by Archer, Mia
"So good to hear that captain,” Sabine said. "But what I'm really interested in is what kind of broadcast equipment you're packing on this ship. I’m assuming if they have you on blimp duty then you have some way of transmitting your signal to one of the broadcast hubs so it can go out on the cable?”
“Korval,” he said. “Please, call me Korval. After rescuing us being on a first name basis seems like the least I owe you.”
“Fine Korval,” Sabine said. “What kind of comm equipment are you packing on this heap?”
"I would assume only the best," Korval said. "It looks like we're flying around in a repurposed Class II defensive saucer. It's a damn shame they've repurposed the thing to broadcast a sports game of all things."
"Whatever," Sabine said. "All I really care about is what kind of broadcasting stuff you have. Anything directional? Anything we can use to target the stadium below?"
"I think we can do that," someone piped up in the background.
"Good," she said. She turned to me and smiled. Reached out and patted me on the cheek. "You did good muscling our way in here, but you should let me handle things my way from here on out."
I stared at her in astonishment. I had the unsettling feeling that I wasn't going to like her doing things "her way." Not when doing things "her way" so far had resulted in a whole lot of headache and death and destruction.
I was also just a little confused with how technologically savvy she suddenly seemed when it came to the local alien technology. She'd been complaining about how it was absolute crap up to the moment our friends were no longer under the influence, and now she was practically salivating over the stuff and talking about it like an expert.
She saw me looking at her and smiled and gave a thumbs up. Like she had no idea that I was questioning everything I knew about her. Why would she have any idea? She didn’t have the ability to read minds, after all. Even if she did have that power the earbuds I had courtesy of Natalie would be enough to keep her from rummaging around in my mind.
"Who is your friend there?" Korval asked, walking up to me.
"To be honest I'm not even sure she's much of a friend," I said. "She just happens to be the closest thing I have to a kindred spirit on this planet."
I hated how much I was identifying with so many cheesy scifi series where the good guy refused to kill off the popular recurring bad guy for some flimsy reason like they were both the last of their kind or some such nonsense. It’d annoyed me when Natalie forced me to sit through them the first time around, and it annoyed me even more now that I was living it.
The captain grunted. "There's something to be said for that."
I wasnt sure how to take that. I didn’t think we were going to be BFFs anytime soon or anything, but at the very least we’d shown we could work together. Our raid on this flying saucer had proved that. I suppose that's all that truly mattered for the moment.
"You mentioned something about the cats appearing on your bridge," I said. "Was that on this ship?"
The captain snorted again.
"Definitely not," he said. "I wasn't in command then. That was when I was a young man. So very long ago."
He sort of trailed off. I figured he might be getting ready to start reminiscing, but instead he looked down and frowned.
He let out a little laugh. "You know it's the funniest damned thing. I tried so hard to get onto the expeditionary force. I tried so hard to make the cut to travel the stars. I suppose I’d be there by now. The world we detected was only about three light years away, after all."
"I'm sorry," I said. “But what are you talking about?”
“Oh nothing terribly important,” he said. “When I was young we were preparing an expedition to our closest star. Only the best went to conquer the aliens living there, but of course I was stuck back home.”
I felt a chill. Going off to conquer another nearby star system didn’t seem like the benevolent sort of things good aliens did. I wondered what this planet had been like before the worms took over.
“What the hell does invading some other star system have to do with the alien worms that took over your world?"
"Oh nothing, I suppose," he said. "It's just odd. I thought I’d be going off to fight aliens on another world. Conquer a whole new star system and all that, and then I ended up fighting a losing battle against a bunch of invading furred creatures that were possessed by worms."
"Don't you feel bad for the cats at all?" I asked.
"Not at all," he said. "They evolved along with the worms on their home world, as best as we could tell. Back when there were people on our world tasked with figuring out where they came from and what made them tick. You can bet when you kill one you're killing both, and they both deserve it. Apart the cats and the worms are an unintelligent mess, but put them together and they become a dastardly sapient fiend that's a pain to defeat."
I looked at the two cats with those smoking holes in their heads. I felt a little bit better knowing they were invaders rather than being native to this planet which would’ve put them firmly in the victim column.
"Well then," I said. “That makes me feel a lot better about facilitating their demise."
He reached out and patted me on the shoulder. "I don't know who you are or where you came from, but you can rest assured that you did a good thing this day. Especially if it resulted in some of the cats and worms meeting their end. Excuse me.”
He stepped over to the cats and stomped on something near them. Then he stomped down a second time by the other one. I heard something squishing followed by a very faint screeching noise.
“My apologies,” he said. “The worms were trying to make an escape.”
I stood a little taller at his kind words. This old grizzled captain who was obviously a veteran of whatever war this species fought against the alien cat creatures was the first person since I came to this world who acted like I was the hero I was trying to be. And while I didn't get into the whole hero business to get the approval of others, it was still nice to finally get some of that approval. Especially when it was something that had been so sorely lacking so far.
"You," I said. “Have no idea how good it is to hear someone who approves of my heroics.”
"Could you two stop jabbering?” Sabine asked. "I think we're ready to get this show started!”
"Is she always like this?" Korval asked.
“Maybe?” I replied. “I honestly haven’t been around her long enough to know if it’s a regular thing or not.”
I went over to the communications panel. Wind whipped through the bridge. The lack of glass all around was an inconvenience I hadn't considered when I punched out said window. Several blue alien officers braced themselves against alien control consoles in an attempt to stay in one spot.
"What are you going to do?" the captain asked.
Sabine pointed down to a device that looked very similar to the one she'd tossed into the middle of the ship's bridge. Only this one was a little larger, and connected to a port on the alien control panel.
"If I'm correct then when this baby starts broadcasting its signal down into the stadium we're going to see some serious shit."
"Go ahead," the captain said. "If we're going to do this then we need to do it now."
As though to underscore what he’d just said, one of the younger crewmembers looked up from their panel with something that was approaching panic.
"Captain, I'm showing several incoming."
I looked at Sabine. "I thought you said they didn't have tracking technology."
"As far as I could tell they never used the stuff. I never detected a signal and I assumed they didn’t bother because of the weird radiation.”
"If I may," the slightly panicked crew member said. "The worms didn't use it because while we were connecte to the alien hive mind they could rely on the worm network to call things out."
"That absolutely doesn't mean that we don't have the technology though," Captain Korval said. "It just means that th
e worms decided they weren't going to use that equipment while they were in control.
"That or they didn't quite understand how it worked," the crewman said. "It looks like the hive mind wasn't taking full advantage of a lot of the stuff on this ship."
"Damn," Sabine said. "I'm learning all kinds of useful things today."
“And it’s not good for us,” I said, growing more and more uncomfortable. The hive mind didn’t take full advantage of the weapons on this ship? Considering the nastiness they’d been throwing at me that didn’t bode well if we ever went up against aliens who did know how to make full use of these things.
22
Unleashed
"Do we have anything worth using on this hunk of junk?" the captain asked. "Maybe if the hive mind wasn't using everything to its full potential then it also didn't know to remove some of our toys."
"We do have the usual weapons complement at our disposal," a different older looking woman said. "But there are a lot of them coming for us. Way more than we could handle on our own."
“Would you have an advantage if they don’t know how to use their stuff?” I asked.
“Doubtful,” the woman said. “They’ll still be able to overwhelm us.”
"I know of someone who might be able to even out that fight for you," Sabine said, looking at me with a glint in her eyes.
"Hold on a second," I said. "We said we were going to free these people. We didn't say anything about fighting off a military intervention. I don't want to be responsible for more deaths."
"We're on the edge of town," Sabine said. "What are you going to do? Hurt my volcano? Not likely!"
"She does have a point," the captain said. "If you assist us then we might be able to break through. Otherwise…"
"See?" Sabine said with a huge grin on her face. The kind of grin that made me want to reach out and smack her.
She seemed to be enjoying the fact that I was being tossed into this horrible choice entirely too much.
"What's it going to be?" she asked. "Fighting off a bunch of people under the influence of the dastardly aliens who took over this world? Or letting a bunch of people you just freed die?"
Every eye on the bridge turned to look at me. Some with expectation. Others as though they expected me to let them die. After all, we were talking people who'd been defeated by the alien worms who were now coming to kick their butts all over again. I'm sure being on the losing end of an alien invasion and then waking up years later to discover they'd been on the losing end was a hell of a hit right to the confidence.
For a wonder nobody seemed to question whether or not I would be capable of taking on several of their flying saucers. Maybe they assumed that somebody who was capable of punching through an armored window would also be more than capable of taking out anything else that was thrown at me.
It was a nice vote of confidence, but to be perfectly honest I wasn't sure it was a vote of confidence I wanted.
"Broadcasting now," Sabine said. "Get ready to see some serious shit down there, assuming we survive long enough to watch it.”
She glanced around with a grin. The kind of smile that said she was quoting something. Come to think of it hadn’t she used that same phrase a minute ago? This time I was pretty sure I knew what she was quoting, too.
"Was that Back to the Future?"
She clapped her hands together and then slammed one of those hands down on a big red button in the middle of the control panel.
"You bet your cute ass that's Back to the Future! Serious shit outbound now!"
There wasn't any change in the ship. No dramatic powering down as a new system went online or anything showy like that. No, the only indication that anything was happening at all was a blinking red light on the device she'd connected to the alien interface. It had been blinking until she hit the button, and then it went to a solid red which I assumed meant it was doing its work.
"Hold onto your butts,” Sabine said.
I was pretty sure I recognized that one too.
"That dinosaur movie?"
"You did not just call one of the greatest cinematic achievements in history a dinosaur movie," Sabine said. "In the interest of our continued friendship I'm going to ignore that you ever said that.”
"Whatever," I said.
I floated over to the edge. Looked down at the stadium below. The scene down there couldn't have been more different than before.
Earlier when I’d looked down on that stadium I’d been looking down on a bunch of weird blue aliens sitting stock still staring at a bunch of other blue aliens swatting a ball back and forth.
I guess that was weird experience no matter what world you were on. Like if I had no idea how earth culture worked and I came across a bunch of people screaming at the top of their lungs looking down at a sports match then I’d probably think it was a little weird.
Now, though, it looked like the sports fans down below had undergone a rapid transformation. Where before they’d been sitting there staring in silence, as though they didn’t particularly care about what was happening in front of them, now they looked furious.
They’d gone from stoic to soccer hooligan at the press of a button. Quite literally.
“Are you getting a load of what’s happening down there?” I asked.
“I mean I can see that it isn’t a pretty scene,” Sabine said with a shrug. “But I sort of figured something like this was going to happen.”
I wheeled on her. “You sort of figured something like this was going to happen?”
“Well duh,” she said. “What did you expect? We’re freeing a bunch of aliens who’ve been under the influence of a mind controlling worm hive mind for the past couple of decades. When they break free they’re naturally going to turn on their captors. Look what happened with the good captain here and those cats.”
Korval nodded as though it was a given that the first thing that’d happen when his people were freed from mind control was indiscriminate murder. Dang.
“What are you…”
Sabine rolled her eyes. Not something that was endearing me to her, but whatever. She hit a button and one of the displays zoomed in on the stadium below.
More particularly it zoomed in on what was actually happening in that stadium. From our vantage point on high it’d looked like the people were ripping each other apart, but now that I got a good look at what was really happening down there it became apparent that it was the cats down there that were getting ripped apart.
“Remember the poor bastard we saw pulled out of that car and ripped limb from limb?” Sabine asked. “Well it looks like it’s revenge time.”
Sure enough it was revenge time. That was the only way I could describe the horror going on down there. Sure the oversized cats were giving as good as they got in a lot of cases, swiping at the aliens and leaving claw marks as they defended themselves, but they were outnumbered.
The alien worm infested cats were discovering the same lesson that a lot of despots who ruled through fear or, I guess, mind control had learned over the years. That eventually the people they’re trying to control are going to get sick of being controlled, and that can be very bad if it turns out the despots are outnumbered.
Which they almost always were.
Thankfully the crowds were moving in on the cats which made it difficult to see what was actually going on down there. Which is a nice way of saying the blue aliens were crowding around the cats before they ripped them to shreds which meant the video feed all the way up here wasn’t picking up the particularly gory bits.
Still, it was enough to make me want to lose my lunch. I almost did, but that would’ve involved puking over the edge and I figured the aliens were making enough of a mess down there without me adding my vomit to the mix.
“That’s disgusting,” I said.
“Revenge is very rarely a pleasant thing,” Korval said. “But I can assure you they are only doing what is their birthright. Those aliens took over our world, and we’ve been
given another chance to defend our world thanks to you.”
His voice burned with something that was vaguely unsettling. It reminded me of those ridiculous aliens in some of the stuff Natalie was always playing in the background in the hopes that I would suddenly take an interest in scifi. The ones with the weird ridged faces who were always going on about the glory of battle and all that.
Then again there were plenty of humans who talked like that. Sure I thought they were just as ridiculous as the aliens, but it was good to remember that there were a lot of humans, particularly the ones who’d worked their way up the ranks in the military, who wouldn’t be talking all that different from this dude if they were put in a similar situation.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
As though in answer to my question, and I should’ve known it was a stupid question even as I asked it, the ship rocked a couple of times. There was a scream as off near the edge one of the crewmen fell over the edge, their torso charred where a hole had been blasted through them.
I looked past that crewman, but I was distracted for just a moment by another shape hurtling past the now open-air window. It looked a lot like one of those cats, and it was going straight down.
“It would appear that our friends have arrived to let us know how they feel about us regaining some measure of control,” Korval muttered. “And it would appear the crewmen I sent to take care of the rest of our oppressors have taken care of their business as well.”
Right. I guess without much in the way of sidearms they’d decided to just chuck the cats over the side. Gruesome, but effective. I focused past the window again. Onto the flying saucers that were moving closer and closer to seal our doom.
“They’re going to be on us in a moment, and I don’t know if we can hold them all off,” one of the crew said. “They’re not using all the weapons they have at their disposal, but it’ll still be more than enough to take us out.”
Korval turned to look at me and Sabine. There was pleading in his eyes.
