United We Stand

by Christian Messe

  He tried another, and this time an automated message started to play, “Would you like to begin teleportation sequence?” It sounded like a robotic woman, and it was very annoying.

  “Yes, yes I would,” Mark replied, with false confidence.

  “Mark, those Jupitains can see us…” James said, starting to get ballistic.

  Before the automated voice could say something else, the scratchy voice of a Jupitain replaced it, “What is your operation code?” It growled. It was talking through the intercom, from a control tower nearby.

  “Uh…” Mark stuttered.

  “Operation code...” The Jupitain growled, louder.

  “Auugghh… zero… zero… …zero?” Mark whispered, guessing.

  “Mark?!” James shouted.

  “Hang on Mr. Jupitain sir, we have a, uh, disturbance. There is a very loud, and annoying prisoner, in the holding cell.”

  “Ship model doesn’t have holding cell,” The Jupitain growled.

  “Uh.. chrrch chrrch, sorry, losing ya, chrrch chrrch…”

  “Land, immediately,” The Jupitain growled.

  “Uuuh…” Mark started.

  “Mark they’re aiming at us!” James shouted.

  “Captain, you’re supposed to be the smart one, so don’t go yelling at me!” Mark snapped back.

  “Land,” The Jupitain grumbled simply.

  Mark looked around frantically, and grabbed James’s knife. He started to shank the intercom, until the link between the ship and the Jupitain control tower was lost.

  Mark rummaged his hand through the glove compartment, he looked at ID’s, Jupitain documents, and found an… inappropriate holo-magazine. He dug through some more and saw something else, a note.

  “I found something!” Mark shouted.

  “Would you like to watch a tutorial video, on how to use Holo Warp Transportation sequence?” The automated voice of the woman turned back on.

  “Yes! Yes, I would!” Mark yelled.

  “Loading… loading… loading… playing back Holo Warp Transportation Sequence Tutorial…”

  A video was projected onto the cockpit window, “Darsakian productions, presents to you: Holo Warp Transportation.”

  “Pull up!!” James yelled.

  “Auuugh!” Mark grunted.

  The ship leveled itself, above a horde of Jupitain troops and tanks, only flying a few feet above them. Since the ship didn’t land, they started to open fire, shaking the hull of the vessel.

  An annoying looking Darsakian, with a nerdy voice, appeared on the screen, with a holo board behind him, “Now,” He adjusted his glasses, “In order to use…” He snorted, “Holo Warp Transportation Technology, you must think of the three following things. Number one…”

  A red laser beam from one of the Jupitain tanks smashed into the ship’s hull, causing James to fall off his feet.

  “Where you want to go,” The alien continued.

  Another blast hit the ship.

  “How to get there.”

  A low-powered energy beam exploded a few feet away from the hull, rocking the ship sideways, causing James to bang into another wall.

  “And the limits of your current spacecraft.”

  “Fast forward!” James yelled.

  “I don’t know where the fast forward button is! This isn’t exactly YouTube!”

  “It is crucial to realize, that Holo Warp Transportation relocates your entire ship and crew, by using Usarnius energy particles, attributed from Usarnius’s Law, that move an astonishing five hundred thousand systems per second. Due to devastating tests, we will warn you of a few common side effects. Side effects may include, loss of limbs, loss of life, and loss of ship, due to the relocation of one part of space, to the other. You may also run into the E6 horde, but don’t worry, the Nova Alliance will deal with them soon!” The video was obviously old.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Mark gulped.

  “Better than the situation we’re in now!” James yelled back.

  “To start your Teleportation sequence, please enter coordinates in the following font: LN: 0000. GE: 0000. PL: 0000.”

  A holo-pad ejected from the control board, and stopped right next to the pilot chair. Mark smashed the pad with the numbers he saw on the note and pressed the commence button.

  The tutorial disappeared before the scientist could finish, and the automated female voice started again, “Coordinates accepted… please, fasten your safety restraints inside of your seat, and prepare for Transportation.”

  “Oh crap,” James murmured.

  A purple field of energy started to form around the entire ship; it was spiraling so fast that it almost looked like it wasn’t moving. Then, all Mark and James could see was purple-blueish energy. The ship didn’t go at an incredible speed. It simply disappeared from the Jupitain planet and reappeared in the atmosphere of another.

  The ship kept at the same speed, hurling towards the surface of this new world until it smashed into the ground with a phlooom! The crash spread dirt and mud everywhere and covered the cockpit of the ship in green moss and leaves. James let go of the seat he was holding onto and attempted to get back on his feet. He failed due to the position the ship was in.

  They landed cockpit first into the ground, with the back facing slanted towards the clear blue sky.

  “You all right?” Mark grunted.

  “Yeah, fine,” He replied, climbing the side of the ship, “Where are we?”

  The two of them expected to hear the annoying voice answer them, but the landing broke the module. They looked at where they had set the unconscious alien. He was dead, killed from the force of the impact.

  “Oh God....” James gasped.

  “It was him or us,” Mark said, darkly. It was quiet for a few seconds, “Well, guess we’ll have to take a look outside.”

  “Wait, the air might not be safe, or… we don’t know what’s on this planet…” James started.

  “There’s no use in staying here,” Mark argued, “I’d rather take my chances out there than do nothing here.” He opened the cockpit door and leaped out of the damaged hangar. Their escape pod had crashed miles away from the site.

  Mark looked around. They had crashed into a vast jungle. Thick vines were scattered across trees that were seemingly as tall as skyscrapers, and green plant life cluttered the ground, making it impossible to see any dirt. Mark could feel the moist soil against the bottom of his shoes.

  “All clear Captain!” Mark shouted from the ground, cockily. Seconds after he finished his sentence he was pegged in the face by a rock. He hit the ground hard, unconscious.

  “Mark? Mark!? What’s going on down there?” James asked, panicked.

  Then, dozens of alien humanoids jumped out of the bushes, surrounding the crash site, and shouting war cries. Their skin was light blue, and the skin around their eyes was even lighter blue. It was glowing, highlighting their facial features. Some had hair, but it was all the same color. Black, dark black. They wore primitive looking rags, probably harvested from the animals of the jungle. Their weapons were just spears and unsharpened sticks.

  James peeked out of the hangar, to see the alien tribal people surround the exit below him. They shouted at him with angry war cries. One threw a rock at him, forcing him to duck.

  “Oh crap… oh crap,” James hyperventilated, “They’re gonna eat me!” He panicked.

  A few of the tribal people found the cockpit of the ship, which was the only part of the vessel that was touching the ground. They stabbed it with their spears, but the blast-resistant glass wasn’t going to break anytime soon… unless the shields were off.

  “Oh no…” James winced.

  The glass shattered, and the aliens flooded in, shouting primitive slang. They climbed up the tilted wreckage of the hull and reached James. He was defenseless. They looked at him with curiosity, for about two seconds before one of them grunted, and smashed the butt of his spear against James’s face.

  He woke up in a t
ent, made of wood and vines for a roof. He tried to get up, but he was tied to a chair, well if a flat rock counted as a chair. Other than being tied to a rock, and hit in the face with a staff, he felt fine. He wasn’t tortured or eaten, were these people really savages?

  Two of the tribal people walked in, side by side holding spears. One grunted like it didn’t approve of James being there. The other just stood there, like it was waiting for something. Then, a man walked in from behind them.

  He didn’t look like any of the people James had seen on this planet. He was roughly the same size as the tribal people, who were about six foot. He was just a few inches taller. His skin was black, African. He was human. He had pitch black hair and a short black beard. Both had small touches of grey. He wore a black shirt; it was sleek looking like it was for a set of high-tech battle armor. The rest made him look like the average bounty hunter. Leather pads on his shoulders and legs as armor, with torn up jeans. He had a leather belt around his shoulder to his waist, holding laser cartridges… and lead, 50 caliber. His face was rugged and scarred, yet it had a high intelligence look to it.

  He dismissed the tribals and looked down at James, hands on his hips, “When I saw your friend, I could hardly believe it, another human… another man.”

  James looked up at him, “Who are you?”

  The man smiled, “Private Douglas Daly, Third Regiment, U.S. Army.”

  James gaped, “U.S. Army? Like, the Army, the branch of the military for the United States, before the invasion?”

  “Which other did you have in mind?” Douglas sighed, “Shame such a great nation fell, but, nothing escapes the grasp of those demons, nothing.”

  “Jupitains? You know about them?” James asked.

  Douglas laughed, “Do I know about em? I knew what those bastards were before the entire planet of Earth did, or at least I think so, I might not be the only one.”

  “What do you mean only one?” James asked, frustrated, “What are you talking about?! And jeez, can you untie me, it’s not like I could do anything.”

  “You’re a loud one,” Douglas grunted. He cut the vines holding James, with an Army combat knife.

  “You said that you were a part of the Army, how? Every single person on the planet that was even slightly associated with any kind of armed forces were killed. I should know especially,” James sighed, thinking back.

  “Well, maybe I wasn’t in the invasion,” Douglas hinted.

  “Not a part of the invasion… that’s not possible. You couldn’t be here if you weren’t abducted…”

  “Oh, I was abducted all right, just not by the Demons. Have you ever, heard, of the Third regiment?” Douglas asked.

  “No,” James replied.

  “1968, Vietnam War.”

  “No,” James said firmly, “No, no, you’re lying, you… you’d be dead, die of old age, a… and how, how would that make sense, how could you explain that?”

  “I was abducted,” Douglas replied simply.

  “By who? By what? You’re not answering anything!” James shouted, getting worked up.

  “Kid, have you ever heard of the Martians?”

  “They would never…”

  “Not the Kelisians you idiot, the Martians. You know, the little green men, the Area 51 kind of stuff.”

  “Those kinds of Martians don’t exist,” James argued.

  “You can’t say that to someone who’s been abducted by them,” Douglas grimaced.

  “You’re trying to tell me that there are in fact little green men, they exist?”

  “Yea, and they are not the type that take little primitive worlds, and create giant out of pocket alliances, like… the United Worlds. The Martians I’m talking about have obliterated entire Earthly civilizations, just to see what would happen, luckily, they were wiped out by a civil war that cleared all life from their entire planet in 1952. They used these type of bioweapons, and it got well, out of hand. The surface of the planet just, evaporated really.”

  “So, you're telling me, that you were abducted by little green men, fought in Vietnam, and are still alive, somehow got across the Galaxy to this jungle, and- and… know about these things that happened, plus, I’m pretty sure N.A.S.A, and other people would’ve found out there was life on Mars, before 1952…”

  “Oh please? Why do you even think Area 51 existed, conspiracy kid, the damn Egyptians even knew about em… I know that it’s a lot to take in, but it’s true. All the disappearances, people gone without an explanation, or just a made up one to calm the masses down… it’s all true,” Douglas turned around, “I’ve traveled so far, seen so much, things that I would have never imagined existed. I can assure you, this war has been going on since before both our times.”

  “What are you talking about?” James asked.

  “I’ve been at war with the Demons, or at least, what you call them… Jupitains, for over forty years. I’ve sided with countless rebels, all fighting for the same thing, with men I’ve called brothers. Seen every fancy piece of tech they’ve ever had, been in battles that you would never even be able to comprehend and seen things that would make any ordinary man go insane. There’s no war here, not one you can win. This isn’t some kind of conquering empire, that just takes over planets, trying to get power, no no, this… this is worse. The Galaxy’s seen its fair share of tyrants and overlords, but the Demons… they’re unstoppable.”

  Douglas sighed, “Dark and Gold matter, are substances known to the Galaxy, as the most powerful sources of energy, that will ever exist… they lie below the surface of every planet, in small pools next to their cores. The rarest substances in the Universe maybe, but all you need, to make one Jupitain, is a drop of Dark matter. A drop, that’s it. Then the visor scans it, and the code forms the drop into a perfect, world exterminating soldier. They wipe out entire species, leave some alive to mine for more Matter, but then when it’s all gone, they kill everyone, and move on to the next, in a never-ending cycle.”

  James wasn’t going to try to convince him. He knew it would be a lost cause, “I won’t ask you to come with me, but I will ask you this. Can you get me and my friend off this planet?”

  A.C.O.L.Y.T.E

  In 1947 the United States discovered that there was intelligent life outside of Earth… moreover, that discovery changed the course of technological advancement in the country, and on the planet, forever. A Martian flying saucer crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. The inhabitants of it, three refugees trying to escape from the civil war raging on Mars. The FBI reached the site in forty-seven seconds, and the entire flying saucer was entirely removed from the area in less than two minutes.

  At first, these Martians were treated with extreme caution. The government officials were cautious of any diseases or weapons of mass destruction the species might have been hiding, but then, one of the aliens pulled out a translator sphere, and told the United States government everything they wanted to know, cooperating fully. They revealed the various details about the Martian civil war, the fact that they had been abducting humans for millennia, and, the Jupitain outbreak that had spread across the entire Galaxy.

  A massive project was started, the construction of Area 51. It was a large facility buried two-hundred feet below the surface, with over twenty aircraft hangar-sized floors, built to house the three Martians, and any other object from space that could be a national security concern… or an asset. For years United States astronomers associated with the secret facility observed the civil war on Mars, and even though it ended in 1952, resulting in the extinction of all life on Mars, the U.S’s agenda towards space exploration and defense, only got stronger.

  In 1958, NASA was founded. In the eye of the public, it was meant to compete with the Soviet Union in the space race, but in reality, under the cover of NASA’s shadow, A.C.O.L.Y.T.E was born. A.C.O.L.Y.T.E, standing for Advanced Covert Operation on Labile Yields of Technological Extraterrestrials, would become the staple of every top-secret experiment and project for dea
ling with matters in outer space. The moon landing, was merely a side project.

  The U.S however, lost its closely guarded secret after a Soviet spy successfully infiltrated A.C.O.L.Y.T.E and obtained dozens of files, filled with detailed descriptions and data about Martian technology. The Soviets started to study the documentation and were soon able to understand a set of complex blueprints seized from Berlin in 1945; a Nazi Ion cannon prototype. The project was scrapped however, after the Soviets realized that the power needed to operate the cannon would be far too immense to even be considered logical, and they soon turned their attention back to ICBMs.

  England discovered alien life in 1962 after A.C.O.L.Y.T.E and the U.S government decided it was safe to disclose classified information with their closest ally. A.L.C.O.L.Y.T.E’s members, consisting of various highly intelligent and gifted military officials and scientists, displayed a video recording of Jupitain warships firing their Ion cannons on a world unknown to them at the time, called Kalaria. It was the closest planet to Earth that they had ever seen the Jupitains near.

  For decades A.L.C.O.L.Y.T.E worked in immense secrecy, and was the most confidential organization not only in the United States, but on the entire planet. Anyone who disclosed information about the program would be killed. Anyone who risked the program’s security would be killed. Anybody who even made a mistake inside of the program, like a coding error or small slip up, would be killed.

  Only the best, of the best, of the best, could even qualify for A.C.O.L.Y.T.E, and even then there was no way for enlistment. The government, went to you. Anyone working for the program had to have no emotion whatsoever, absolute discipline, and the acceptance that their name would never be remembered due to secrecy.

  China was the last major power to discover alien life, in the year of 1966, when a Martian flying saucer crash-landed in the Himalayas. The four Martians were dead, but that didn’t stop the Chinese government from using them in a… different way. For decades the Chinese government took greater and greater strides in the field of genetics, and much like the U.S’s A.C.O.L.Y.T.E, the program studying the Martian data and genetics were kept under immense secrecy, and anyone even slightly thought to be disloyal to the genetic program was killed without question.