“Release me!” the Grey screeched.
The Bunnie crept over a bank of machines. His arms reached out, and he would be on Jeff in an instant.
“No, no, no, human,” the Bunnie said.
Whistle came to life, racing across the room towards Jeff, each step a tremor on the floor. She pushed the Bunnie to one side and tried to grab Jeff. Jeff jumped down the chute. It was like diving into an elevator shaft with no elevator.
Jordan, still on the ladder, yelled his name as Jeff dropped past her.
The fall might not be a fatal one, but it was high enough that there would be serious hurt if he was wrong about Commons safety features. Someone, most likely the Grey, had shut down the lift to keep people like Jeff out. As Jeff jumped, the assumption was that the lift would turn back on if anyone got in it from the booth above to prevent them from going splat. The grav lift clicked on. Their fall slowed to a gentle descent. Jeff landed light on the floor of the terminal, the Grey firmly in his arms.
“You fool! You imbecile! You human!” the Grey said. It frothed and spat as it cursed him. A putrid smell rose from its body.
“Yup, maybe, and true,” Jeff said. “Coming through!”
He ran into the crowd with the Grey clutched tight. He elbowed forward.
“Stop!” Whistle yelled. She landed on the bottom of the chute just behind him.
Jeff didn't look back. He heard screams from the crowd as Whistle cast anyone aside that didn't move. Her heavy footfalls pounded the floor behind him. The crowd hadn't moved much in the terminal lobby. Jeff continued to cut forward. The Grey wriggled and twisted in his grip. It felt slimier than before, a film of mucus over its entire body. Jeff came to a stop in front of a large four-legged creature with a trunk, a Commons citizen he had seen before out in the streets. It looked an awful lot like an elephant. It glared at Jeff, daring him to break in line in front of it. Jeff ducked and tumbled under the large creature.
“Hey!” the elephant yelled.
Whistle, a step behind them, collided with the elephant with a fleshy impact. The elephant didn't budge.
Whistle said, “Move.”
The elephant creature trumpeted like a proper pachyderm and squared off with her.
“No,” the elephant said, a foot scraping at the floor.
Other creatures were trying to give the combatants space or get closer for a look, resulting in more pushing from every direction. Jeff stepped around as many of the crowd as possible, but he was hemmed in from all sides. That was when the Grey bit him, locking its tiny flat teeth onto Jeff's hand. Jeff jerked his hand free.
“Stop it,” Jeff said. He readjusted his grip to avoid the Grey's mouth.
“The human is here,” the Grey screamed. “The human, the human, he's here!”
Several in the crowd stopped and looked at Jeff. Eyebrows raised. A claw pointed. A few tried to back away from the human, not wanting to touch him, but not having anywhere to go. Jeff had some space around him now; yet, he couldn't make much headway. The Grey kept shouting.
One blue quadruped with two heads looked at Jeff without recognition of what it was looking at, then it looked at the Grey, then it looked behind it for the bogeyman that had caused the citywide exodus. “Help! Human!” it started to shout with both mouths. Others took notice, the cry of “Human” being taken up by others. Half the terminal now knew a human was among them.
Yet with all the eyes on Jeff and his prisoner, no one did anything to stop him.
CHAPTER 36
WHISTLE HADN'T HAD TO FIGHT anything near her own size since her last time back home, a sororal reestablishing of her family's pecking order via a double-elimination tourney of one-punch. There were quite a few creatures larger than she in the Commons but few of a violent disposition. The carnivorous elephant creature before her stomped a foot and launched forward. Before Whistle could brace for impact, the elephant took her off her feet and carried her with it, colliding next with a number of other creatures who had the misfortune of standing too close. Commons citizens climbed over one another to avoid getting squished.
From somewhere in the crowd, the Grey continued to yell. But Whistle was busy, filling with rage, and about to teach this creature the true meaning of brute force. Her master would have to wait. She gave way to the heady rush of her rising fury and started swinging.
***
Most in the crowd were distracted by the nearby violence and tried to back away from the fight. Jeff ducked and crawled and dodged through the throng, passing several security bots that continued their feckless attempts at order through rote announcements. Some in the crowd held up devices to record the fight in the terminal. A few took footage of Jeff's passing as if he were an escaped zoo animal or other curiosity.
More shouts from the crowd. More fingers and tentacles pointed. But not at Jeff and not at Whistle and her fight. Faces looked upward.
“A Bunnie,” someone next to Jeff said. “Look!”
Jeff saw motion above him. The Bunnie crept along the ceiling, huge, free of its disguise, long arms and legs moving impossibly fast. He moved to a pillar right above Jeff. His head pivoted, looking straight down at Jeff. His eyes sparkled. And he jumped.
Jeff dove. He tumbled to the right, the Grey still held tight, got up, ducked between a pair of onlookers. The Bunnie landed right behind him. The spidery creature spread his arms wide like a giant hairy fan. The crowd screamed and pushed to get away. The Bunnie thrust creatures aside with ease and reached for Jeff.
“It's time,” the Bunnie said. “And you cannot stop us.” The “S” in “Us” came out as a long hiss. “Put down the Grey, human.”
The Grey wiggled, but Jeff didn't let go. A mass of citizens blocked his way forward. The Bunnie would be on him in a second, and there was nowhere to run. He set his jaw and braced for impact.
A pair of shimmering bolts hit the Bunnie center mass, sending his many arms and legs flailing as he fell to the floor. Flemming, Ceph, and a pair of scarlet-skinned policemen stood in the crowd with weapons out. Ceph stood in a firing position, relaxed, a pleased look rippling across his tentacled face. He lowered the stunner.
“Nice timing,” Jeff said.
“I see you have the little troublemaker,” Flemming said. He edged through the crowd and leaned in close to the struggling Grey. It continued to wiggle and secrete body juice, and it was starting to smell like fish. “I don't know what you're doing or how you locked the city into this panic, but it's over. You're under arrest.”
The Grey grinned. “No, officer, it's not over. This has just started.”
Something beeped on the Grey. Jeff saw a sub-dermal green number illuminated on the creature's left wrist. Before he could say anything, it finished a countdown and flashed 00:00:00.
A klaxon went off throughout the station, trumping the other alerts. Lights flashed from the main transportation platform. The crowd stopped, the panic interrupted as the new emergency sounds cut through the din. A big board that had displayed a generic departure delay message now went dark, flashed, and read “Emergency Evacuation Protocol Engaged. Elevators arriving at all platforms.” The system that was on hold before came to life as a row of fifty elevators appeared at the platforms and opened their doors. There were shouts and exclamations from the masses but mostly just a collective sigh of relief as something approximating progress was indicated by the elevators' arrival. The crowd settled down, moved forward, those in front boarding the elevators and starting their journey away from the Commons. And off they went. More elevators appeared, and the next in line got in.
“This can't be good,” Jeff said. “Is there any way to shut this down?”
“They're evacuating,” Flemming said. “Returning to their home worlds. We can recall everyone once we get the systems here reset.”
“Stepping back into the same river and flying the coop,” Ceph said, nodding.
Jeff shook his head. “We're missing a piece of this.” Jeff readjusted his grip on the Grey. It con
tinued to wiggle and fight. “All of this just to get people out of the city?”
A third batch of elevators arrived and took the next group away. The crowd settled into its queues. There was a calming effect on the line once the Commons citizens sensed that they were about to be cared for and sent home. Some in the crowd laughed, some applauded. A forward shuffle gave everyone something to do, the human and Bunnie all but forgotten.
When the fourth batch of elevators arrived, something was different. A tremor passed from the front of the lines to the back. The terminal was large, and the new clamor at the one end blended in with the city alarms and crowd noise at the other.
When those at the front waiting their turn for their elevator home shouted, “Bunnie!”, the cry spread to the entire station, devolving into more of a question the further back it went. Someone near Jeff yelled, “The cop got it!” Yet the cry from the front continued. What cemented the panic was when scores of Bunnie poured forth from the returning elevators like a tidal wave of giant spiders. The crowd pressed back towards the exits and towards Jeff.
A strange tingling sensation pierced the air as the Bunnie came on. It hung in the air and settled in somewhere behind Jeff's head. Jeff noted that the cops and others in the crowd put their hands and limbs to their translators. Jeff's own unit was humming, the sound building like a feedback loop that got louder, only to deliver a final pop. Once again, all translations ceased.
***
The Bunnie attacked, slamming into the many waiting creatures standing close to the arriving elevators, knocking them down like dominoes before bounding over the heads of others. They grappled some to the ground, mandibles clacking and spinnerets spinning. White strands of sticky webs soon covered several hapless creatures.
Other Bunnie had weapons, four or more in outstretched claws, blasting away at anything and everyone. Citizens fled, many struck down and stunned by the flashing yellow beams or tripping and stumbling into others, sending those to the ground. In the midst of the chaos, a number of the security bots tried to move forward towards the Bunnie while blasting a stern warning but were hampered by the crush of the fleeing crowd.
One bot near Jeff extended its neck. Its head now stood above most of the crowd, blinking red lights flashing from a rack it wore like a hat. It started to speak, but it came out as nonsense. Jeff only heard an electric squeal. The bot bounced up and down on its hydraulic pistons. It waved its tiny arms, but no one paid it any mind as they pushed past towards the exit. A Bunnie arced through the sky and landed in front of the bot, toppling a group of citizens in the process. The bot beeped once before a hairy arm knocked it hard enough to almost overcome the bot's gyroscopic balance. As it bobbed back upright, a second blow removed the bot's head with a crunch and an electric pop. It keeled over, releasing a puddle of oily gore.
Jeff turned to run. He caught a glimpse of Jordan across the terminal, waving her arms, shouting something. The crowd pushed at him, any thought of a lateral passage through the crush vanishing. He lost sight of her as she was carried towards an exit. Various fleeing creatures bumped into Jeff, but he kept his footing, tried to stay close to the cops while keeping the Grey held tight.
Flemming went forward and began helping various citizens not get crushed, picking one baggy-skinned biped up from the floor, standing it up, and sending it on its way. He shouted orders to Ceph and the two red officers. All that came from his mouth was gibberish. Ceph's response didn't translate either, but he moved to direct the crowd and waved them on towards less-busy doorways that led to the streets.
Some of the Bunnie leaped over the masses and landed above the exit doorways. This made a few in the crowd stop and scream and try to move away from those exits, but they were trapped by the rush. The Bunnie fired away indiscriminately and pulled individuals from the crowd into their clutches.
One wide-bodied creature knocked Jeff to the floor. Before Jeff could stand, the Grey capitalized on this moment and kicked him in the face, the blow giving the Grey enough wiggle room to pull free. Jeff scrambled up, the Grey an arm's length away and gaining speed. The thing knew how to run. Jeff wasn't slow, but the Grey's size made weaving through the pack easy. Jeff found a break in the crowd and lunged forward, the Grey now in reach. Suddenly, Oliop was in his way. The hairy technician smiled at seeing Jeff and frowned at seeing the impending collision.
They collided. They both went down, Oliop providing a cushion as they hit the hard floor's sensible and subtle-patterned tile. Jeff yelled, “Get him!” Oliop didn't understand the words, but he did see the Grey, and he got out from under Jeff and helped him up. The Grey was heading for a small side door marked with non-flashing and now unintelligible signs.
The Grey went through the door. Jeff caught the door before it closed. This wasn't an exit. Jeff had seen the plain, industrial back passageways before. These were the same corridors that connected to the private hangars, including the Grey's, where Jeff had first arrived in the Galactic Commons.
The Grey threw a bucket back that caught Jeff in the shins. Jeff stumbled, his momentum blown. Oliop bounced past, grabbed a mop, and chucked it forward. It missed the Grey but momentarily blocked access to another door. In the second it took for the Grey to push the mop away, Jeff was on the tiny alien.
Little fists struck at Jeff's arms as he grabbed the Grey.
“Let me go,” the Grey yelled, its voice raspy with exertion and anger. All semblance of self control had vanished, the alien's face flushed with strange dark colors that made it look bruised.
Oliop said something that Jeff didn't understand. Jeff gave the Grey a studied look.
“Why is it I can understand you?” Jeff asked.
“Still haven't figured this out?” the Grey said as it panted. “How can a species with so many moronic, nonsensical, and backwards phrasings be so simple?”
Oliop said something again. It might have been a question. From outside in the terminal, the tumult continued, barely muted by the walls that separated the maintenance corridor.
“So you either have a translator that works,” Jeff said, “Or you've learned English.”
“Learned?” the Grey said. It twisted and jerked against Jeff's hold. Bubbles of spit foamed on its lips. “That clutch of words you string together shouldn't be called a language. Your entire species is infested with sounds and groaning that are so much uttered offal. The Commons beings don't need you; we don't want you, you or the pollution that comes from your throat and tongue.”
“Listen, you, I didn't ask to be invited to this, but here I am,” Jeff said. “And you speak as if the Commons is something you care about, yet it seems you're doing a pretty good job at screwing this place up. Why would you bring the Bunnie here?”
“Sometimes you have to tear something down before you rebuild.”
Oliop tugged at Jeff's elbow. Jeff looked over. Oliop had his translator out, showed it to Jeff, and shrugged. Jeff shook his head but stopped, knowing even that gesture was meaningless. Jeff shrugged back and indicated the Grey in his arms with a nod.
With a furrowed brow and pulled-back ears, Oliop said something to the Grey, but the Grey ignored him.
From outside, the screams got louder. Something slammed into the door.
Oliop tapped Jeff with a finger and pointed to a corridor that led away from the main terminal. He walked and beckoned Jeff to follow. Jeff did. They walked a ways, the Grey occasionally giving Jeff a kick when possible or squirming any time Jeff's hold slackened. After going down a long ramp to a lower level, Jeff stopped. It looked like they were near the place where Oliop kept his garage of broken elevator parts.
“Oliop,” Jeff said. “We can't just hide.”
“'We can't just hide,'” the Grey mocked.
“Shut up. We need to go back to the room with the talking computer.”
Oliop had stopped, was listening, but clearly not understanding.
Jeff tucked the Grey under one arm. He pointed to his own null-space pouch where his tran
slator lay, and then to Oliop's. Then he pointed upward in an approximation of where the street level might be. Oliop made a gesture, said something. Jeff shook his head. Communication wasn't possible, and there wasn't time to work this out.
“You'll just have to follow me,” Jeff said, knowing that the technician wouldn't understand.
Jeff headed up the ramp. Oliop's statements became exclamations, the exclamations giving way to what might have been the technician swearing, but Jeff continued his ascent.
“There's nothing you can do,” the Grey said. “Hide. Run. It won't matter.”
By the time Jeff found a door to the streets, Oliop had joined him, grumbling as he moved ahead of Jeff and peeked out the door, looking for signs of danger.
CHAPTER 37
OUT ON THE STREET, Jeff and Oliop moved from cover to cover to avoid the invaders.
They saw a trio of Bunnie surrounding a stick-thin creature that rode in a motorized coffin. The chamber the creature sat in was chock full of wires and electrodes and some sort of thick atmosphere visible through its glass front. The Bunnie toyed with the creature and got excited every time they could get the alien to make a seventeen point turn to try another route of escape. The many-armed assailants swatted at the coffin with their claws, almost knocking it over. The driver tried for a break between two Bunnie, but the coffin's chassis was so slow, and the Bunnie, even in their exaggerated lethargic taunts, were too quick. Anytime the coffin collided with a Bunnie, it came to a stop, its underpowered drive train incapable of pushing anyone out of the way. The Bunnie jeered and poked at the trapped alien.
The Grey, still firmly held in Jeff's arms, laughed. “Tell me what you see,” it said. It emitted a rotting fruit smell.
Jeff got down behind a row of large decorative planters with some kind of trees with boughs and branches that looped and twisted every which direction. He didn't want to watch the scene on the street anymore. From here, they would have to cross at least some open ground to get to anything resembling cover. The three Bunnie with the trapped citizen in the coffin weren't the only set of invaders nearby. Others raced past in pursuit of fleeing Commons citizens. This hiding spot was good, but they couldn't stay there.
A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth Page 24
