by Clark Graham
“Very well, take us down.”
The Lieutenant could not help but notice that the air of confidence had completely left the acting commodore. He looked so unsure of himself at this point that Lemkin almost felt sorry for him.
The dark grey aircraft landed next to a large building. The ‘Jay Hawk’ plane was the workhorse of any invasion fleet. It could carry troops and supplies from outer space into the atmosphere. It had a blaster on each wingtip for close air support. The major drawback of the craft was it did not have enough armor when it got into a fight with ground troops. This allowed the plane to save weight so it could carry more cargo. The lack of armor didn’t matter because the rifles of this world were not going to bring it down. The natives would need something a lot heavier to do the job.
When Revlov got out of the plane he stretched and then went straight into the building. Lemkin had arranged for the tables and chairs to be set up before they arrived.
The acting commander sat down and asked, “What is the situation?”
Lemkin sat down across from him and started reading the reports from the various commanders. The situation was bleak.
“It’s time to activate another division,” Revlov concluded. He knew he was admitting a degree of failure, but if he wanted the attack to continue, he had no other choice.
Chapter Seven
East Coast of Santeria
“This blasted radio doesn’t work,” Pethran said as he kicked it.
“Honey, don’t kick it. Maybe we can get it fixed.” Sara was so upset her face was red.
“Dad, the enemy is jamming the signal. They don’t want us knowing what is going on,” Zedra suggested.
“Well, something is going on; I can hear gunfire in the distance.” Pethran was worried and angry at the same time.
Just then the phone rang. “Well, at least the phone is working,” Pethran said on his way to answer it. “Hello.”
There was a pause while he was listening, then he said, “I am on my way.” Pethran swallowed hard. He was worried.
“Where are you going?” Sara demanded as he hung up the phone.
“The aliens have been seen on the edge of town. The sheriff wants every available man to protect it.”
“You are just going to leave us?” Her voice was edgy and upset.
Pethran grabbed a pistol out of the closet and handed it to Zedra. “I am leaving now; protect your mother until I get back.”
“Yes, Father.”
After picking up his rifle, Pethran headed out of the door.
Sara was visibly worried and even shaking a little. Zedra had her sit down. “Its okay, Mother, we will be fine.”
“No, I don’t think that’s true. I have a bad feeling in my heart about all this.”
“I am here for you, Mother,” he said, even though he was at least as worried as she was.
As the evening wore on gunfire could be heard in the distance. Soon it was getting closer and closer and it seemed to Zedra that it was on their very farm. Green flashes of light started appearing on the hill.
Zedra cocked the pistol in his hand. Over the horizon an airplane appeared. It moved towards them until he could see the shape. It was exactly like the one the radio had described and it was over the house. It let out three flashes of light from each wingtip and the barn next to the house blew up into a million pieces.
“Oh, no, oh no,” Sara cried out as she fell to the floor clutching her chest. She started to tremble so Zedra lifted her off the floor and wrapped his arms around her.
“Mom, it will be okay,” but at that point she stopped breathing and started to turn blue. He tried to resuscitate her, but she was gone. “Mom, come back. Don’t leave me.” He burst into tears while still holding her.
He sat there for over an hour, crying and waiting for his father to get home. He had not paid attention to his surroundings but soon realized that everything had gone deathly quiet. He got out a bed sheet and draped it over his mother’s dead body and then picked up his pistol and cautiously made his way outside.
The barn was still smoldering but he walked over there anyway. He saw two bodies lying in the rubble. The one he recognized as his next door neighbor, Alkin. He turned over the other body. It was Alkin’s son, Jes.
He thought that the two must have given up the battle and were trying to get home when the plane appeared. They hid in the barn, but it did them no good. Zedra started to panic, ‘Dad, I have got to find Dad.’
His previous caution was laid aside as he ran over the hill where he had seen the green flashes of light. There along a fence line were five more bodies. One of them was the sheriff. He looked at each in turn, but his father wasn’t among the dead. He was still worried and upset. His world was coming to an end and he had already lost his mother, he wondered if he had lost his father too.
As he headed over the hill and into the valley, suddenly two aliens came out from behind a tree in front of him, “Stop where you are,” one of them demanded.
Zedra pulled out his pistol and shot. He wanted them all dead. One of the aliens fell down and the other took aim, but before he could fire, Zedra was tackled to the ground.
The alien that was hit stood back up clutching his chest. “You should have killed him,” he said to his companion.
The one that had tackled Zedra just laughed. “That pop gun wasn’t going to kill you. We need this boy besides. We are not meeting our quota.”
The man looked at the new hole in his uniform and the dent in his body armor. “It still hurts. I told him to stop; this one doesn’t listen.”
“We still need him.”
They put handcuffs on him and chained his feet together. The man who was going to shoot Zedra threw him over his shoulder instead. “Congratulations, you have just volunteered for service as a soldier to the Galactic Empire.”
“You can all die and rot,” Zedra responded. He struggled against the handcuffs but that only brought a hit on top of the head.
“I told you he was feisty,” said the one soldier.
As they marched Zedra towards town, he noticed several fires where buildings once stood. There were some of the townspeople lying on the side of the road where they had fallen during the ongoing struggle. It hurt him so to see them like this but he wasn’t going to let the enemy see him cry.
In the middle of town was an airplane sitting on the ground. The aliens took Zedra inside and held him in place. A strong magnet on a rail in the roof was turned on and it held Zedra’s hands above his head. Another in the floor held his feet in place.
“Don’t worry, kid. This is only temporary until we take you up to the fleet,” the alien that almost shot him said as he left the craft.
“Zedra, is that you?” a voice from behind him asked.
Zedra tried to turn around and look but he could not see into the darkness of the back of the plane. “Lee?” he guessed by the sound of the voice.
“Yes, it’s me. They got you, too?”
“Yep, they got me, but I shot one of them first. It did no good.”
“They got Jamie and me when they came to the house. They just crashed through the doors and they had us before we knew it.”
“They got Jamie too?”
“I am back here. I have been for over an hour. What do you think they want with us?”
“One of them told me that I had just volunteered for service in the Galactic Empire. Whatever that is,” Jamie replied. He was worried, what if they forced us to fight against our families and friends?
Just then one of the dark clad aliens walked into the ship. The boys quieted down. The man sat down in the pilot’s seat and picked up the radio. “This is Senior Chief Petty Officer Ludrik reporting. Town 422 has been secured. We have eight new recruits, but have lost eighteen men taking the town. Five dead and the rest wounded.”
“Eighteen! That is an unacceptable number; what happened?” came the voice from the radio.
“The whole town mobilized against us. We have had
to kill most of the men in the town and destroy a lot of the outlying buildings. We have mopped up now but I don’t have enough men left to take our secondary objectives.”
“Hold your position until reinforced, and then await new orders.”
“Yes, Sir .”
The radio went dead and the man walked outside.
“Eighteen of them, did you hear that? We got eighteen of them!” Lee was happy.
“My mother died of a heart attack when they attacked our farm. I found my next door neighbor dead in our barn along with his son. I came out of the house to look for my father, but I can’t find him.” Zedra’s voice had a desperate sadness in it.
“I saw your father. The enemy captured him. They were marching him to the other side of town when they marched me here,” Lee said.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes, but they got him. I don’t know what they plan to do to him.”
“At least he’s alive,” Zedra said to reassure himself.
Another alien walked into the plane. “Are you ready for your new adventure?” the man said with a smile. It had been a rough couple of days and he had lost friends in the attack so he was taking it out on these boys.
“I hope you die,” was Zedra’s response. The man pushed a button on the console sending a shock wave through Zedra. He screamed in pain but stopped when the man let off the button.
“We have ways of dealing with insubordination from our new troops,” the alien said with the same wicked smile. “Anyone else want a dose of my electrotherapy?”
The other boys in the plane all shook their heads.
“Good, we can be on our way then.”
Chapter Eight
East Coast of Santeria
Ignoring the bad feeling he had about the situation, Pethran walked out of his home and down the road to meet where the sheriff had arranged. He thought about driving, but the sheriff had cautioned him not to. He didn’t want a lot of cars giving away his position. Before Pethran got to the place, suddenly gunfire broke out over the next ridge. He hurried to get there, but when he got closer, suddenly he was surrounded by the enemy.
“Lay down your weapon,” one of the black clad men demanded.
There were four of them pointing their ray guns at him and Pethran knew he could not get them all before he was shot. He laid his rifle on the ground.
“Get down on your knees,” the same enemy soldier demanded. Pethran complied.
He was put in hand cuffs and led down into town. They were putting a lot of the captives in the dance hall, they led him that way.
Pethran saw that the enemy had captured Lee and Jamie. They were marching them in the other direction towards one of their ships. He wondered why, but he knew better than to ask questions. As he watched the two boys they looked over at him and suddenly he felt ashamed of being caught. He wondered if he would have been better off if he would have died fighting. He was headed towards an uncertain future at best.
The dance hall was full of cots and the wounded of both sides were being treated by doctors and nurses. The alien women worked alongside the men in caring for the causalities. Even Pethran, with his animosity towards them, couldn’t help but see how different and yet how beautiful the women were. Their nurses and the doctors were dressed in white. Machines he had never seen before were hooked up to the wounded. The beds had a lot of ways to be adjusted and there were monitors and things that beeped every second or so. He looked in awe at the equipment the enemy possessed.
“What are they doing to our wounded?” Pethran asked. He half expected a hit on the back of the head for talking; instead one of the soldiers answered him calmly.
“We are treating their injuries.”
“What are those devices they have them strapped to?”
“Oh, those. You have not seen anything like that, I suppose. They are to monitor heart rate, blood pressure and the other vital signs. The bags are giving the patients fluid. We have an operating room in one of the cargo planes where we can operate on the minor wounds. For the bad injuries we have to take them up to the hospital ship in space.”
Pethran was dumbfounded so he didn’t say another word. He just let himself be led to one of the chairs along the side of the wall. There was a long chain there that had been attached to the wall and the soldier clipped the chain onto Pethran’s handcuffs.
“Take it easy for a while; I will be back to get you soon. First we have to finish taking this town.” The soldier then walked out of the door.
It left Pethran wondering what he meant when he said he would be ‘back to get him.’ Nothing made sense. Why were they treating the wounded from the town? Why was he treated well? How did they seem to know the language of the nation? The alien spoke it with no accent like he had been speaking it all of his life.
After a couple of hours of sitting there, a nurse came up to Pethran and stood in front of him. “Don’t be alarmed, I am here just to check your vital signs.” She then stuck something in his ear and put a cuff around his arm. After shining a light in his eyes she said, “Your blood pressure is a little high, but that is to be expected. Otherwise you are fine. Have you been processed yet?”
“Processed?” It sounded ominous and Pethran was worried about it.
The nurse smiled, “I guess not then. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you.”
“Why are you doing this to us? Why did you invade my planet? What do you want?”
The nurse looked serious, “You have what the Empire needs; minerals, food and manpower. They thought it would be easy to take over your planet, but they were wrong. You will find that, in a very few years, your world will improve. You will have things that will make life easier. Computers, planes and trains that go a hundred miles an hour. Just don’t fight it anymore.” After she said that she went to the next person and started checking him.
Pethran sat down and contemplated what she had told him. It was very true that these invaders had things that his planet had not even dreamed of yet.
It was just a few minutes later that the soldier came back and got Pethran and followed him to the store that was next to the dance hall. The store had been emptied out and had only a desk in the middle of it with a man behind it. The man was older than the soldiers and had grey hair. He was bald on top. The soldier put Pethran in front of him.
“Name,” the man said without looking at him. Pethran just stood there and didn’t say a thing.
The man looked up, “What is your name?”
“Why should I answer your questions? You have invaded my country and taken me hostage.”
“Yes, and they invaded my planet and Corporal Ludwin’s planet and all the other planets, save a few, that make up this galaxy. You are no different than the Endorians or the Meletides or any of the other races that make up the Galactic Empire. Your life will go so much better if you cooperate. If you wish I can have Ludwin use his taser on you, but that will be very unpleasant. Just tell me your name.”
“Pethran.”
“Address?”
“Blue house on Rease hill.”
The man flipped through his papers. “Yes, I have it here. Who was the woman we found dead on the floor?”
“What?” Pethran’s face turned red. “What woman?”
Suddenly the man’s face grew sympathetic. “Take him to the morgue, Ludwin; see if he can identify her and then bring him back here.”
Ludwin nodded and he escorted the man down the street. The town’s doctor’s home had been converted into a makeshift morgue. Ludwin escorted Pethran there. There were refrigeration units in the ceiling and the walls had foam insulation on them. Tables lined the walls and bodies had been laid on the tables. Pethran looked around and he saw the sheriff’s body on one table and several of his neighbors on other tables. He felt guilty for surviving and being captured.
Then he spotted Sara. He dropped down to his knees in front of the table she was on. “No, no, Sara, no.” He wept. He sat there for a few minutes then he stood up
and looked at Ludwin. “You murderers.” He bellowed.
“She died of a heart attack. We did not kill her,” Corporal Ludwin replied.
It did little to quell Pethran’s anger so Ludwin pulled out his taser for self defense. Pethran looked down at the device. He did not know what it did and he decided not to find out. He went back over to the table to Sara and held her hand while he cried.
Chapter Nine
Deep Space
The plane that the three boys were on slowed down. The magnets released their hands and feet from the uncomfortable positions they were in. When the blood rushed back into his arms, Zedra groaned. The pain was bad, but it was short. He heard a thump, and then the ship shook. Soon the back opened and let light in the back of the airplane. There were four soldiers standing at the entrance waiting for the new arrivals.
“This is the new batch then?” The leader asked. “Are any of them causing you trouble?”
“Just this front one. He is a little mouthy is all.”
“Mouthy, is he, he will make a good engineers’ mate on a starship. No one will be able to hear him down there.” The leader gave out an evil snort. Zedra could not tell if it was an attempted laugh or not.
A chain was brought into the plane and it was clipped to all of the handcuffs. The boys were then led out of a ship into a long corridor. It was well lit, but Zedra could see out of the windows. There were hundreds of spaceships coming and going in all directions. Small ones like the one he had been in. They made up most of the fleet, but there were large ones too. The length of the town he had grown up in. The one they were in must be even more massive than those, he reasoned. It was very intimidating.
At the end of the corridor there were at least a dozen doors. The doors on the sides had bars on them but the ones in the middle did not. The boys were separated and put in the doors with bars.
After being in a well lit corridor, it took a few minutes for Zedra’s eyes to adjust to the dim cell. When they finally did, he looked around and saw about a hundred boys his age all sitting or lying on bunks that had been placed around the edges. Some of them in the corner were standing and talking, but for the most part, they were just staring into space, wondering what type of fate now awaited them. Zedra made his way to one of the bunks and sat down.
