Assault Troopers

by Vaughn Heppner

I couldn’t turn off my curiosity as easily as it seemed N7 had shut down his. “Keep us sliding toward the jump route,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Claath. There are too many mysteries here for my taste. We’re free now. We need to know the score if we’re going to make wise decisions.”

  “Wise decisions have not given us this position of freedom,” N7 said. “Wild, nearly insane decisions have proven best so far. Perhaps we should stick to what works.”

  “Keep an eye on the android,” I told the senior trooper. “Call me if he does anything suspicious.”

  I strolled out of the command chamber. The minute I was out of sight, I broke into a sprint. As I ran, I called the surviving centurions. A group of one hundred troopers still swept through various areas of the ship. They hunted the surviving Saurians. We hadn’t gotten all of the lizards yet, but we had to. This was an Earth-ship now. We couldn’t afford any alien stowaways.

  “Rollo,” I radioed.

  “What’s up, Creed?” he asked.

  “What has Claath been doing?”

  “He started out by threatening us,” Rollo said. “After a while, he offered us extravagant prizes if we let him go. You should hear this guy. He has some imagination.”

  “It sounds like he’s still interested in living,” I said.

  “I’ve never met anyone who wanted to live more,” Rollo said.

  “I’m heading down to you. We’re going to have a real heart-to-heart with the devil.”

  “Thinking you’d feel that way sooner or later, I started carving a few splinters,” Rollo said. “Then I took a good look at his fingers. The bastard doesn’t have any fingernails.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a few ideas. Soon, Claath will be begging to talk.”

  -26-

  “Are you comfortable?” I asked.

  Rumpelstiltskin Claath sat in a chair before me. He wore blue skivvies and nothing else. The Jelk had a miniature humanoid body, with odds bumps along his spine and too many ribs showing on a square and much too thick chest. His stomach was thinner than a man’s would be. He had large, knobby knees and just as knobby elbows, with the otherwise sticklike arms of a Holocaust victim. With his pointy teeth, he seemed like a Germanic Middle Ages’ goblin.

  “I asked you a question.” I said.

  We occupied a living room-sized chamber, holding Claath’s chair, a table and chair for me and several large metal containers on the sides. Rollo leaned against the closed hatch, with his arms crossed and the index finger of his right hand tapping his biceps.

  “Hmm,” I said, taking out my Bowie knife, removing a speck of imaginary dust from one of my fingernails. Then, with a clunk, I set the knife on the table.

  Claath’s eyes fixated on the Bowie.

  “It’s from Earth,” I told him. “I’ve sharpened it so that if I wanted to I could shave with the edge. I’ve always wondered if it was sharp enough to peel off skin. Now is my chance to find out.”

  After a half-second’s pause, Claath said, “Your threats mean nothing to me.”

  “Actions speak louder than words, huh?” I asked. “I know exactly what you mean. Boasters are so annoying.” I shifted around in my chair. “Rollo, could you come here, please? I need you to hold our little friend down.”

  From his spot near the hatch, Rollo pushed off the wall and ambled closer.

  “I am a Jelk,” Claath said proudly.

  I faced him, and I let my hand drop onto the knife’s hilt. “I know you are, and that’s what’s going to make this an enjoyable occasion,” I said, picking up the knife.

  “You are a barbarian.”

  “No, to you I’m a beast, remember? Hey, just so you know, Claath. I’m thinking about roasting the pieces I carve off you. I’m going to have a feast. Rollo?” I asked, half turning his way. “Would like some roast Jelk?”

  “I’d love some,” Rollo said.

  “Your threats—” Claath jumped off the chair. Rollo moved fast, intercepting the small alien. Claath attempted to use his pointy teeth to bite my friend’s wrist. Rollo slapped the Jelk’s face, twisting the neck so we heard a creak. That seemed to take the fight out of Claath. Without further ado, Rollo push the Jelk back onto the chair, and like a rodeo cowboy tying a calf’s legs, he tied down Claath’s wrists and ankles to parts of the chair.

  “Better tie down his entire left leg,” I said. “I’m going to hack through the foot.”

  Rollo used more binding, and he tied the leg tightly so the cords bit into flesh.

  “I am a Jelk—”

  “Put a gag on him,” I said. “If he’s not going talk, I don’t want to hear him scream either.”

  Rollo whipped out a cloth.

  “Wait,” Claath said, finally sounding worried.

  I was already coming around the table, with the knife in my hand. I paused, and I raised an eyebrow.

  “How do I know—” Claath said.

  “No bargains, Jelk,” I said. “Either you start answering my questions as fast as you can, and hope for my mercy, or I’m going to carve you up piece by piece.”

  Claath shuddered, and he shrank back from me. “I would like to point out that it was my mercy that gave you the freighters. Without me—”

  “The Lokhars wouldn’t have had any reason to come to Earth and use their bio-terminator,” I said. “Yeah, I know. I lay the majority of the blame on you, but not all of it.”

  “But—”

  I held up the knife.

  Wisely, Claath kept quiet and refrained from giving me more gibberish.

  “Now we’re finally getting somewhere,” I said. “Before we start the twenty questions, I want to know the codes to the freighters.”

  “You would strip me of single bargaining chip?” Claath asked.

  “I’m not bargaining,” I said.

  “Then why should I talk?”

  I stared at him and shrugged. Maybe I needed to hack off a foot before he realized how serious I was.

  He must have seen something in my eyes or my bearing. “Wait, wait,” he said.

  I was through listening to pleas. He needed to see, to feel, the business edge of my knife. I knelt beside him, and before I could think or worry about anything else, I began to saw at the ankle joint so blood spurted.

  Claath screamed, and he shouted, “I’ll talk, I’ll talk! Please, please, don’t cut off my foot. I’ll give you the codes.”

  I almost kept sawing. He didn’t deserve any better. How many thousands of Earth men and women had lost their lives because of him? He was a mass murderer. But I hesitated. If he tried to bargain again…

  Claath babbled the codes.

  Rollo sat at the table and wrote them down. I could hear his writing implement scratch against paper.

  I stood up, and I wiped the blade against Claath’s chest, leaving a bloody smear there.

  “My ankle, my ankle,” Claath sobbed. “It’s bleeding. You must bandage it. My blood is more precious than you can conceive.”

  “You’re going to have to talk more than that before I give you a bandage,” I said.

  He bobbed his head in the affirmative. It seemed to me that he was ready to give us straight answers.

  “Why did you attack the Sigma Draconis system?” I asked.

  “To open the routes,” he said. “The shorter way between Jelk-controlled areas will decrease my costs by twenty percent.”

  “I’ll buy that’s part of the reason,” I said. “No, maybe that’s just a fringe benefit. What’s the real reason, Claath? Why did you make this attack?”

  “I have told you.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” I asked.

  “No. You are an unusual beast—man,” he said. “You’re a man, not a beast. I see I’ve underestimated you. This attack on my battlejumper—it was brilliant.”

  I pricked him with the tip of the Bowie. He tried to ease back from it. He kept his eyes on the knife until he finally looked up at me.

  “This space battle was too bloody o
n the Jelk,” I said.

  He frowned. “I do not understand your meaning. Except for my ankle, no Jelk blood has been lost.”

  “You lost too many battlejumpers,” I said. “If you needed to open up this system, you should have brought more ships to smash it open at a lesser cost to you.”

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” he said. “We did not realize the guardian fleet was so strong.”

  “You could have fled the moment you saw their strength.”

  Claath shook his head. “You don’t understand space combat. The guardian fleet attacked as soon as we came out of the jump route.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “I saw some of the battle, remember? You attacked the guardian fleet as it hovered near the PDS. Listen, Claath, you’re going to lose both feet in short order if you keep lying to me. You’ve trained me too well, you see. I’m a killer, and I’ve killed plenty of aliens now. Lopping off your feet will be easy to do, a pleasure, in fact, payback for all the things you’ve done to us.”

  He stared into my eyes, and I saw something hard and remorseless in his orbs. They seemed to deepen in color from inky black to ultimate black-hole dark. He straightened, pushing against his bonds. Despite myself, I found something majestic in the little prick’s manner. He seemed to shed the simpering weakling as if it had been an act and now he showed his true self.

  “I am an Umbra and a Classist,” Claath said. “You cannot conceive what that means. I am of noble blood and have earned massive profits throughout my long life. Do you believe I’ve never been captured before? That this is my first time?” He bark laughed. “I remained here in your custody in order to see what kind of creature you Earthlings really are. You are ruthless, I’ll grant you.”

  “The codes you gave me?” I asked.

  “You wonder if they are detonation numbers instead of deactivation codes and you are quite correct,” Claath said. “Use them and watch the last of your race die.”

  “Why did you attack Sigma Draconis?” I asked.

  “You’re a curious beast,” Claath said. “Very well, I’ll speak, for all the good it will do you. We want this corridor open. It will improve each of our cargo percentages by twenty points. Given our volume of trade, that’s a vast amount of added revenue. Yet you are perceptive enough to see that we’ve taken too many ship losses. The guardian fleet surprised us by their numbers, but we battled our way to the Shrine Planet. After all these centuries, we have finally opened the way there. Even now, Doojei Lark or Axel Ahx races to the hidden Forerunner shrine. The Lokhars are primitive creatures. They fail to understand what they hold. But we know. We are the oldest race left in this region of the galaxy.”

  His words shocked me, but they had the ring of truth to them. I believed him, and I wondered who or what Claath and the Jelk really were. Why did a Jelk fleet only contain three members of their race?

  “Why use Earthers?” I asked. “Why did you come to our planet, to our solar system?”

  Claath laughed. “You are so terribly curious, aren’t you? It delights me to see you flail away for knowledge, to attempt to grasp the true realities of the situation.” He shook his oversized head. “You do not get to know the true reasons, now or ever.”

  “Is this about the Forerunner object?” I asked, “The one that disappeared in the Altair system?”

  His dark eyes narrowed. He hissed like a wet cat. “Tying me down and cutting my flesh was a gross indignity. I will remember this, Earthbeast, and I will enact a fierce revenge because of it.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m the one who’s going to enact the revenge.”

  “Do you think so?” he sneered.

  I’m not sure why, but I believed he was going to escape the bonds and the ship. I didn’t think Mr. Rumpelstiltskin would boast or act bravely unless he truly had an ace card. In the Altair system, the Forerunner artifact of the First Ones had disappeared. The Lokhars had unstable teleport bomb-ships: another form of disappearing craft.

  As I thought about that, my fingers tightened around the hilt of the Bowie knife. Claath couldn’t do anything tricky if he was dead. Using my neuro-fiber speed, I thrust the knife. The steel parted goblin-red skin as the blade sank through Claath’s flesh. I felt the blade grate against bones.

  Claath screamed in agony. It was a satisfying sound. Then his dark eyes locked onto mine. I felt a strange sensation against the base of my head.

  “I’ve marked you, Earthbeast,” he whispered. Blood stained his pointy teeth.

  “I’ve killed you, you little bastard,” I told him.

  “No,” he said, as blood dripped onto his chin. “I do not keep my heart where you do.” He laughed, and he began to fade.

  “No!” I shouted, yanking out the blade. I stabbed again, twisting the knife, hoping to kill the devil before it was too late.

  He shuddered, he screamed again, and he faded even faster.

  “I have marked you,” Claath said in a ghostly voice.

  I removed the knife for another strike. Even as I did so, Claath faded until he collapsed and coalesced into a bright, pulsating ball. It was the size of basketball. I noticed that one part of the glow had a hole in it, and light or some weird substance smoked out of it. Had I done that with my knife when he’d been flesh and blood?

  I swiped the Bowie knife through the pulsating ball of light. To my surprise, I felt resistance. Maybe this thing wasn’t exactly light, but matter of some kind.

  I will return to enact vengeance for this indignity.

  I heard Claath’s voice inside my head. And I felt the twinge again in the base of my skull. I jerked away the blade, and I noticed it glowed red as if hot. Using a finger, I touched the blade, and grunted at the heat, jerking my finger away from it.

  “Look,” Rollo said.

  The two of us stood in the nearly empty chamber. The ball of pulsating light floated away from us.

  I expected to see the ball disappear and fade away. Instead, as smoky light continued to bleed out of the hole, the ball floated up against the ceiling. The bulkhead there turned red-hot until metal dripped. That area of the bulkhead dissolved and the ball sped upward.

  I glanced at Rollo. “Are you seeing this?”

  “I am,” Rollo said.

  “Is he really a devil?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Rollo said. “I mean…he turned into a ball of energy or something like it.”

  I touched the knife again. The blade wasn’t as hot as before. From the ceiling, I watched liquefied metal drip onto the floor. A supernatural creature couldn’t do that, could it? Like Ella would say, there had to be a scientific explanation for this.

  “I don’t think Claath is an actual devil,” I said.

  Rollo gave me a strange look.

  “He’s not a spirit, I mean,” I said. “Spirits don’t make metal hot and need to burn through it in order to get away. He must have substance of some kind.”

  Hissing sounds came from above, and air blew fiercely around us, lifting Rollo’s hair as if he stood in a blizzard. What was this? What sorcery, fiendish wizardry, did the Jelk commit as he escaped?

  “Hull breach,” Rollo said. “I think he burned his way out of the ship. We have to get out of this room before it depressurizes.”

  “Go, go,” I said. “If you’re right, maybe he’s headed for the planet. He’ll warn the other Jelk.”

  We ran out of the chamber and sealed the hatch behind us.

  “Tell the others what happened,” I said. “I’m headed for the control room. Hurry! We don’t know how much time we have left.”

  ***

  I ran through the corridors, not knowing what to think. Jelk were energy creatures that played at being flesh and blood? Having to turn into the ball of light had made Claath angry. Maybe it was difficult to do. I’d wounded him, too. He must be susceptible to pain, otherwise why had he taken so many precautions these past months?

  What exactly was the Jelk Corporation? What exactly was the Jade League? I knew
so little about interstellar relations.

  None of that matters now, I told myself. I had to get back to Earth. I had to free the humans in the freighters. Despite everything I’d seen just now, humanity still clung to existence by a thread.

  I burst into the control room and told Ella and N7 what had just happened.

  Ella sat down hard on the floor, staring into space. N7 appeared more thoughtful than usual.

  “Did you know anything about this?” I asked N7. “That Jelk could do something like that?”

  “Negative,” the android said. “I am stunned by the turn of events.”

  “Can you spot him in the void?” I asked.

  N7 worked the controls, finally admitting defeat.

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe it takes time for Claath to journey through space like a glowing ball. Maybe he can’t communicate with others until he’s in their presence.”

  Ella snapped her fingers as she turned toward me.

  “Spill it,” I said.

  “I’m in agreement with you that the…the…transformation you witnessed is a difficult procedure for them,” Ella said.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “They used a fleet to battle to his planet in order to enter a Forerunner shrine or temple,” Ella said. “I’m presuming they need to see something at this shrine. But why bother with a fleet if they could turn into this ball of light and simply travel here and look at it?”

  “That is logically reasoned,” N7 said.

  “I am a scientist,” Ella said. “I use reason and observation to test theories until I approach an approximation of truth.”

  “Never mind about that,” I said. “We have to risk greater movement and reach the jump route. We have to leave this system before the Jelk or Starkien ships come after us.”

  “Do you know which jump routes to use in order to get us to Earth?” Ella asked N7.

  The android touched a control so a split screen appeared. One showed the Sigma Draconis system. The other was a star map with jump routes in a blizzard maze connecting about one hundred star systems. As N7 adjusted the panel, a blue light appeared showing a path.

  “There is our route to Earth,” the android said.