the trip right away,” He walked into the small cockpit and started using the control pad. The ship shook slightly, and the engines began to emit a blue fire, making the vessel accelerate into I-Hypotonic warp.

  James walked into the cockpit, next to the alien who was sitting in the control chair, “How long until we make it to this cargo port?”

  “Not long, not long, we’ll be there shortly, but for now just get comfy, I’ll alert you when we get there.”

  “Sounds good to me, and thank you. This means a lot.”

  “No thanks necessary. It’s my pleasure.”

  That comment sounded off to James, but he ignored it and walked back into the hangar with Mark.

  “What’d he say?” Mark asked.

  “That we’ll be there soon,” James replied. Barely ten seconds passed before the ship started to slow down.

  “What’s going on?” Mark asked.


  “Don’t know, but we can’t be so close to our Solar System so soon, can we?”

  “Definitely not, cause that’s here,” Mark pointed at a small glass window. Jupitain warships. An entire fleet.

  “What’s that guy doing?” James asked himself. Suddenly, the door to the cockpit closed and locked itself.

  Mark ran up to it, “What are you doing?!” He shouted.

  “Making a profit,” The alien replied, “You think that I would go through all the trouble to help people who aren’t paying me, well now I have the opportunity to aid, and get paid… paid well at that. The E6s put a lil’ bounty on your heads, don’t know why don’t care why, all I know is that its easy money.”

  Mark banged on the door, “Turn around!”

  “No can do my friend. No can do.”

  The ship entered the atmosphere of a rocky, wasteland type planet, much like the one James and Mark had just escaped.

  When the clouds cleared, there was no rock for miles. Flat, clean, polished metal covered the ground, with rows upon rows of empty Dark matter chambers, and in the very center, a giant black hole bomb, roughly the size of a mountain. It was still under construction; Dark matter being pumped into it while workers of all types of species built the remaining parts of the outer layers. From the looks of it, the device was almost done.

  James noticed a control pad on the side of the door, it was off, but the panel was loose, and not well connected to the wall. He grabbed the first aid knife and cut through the loose connectors. The control pad fell, revealing a system of complicated wires.

  “Mark, little help figuring this out.”

  Mark walked over, looked at the shown wires, and ripped them out of the wall. The door opened, revealing the alien’s face. It went from overjoyed, to panicked. Mark punched him in the face, knocking the alien out. He set him by the doorway. Mark sat down and took the controls.

  He started to press random buttons that looked like flying controls. The first one he tried, the ship’s glove compartment-type thing popped open, filled with Jupitain identification slips and fake ID’s.