by Mark Tufo
Progs and Genos are terrifying in their own reptilian way, but holy fuck, a Giant Centaur Spider? Yeah, there’s not enough illegal moonshine in Tennessee to wash that away. I debated staying and just getting the extreme radiation-induced tan. The Stryvers communicate telepathically on many levels; for some reason my drug addled brain was able to pick up on their threads of communication, which, granted, I had no right to eavesdrop on. Oh yeah, they were duplicitous fucks. With one hand, they were offering aid and assistance against the big bad Progs, and with the other they were planning to suck the blood right out of us. And I mean literally. They wanted the Progs out of the way so they could move in. Like all ancient grievances, we got conflicting stories of who started what, but what we knew for sure was they had been enemies for a good long time and had crushed a great many foes between them while they chased each other across the universe. We did not want to be added to that inauspicious list. The horrifying spider creatures we would take care of later; we were going to ride out the help as it suited us.
A Prog armada had returned to Earth, hell-bent on destroying or knuckling under anything left there. Paul, now the commander of the Guardian, scampered off in the only real military strength the earth had. Rightly, I might add, or he would have been destroyed, but still-kind of difficult to instill confidence in your populace when you run away. Our buddies the Stryvers were able to track him down, and my team got back on the ship. The Stryvers offered to help repair damages to the ship, and I was able to capture a Stryver that had been sent on a mission to kill me, proving my theory that they were lying bastards despite their protestations to the contrary. Besides the now infamous spider penis debacle, (again, see previous journal) we were able to glean incredible information regarding the Stryvers.
I convinced Paul to let Tracy, BT, and myself take a shuttle back to Earth so we could reunite with our son. During an ambush, we’d set up, we figured we might not be noticed, we uncoupled from the Guardian as they shot at the Progs, and then immediately buckled. It sort of worked, except for the fighters that pursued us and ultimately shot us down. We landed somewhere outside of Area 51, which, despite our dire situation, we recognized truly as a conspiracy theorists’ wet dream. We stocked up on supplies and helped out with a mission before departing to get back to Maine. Dee, in the meantime, stuck faithfully alongside my father, Tony, and Travis and they were making their way to Indian Hill after Searsport was attacked. Seemed that the Progs had done their homework and were not going to leave any stone unturned. And guess who was the number one enemy of the State? I suppose they really wanted to make an example of me. Fuck ‘em, they can get in line like everyone else.
I don’t know if it’s me and I have the world’s biggest trouble magnet shoved up my ass but if you stick around me long enough, you can be guaranteed you’ll be in the thick of it soon enough. We found ourselves smack dab in the middle of some Genos and some mutes (enhanced Genogerians, war mutations, really) having their own battle. Made a quick and dirty alliance with the Genos for one measly skirmish that turned out to be a full-scale war. And if that wasn’t screwed up enough, the Stryvers decided to join the party. So, the mutes that we had just been fighting were now our best buds. Well, not really; more like they were the enemies of our enemies. We won the day, but as a human, I was still on the losing end. We were shuttled up to the Vicieus, commanded by Asuras. I truly thought we had found someone high in the chain of Progerian command that would actually make a deal stick so that we could fight the Stryvers together, something I deemed absolutely paramount but which put me diametrically opposed to Paul’s stance. Shocker, right? Paul had already sided with the Styrvers against the Progs and who could blame him? The species I wanted to align with had killed billions of humans, yeah, that’s with a “B.” The Stryvers thus far had given us a chance to combat our enemy with advanced weaponry and help, plus, they had fought on the ground against the progs’ designated hitters, the mutes.
My stance was shaky at best, but, see, I could hear them. I knew, I absolutely knew, that the Stryvers just wanted the Progs out of the way so that they could take over the whole circus. Sort of like France helping the burgeoning United States back in the 1700s; it wasn’t so much about aiding the US as it was about sticking it to England. Somewhere in the midst of all this crap, Beth had absolutely lost what shreds of her mind she still had control of. She’d befriended Uut, the Stryver I’d captured. She’d communicated with the Stryvers, and was now their person on the inside. Besides repeatedly trying to have me killed, she threatened to give them the whereabouts of the Hill, which would have meant its untimely demise.
As if it wasn’t bad enough with the enemies we had, we got to add in some disgruntled humans that Beth had manipulated. A part of me can’t even really fault the plan. Arguably the two top leaders of the planet couldn’t even get their shit together, why should she? With her little band of armed malcontents and the threat she’d promised, we watched helplessly as Beth flew off. We’d evacuated the Hill, but Paul should have pulled that trigger and blown Beth out of the air. I had high hopes that was the last we’d see of her, that maybe the Stryvers would make a nice Beth pate…lord knows her brain was creamy enough.
BT and Drababan had developed a frenemy vibe and even met in the stadium to duke it out, only that started a whole chain of events which was the beginning of our being flushed, spiraling out of control, down a huge cosmic toilet. For some ungodly reason, I was at the helm of Earth’s most powerful (well, only) ship. I employed some less than textbook maneuvers as we were besieged upon by a bevy of Stryver war ships. I gained a tactical victory, but the Guardian was basically a floating tomb by the time I was done playing with it. And oh yeah, ended up my buddy Asuras had been playing us as much as the Stryvers were. There was never a deal in place; he was placating us as we did his dirty work.
Mankind was on a rapidly shrinking island and a tsunami, along with a category 5 hurricane, were both barreling down on us. And this time there would be no help coming, no last-minute cavalry charge, no evacuation. I put a bullet in Asuras’ head for my trouble; if there’d been any chance at salvaging the relationship it left the barrel of my pistol at eight hundred and thirty feet per second. And since he was like, only ten feet away…well, you get it. I made a mess in his quarters. We had all of our personnel from the Guardian aboard his ship, and luckily, a large percentage of his people were off repairing the Guardian, since they were planning on taking it back and wanted it running. Paul gave them a megaton surprise. We were formulating a coup when the Stryvers liked the odds, and, led (somewhat) by Beth as their front man, they nailed us. The ship was sufficiently damaged by the ferocity of the attack that it initiated its own self-defense mechanism and was on auto-buckle hell bent for its home world. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we, as of yet, had not found a way to disengage this fail-safe system, and the journey there was somewhere around two and a half years long.
There were still mutes and Genos on the ground and Stryvers in the air, as far as we knew. Even if this bucket made it in one piece to the Progerian home world and we could immediately turn it around and head for Earth, we were still five years out. There was no telling what, if anything, would be left of our home world, not to mention our son, who would have effectively been orphaned for more of his life than he’d had parents. That, that above all, had the most crippling effect on me. Tracy would deal with it better than me because…well, fuck it. She’s just stronger than me, no reason to dance around it. But it was still going to take a high toll on her. A big part of me wanted to pilot this ship straight into the Progerian planet and create our own extinction event; nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to watch everything they knew and loved burn, but then I had to pull back and realize I’d be dead, so odds were, I wouldn’t actually get that much out of it. There were a good many hurdles to overcome before we got there, anyway. First and foremost was taking this ship over from the Progs once and for all, and second was dealing with the Stryvers that we
re following at pace. Probably not all that hard to tail us; we were like an old Chevy station wagon with burned out o-rings, meaning we were blowing blue smoke all across the galaxies.
Chapter 1
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 1
I was losing my shit. “No, no, no!” seemed about the only thing I was capable of saying. I was trying to wrap my head around the facts that had been presented to me and was doing my best to wriggle around some of the hard edges and inject some hope. Couldn’t though. The square peg that was our situation fit perfectly with zero tolerance into the reality hole we had dug. Every half-assed ill-informed idea I had was met with a thorough and resounding “no” before it could even be fully-assed.
“Then I’m going to fuck up some Progs. This needs to be taken out on someone.”
Even that got thwarted as Dee’s cooler head prevailed. “I do not think that wise, Michael. We may still need them. We are not sufficiently trained in how to maintain or fly this ship and if we fight and kill the Progs onboard, we will invariably lose even more of our personnel. Much may happen during our journey; we can ill-afford to waste any potential resource.”
“Fly? Maintain? We don’t have to do squat, Dee. We’re passengers. All we have to do is eat and crap for the next two and a half fucking years!” I kicked the wall, it gave zero shits and it hurt my toe. “Maybe make sure our tray is in the upright position when we land and all that,” I said to cover the limping.
“There are immediate issues we need to address, Mike,” Paul said. “I’m listening, guys. On one hand, we can’t kill the Progs because we might need them, but we can’t just sit on the sidelines while we barrel through space.”
A pin dropping would have been welcome. The rock and the hard place had fused and it just wasn’t fair. Where was my fucking hole card? I personally wanted to rail and shout, I felt like a good tantrum could actually relieve some stress.
“Can’t we just kill some of them?” I mumbled. “What about an accidental airlock malfunction?”
BT had pulled me aside. “We’ll make it through this, man. But you’ve got to keep it together. I can see you getting ready to shake right out of that skin of yours. Scary as it is, you’re our best chance. I know it and so do all of those people over there, including the general and your wife. I don’t have a fucking clue how you’re going to do it, just that you are gonna do it.”
“I can’t be the answer this time, BT.” I had tears brimming in my eyes. The thought of being away from my son for that long with neither of us knowing what was happening to the other, it had me on the edge. I’ve had stuff happen in my life, lots of it, actually, where I just lost my grip and things, important things, big fucking parts of my life just fell away and there were feelings of dread that I’d never get it back or ever get my head back to a decent place. This time though, this was a whole different ballgame. Breathing, just that most basic of functions, was eluding me. Panic. Yeah, that was the state of mind that was dominating all others. Like this ship had shrunk down to the size of a crypt and I’d somehow been mistaken for dead and buried alive. That type of panic.
Tracy had been around me long enough; had been witness to the nightmares that haunted me at night, and could spot the look of the damned when it plagued my days.
“I’m here,” she said, putting a hand on my face. I leaned into that caress. “We’re going to get through this. We’re strong; we’re stronger than this.”
“You are,” I said, and that I meant.
“I know. And I’m going to pull you through to the other side, kicking and screaming- like.”
BT smiled at that, which caused me to smile, despite it all. “Okay, you can go,” I said to BT as I stepped forward to hug my wife.
“Typical. I do all the heavy lifting and someone else gets credit for the move.”
I was just pulling back from our embrace when the ship comm came to life.
“This is Sub-Commander Eenos. I wish to speak with the leader of the Earth Forces…” I watched as Paul’s ears perked up and he began to walk over to a comm unit on the wall. He stopped and turned to me with a soured expression on his face as Eenos finished his missive: “Colonel Talbot.”
“Are you available, oh supreme leader?” Paul asked.
“Not sure. First off, he called me by the wrong rank; I’m playing at General now. And last I checked, you were still in charge of the Earth Forces.”
“Maybe I was playing at that rank, too,” Paul answered, and not in any sort of snarky way either. It was damn near a breakthrough as far as I was concerned. Maybe without Beth’s cancerous influence there was a chance we could repair some of the damage to our relationship. We would never be friends again; it was bad enough he’d tried to have me killed, but he’d done the same to my wife. You can’t just clap someone on the shoulder after that and invite them out for a beer.
“Answer it, Paul, I’m afraid my voice will crack and I don’t think that’s the message we need to convey right now.”
“This is General Ginson.”
“General, I would like to meet with you and your most senior officers in a neutral part of the ship. You may choose the time and place.”
Paul took his finger off the send button. “The whole ship is theirs. What the hell is neutral?”
“Think they’ll let us on the bridge?” I asked.
Dee shook his head at me like I was seven and asked if I could operate the big construction crane.
“The troop staging area on deck five,” Tracy said. “It’s close to where the majority of our people are. If he tries anything, we’ll be in our best position to counter it.”
“That was my second choice,” I said to Dee.
“If you say so,” Dee replied.
Paul relayed the information to Eenos, who said he would meet us there in ten minutes.
“Would be tough to rally his troops that quickly,” I said.
“Yeah going to be hard for us to do it as well.” Tracy took off at a run, the rest of us were quick to follow.
We’d raced to get there; that Eenos was already there meant he’d been moving at a good clip himself. Whatever was up, seems it required immediate attention. Paul, Tracy, Dee, BT, and I entered that staging area like we had all the time in the world, but we also had five-hundred troops to our back, should we need them. Eenos had only one other with him, but it was a mute, so he was worth three or four of us. Eenos himself was big for a Prog, not mute-big, but he was closing in on Geno-sized. His features and stance betrayed the stress he felt, though he was doing his best to hide it from us. Our side was all armed to the teeth with weapons up, so our stress level was right there upfront.
“There is no need for weapons, just yet,” Eenos said.
“Just yet?” I said softly.
Paul whipped his head back to me and I thought he was going to hiss.
“He said it,” I was explaining.
“Which of you is Talbot?” Eenos asked.
I had a sneaking suspicion that if I identified myself, a hidden sniper would splatter my brains across the floor. Shouldn’t be too big of a mess really, but who wants to clean that up?
Paul turned back to me again. I shrugged and stepped up.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“As diplomatic as a freltrun,” Dee said.
“That good?” BT questioned.
“Much like your skunk.”
“Yeah, that makes sense now,” BT smiled.
I took my finger away from my trigger guard long enough to give them both the finger.
“There are problems we must deal with together,” Eenos started.
“Sure are. If you could just hand over the keys to the ship we could take care of the first one,” I said.
“A freltrun would’ve done better,” BT said, shaking his head.
I don’t know if they knew exactly what I was asking for, but the tone was translated easily enough. The mute lifted his arms slightly, exposing a hidden firearm he was itching to get a hold of. All of ou
r weapons came up at that gesture. This would be a short firefight; they would all be dead and Eenos wouldn’t have solved whatever he’d come here for. Even I could see I was making a tense situation tenser.
“Alright, alright…let’s take my last sentence back; I’ve had a tough week. Why don’t you say what you came here to say and then we’ll take…”
“Mike!” my wife berated me.
“The floor is yours,” I told Eenos. When he said nothing, I asked him more politely to tell us why we were meeting here.
“You are aware of this ship’s ultimate destination?” he asked.
“We got the memo. Yes,” I added when he looked confused.
“Going to need to be clear, Mike.” Paul had come up beside me. “And cut the sarcasm; it doesn’t play well with them.”
“Might as well ask a horse to stop galloping.” BT felt the need to say.
“Is there any way to stop the ship?” Tracy asked. My heart lurched at the hope of a positive response.
“Any chance we had died with Asuras.” Eenos was looking at me.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that. Did you see how he looked at me?” I asked Tracy. “Asuras asked for and was granted a peace between us which I bought with great personal and public cost and against my closest advisors. Then, the minute he got what he wanted, he reneged. Not sure if treason is the right word here…how about treachery? That works. So I shot him. I have no problem killing anyone that threatens those I love or myself.” Involuntarily Paul and I found ourselves looking at each other for a moment. A lot passed between us in that brief second. I think he suddenly realized that the only reason I hadn’t killed him was that once upon a time we were friends. Now that he’d played that particular card; if we were ever in that type of situation again I would not hesitate.
“My apologies if my facial expression offends you; I’ve also had a tough week. You must understand that this ship is heading back to the home world under a fail-safe emergency guidance system. Even if you were somehow able to overpower our vastly superior forces, you would achieve nothing, for when we slow from our buckle there will be all manner of craft waiting.”
