by Archer, Mia
“You said you could do something about this. Was that true?”
“It’s not up to me,” Sabine said, her eyes darting towards me.
“I want to formally protest that you keep putting me in a position where I have to save the day like this,” I said.
I meant that I didn’t like having to save the day by potentially injuring other living creatures, even if they were coming to blow us out of the sky, but apparently she took it to mean something else entirely.
“You’re the one who wanted to be a hero,” she said. “Sometimes being a hero means saving the day even if it means going against what you think it means to be heroic.”
I hit her with a silent snarl. There was something about being stuck on this world that was making me more and more irritated with everything around me, but then I forced myself to get it under control.
I wasn’t going to lose it. Even if I was trapped on a strange alien world where the only person remotely close to my species was a megalomaniacal woman who felt like she’d be better suited to villainy than heroics.
“I’m going to do this, but it’s to save them. Not because I like it,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, still grating on me. “I don’t particularly care why you’re doing it as long as you do it. That’s one of the nice things about not being a hero.”
I ground my teeth together, then darted out of the saucer before I did something we both might regret. Me because it would go against what it meant to be a hero, and her because there probably wouldn’t be much left of her by the time I was done.
I turned my attention to the flying saucers moving in and firing on me. Saucers that were going to do their best to make sure the people I’d just broken free of the hive mind’s influence went back under that influence as soon as possible.
I felt like destroying something right now. If it couldn’t be Sabine then maybe these jerkfaces would do.
23
Planning
“Hold on a second,” Sabine said. “Wait for it…”
She’d done something to part the lava flow moving down the walls of her lair, revealing an even larger screen than the one she’d used before. She was playing the local cable news on repeat.
One of the flying saucers flew in towards the stadium. It had all its weapons firing, trying desperately to hit the saucer we’d liberated. Only there was something in the way.
That something was me. I’d been there, after all. It hadn’t been pleasant having all those weapons firing on me at once, but it’s not like it hurt or anything.
It’d merely been unpleasant. Whatever. I’d dealt with it before and I could deal with it again.
I’d seen this over and over again. Sabine had insisted on playing it on repeat, and it twisted my stomach every time I watched it.
I couldn’t believe I’d do something like this. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get so annoyed by those alien invaders that I did… what I was about to do.
“Could you please turn this off?” I asked.
“No way,” Sabine said. “Not when we’re just getting to the good part!”
Up on the screen something flashed under the ship. Of course that something was me. I felt sick to my stomach as the saucer’s bottom erupted in a massive explosion of fire and shrapnel. A moment later it switched to a shot taken from the top that showed me busting through the other end with that fire following me.
The saucer listed to the side before crashing down on the arena below. The thing was big enough that it caused some serious damage on the way down before causing a fireball that climbed into the air.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Luckily just about everyone had evacuated from the arena at that point, but it was still a heck of a warning for yours truly. I’d done something massively stupid because I let my rage get the best of me. I’d put all those people at risk because I was upset.
I couldn’t do that again. I was powerful, and with that came responsibility. Which included not causing collateral damage.
That was something Natalie understood. That was something she’d practiced even before she met me. That I was doing something worse than one of the most well known villains back on earth was a rebuke that felt like a slap to the face.
“Fucking amazing!” Sabine said, pumping her fist in the air. “I can’t believe you pulled that off! Fucking amazing!”
“It was a very good shot,” Korval said.
I eyed the good captain out of the corner of my eye. I can’t say that I cared for his commentary any more than I cared for Sabine’s, but it was nice to have a reminder that I’d done some good on that day.
Even if the bad seemed to outweigh the good.
“I did what I had to do,” I said, wishing I could believe it.
“Whatever,” Sabine said, muting the screen.
“Why do they even have news on this world?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Sabine asked.
“I mean what’s the point in having a news outlet like that? The hive mind thing controls everything, so what’s the point in having news when everything can be beamed out using the mind control powers?”
“No idea,” Sabine said. “Never bothered to think about the why. It’s just something that’s always been the way it’s been.”
I frowned. I didn’t care for that answer. It seemed to me that there should be something more to it.
“I think I might have some explanation,” Korval said.
“By all means, illuminate me,” I said.
“When the cats use their mind control it’s more of a suggestion than a direct link,” he said. “My understanding from the research that came through before we lost the war is that their own mental link between the cats and worms is more of a direct connection rather than the suggestion, but when they are using their powers on us it’s more of a compulsion than a direct order. We still retain some of our individuality and experience, but they can press at our emotions. Whisper small suggestions in our minds that cause us to do what they want because it’s impossible to resist.”
“Interesting,” I said. “I wonder why they never bothered to try and take you over directly rather than using the cats?”
Korval shrugged. “I’m not sure on that one. As best our researchers could tell there wasn’t an easy way for them to take over bipedal life. We weren’t similar enough to the cats they’d evolved to take over.”
“Right,” I said. “Well it’s good to know they can’t take over my mind if they get ahold of me.”
There was something about the way Sabine looked away from me as I said that which had me wondering, though. She’d been on this world for some time and she’d said some things that made me think the worms had taken a shot at her at some point, though it looked like they hadn’t succeeded. They’d also maybe taken over the minds on one of those giant irradiated lizards, though maybe the lizard mind was simple enough that they could work with it unlike the more complex brain of a sapient creature.
But what if Captain Korval was wrong about everything? What if there was a way for the worms to take over humanoid life? Though I guess it wasn’t fair to think of it as humanoid life when we were in a situation where the aliens on this world didn’t call themselves human.
Whatever.
“Could we please get back to what’s really important here?” Sabine asked, sounding very irritated that no one was paying attention to her.
“So sorry,” I said. “What is more important than figuring out whether or not those things could take over my mind?”
I was indirectly challenging her. If she knew something about whether or not they could take over my mind then I figured she’d say something about it, but instead she blushed and looked away.
Okay then. Maybe she wasn’t going to tell me anything in front of the aliens. I wasn’t going to give up though. That was definitely a question we’d be revisiting later.
“What we need to concentrate on is our plan to get to the top of the tallest buil
ding in the city without getting blasted or having them blast the target before we get to it.”
She slapped the side of her holographic table and it flickered a few times before going blank. I blushed as I looked down at the thing. After all, it was mostly my fault that it was so messed up in the first place.
“If you’ll give my busted holo table here a moment to boot up,” she said, irritation dripping from her voice as she pointedly didn’t look at me.
The thing sputtered to life and then stopped working again. There was a huge crack still running down the middle of the thing, and it’d obviously seen better days. Sabine let loose with a series of curses that would’ve had all the military types around us blushing if they had any idea what the heck any of it meant.
Then again from the way they were blushing maybe they did know. It was still weird that they could understand English. Something about interacting with the hive mind for so long and absorbing the language through those tiny whispers in the back of their mind after the hive mind had learned the language from Sabine.
Which again pointed to a very interesting story that Sabine wasn’t telling me. How had she spent enough time interacting with the hive mind that it had learned a complete alien language from her then turned around and passed that language onto the aliens under its control? If what Korval said about the inefficiency of the mental link was to be believed then it must’ve taken a long time for that language absorption to happen.
“Are you done?” I asked when she finally looked like she’d run out of steam.
“For the moment,” she said. “But you still owe me a new table.”
“Later,” I said. “Right now you were going to tell us all about your grand plan to save this world.”
“Right,” she said, tugging at her suit here and there and composing herself. “As I was about to tell you, this involves targeting the tallest building in the city and…”
“Um, did something happen recently that knocked that building down?” someone from near the back asked.
Sabine looked at the table and let loose with another series of curses about the chastity of the table’s mother and her marital status at the time the table was conceived.
There were a couple of gaps in the coverage on the table. Gaps where the projector presumably didn’t work because there were huge cracks in the thing that made it impossible for the thing to project holographic light in those spots. And one of those cracks happened to be right where she was pointing.
Sabine finally managed to get herself under control and she started moving her hands. The 3D image on the table display moved along with her hands, and after a moment the building she was looking for appeared and she let out a relieved sigh.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by some technical difficulties,” she said. “We will be going for the communications tower at the top of the tallest building in the city. As far as I can tell you all used that to broadcast powerful signals over a short range, say the city, and then used cable for anything longer range.”
“That was standard operating procedure before the invasion,” Captain Korval confirmed.
“Right,” she said. “Well leaving a broadcast tower in place that’s capable of reaching the entire city is the chink in the hive mind’s armor that I spent at least a year trying to discover.”
I frowned. She’d been here for a lot longer than a year. Which begged the question of what she’d been doing with this information the entire time she’d been on the planet. Presumably if she knew how to defeat the aliens then she should’ve done something with that info a long time ago.
I shook my head. Whatever. I could worry about that later. Right now I concentrated on her plan to save these people. Once they were free I could worry about the particulars of her story that weren’t adding up.
“I imagine our distraction is going to get a hell of a lot of attention,” she said. “And that’s where you geniuses come in.”
“What do you need us to do?” Korval asked.
Again I found myself admiring the guy. No, not like that. I simply admired the way he did what needed to be done and didn’t ask any questions. There was a job to be done and he was going to do it, and his tone indicated that there was nothing that was going to stop him from doing that job.
“I figure while the hive mind is distracted trying to keep us from doing our thing at that broadcast tower you boys are going to go and liberate anyone and everyone you can find at that military base while the main force is between us and that base,” she said.
“Got it,” Korval said.
He turned to look at the rest of his crew arrayed around various points of the lava lair. There were a couple of them who were still staring at their surroundings like they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.
I got the feeling that the volcano lair was something that was a trope mostly back on earth and not necessarily on this world.
“Right,” Sabine said. “If there are no other questions, I believe it’s time for us to get this show on the road.”
Blank stares all around. For all that these aliens could understand English thanks to their connection to the hive mind they still seemed to have trouble understanding some idioms.
This, at least, was something I could help with. I’d spent four years studying language and how to communicate with it, after all. I might not be good at the science stuff, but language stuff I could do.
“She means we need to get started,” I said
There were understanding nods all around. Korval gave me a subtle nod of thanks. Everyone scrambled, with most of them moving towards the exit leading down to a hangar that contained their ship.
A ship that had a skull and crossbones painted on it now, which seemed appropriate. Sabine had mentioned something about ancient earth pirates when Korval and his merry band made it clear they were going to help us liberate their world.
It turns out they didn’t have an age of piracy on this planet like we did back on earth. There were no giant bodies of water that were worthy of being called an ocean, which meant there were no bodies of water that were worth pirates traveling on.
Still, they’d taken to the imagery once Sabine explained it to them. So we’d be flying into the city to fight off an alien invasion of an alien world with a bunch of blue crazies bearing the standards of ancient rapists and murderers from earth who’d had their history whitewashed in the hundreds of years since they did their thing.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with this scenario?
24
Offensive
I flew in high over the city. It’s not like there was any point in hiding. Hiding was the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing this time around.
“Anything yet?” I asked.
Sabine was wired into my ears now. She’d given me back my earbud and figured out how to tap into their comm channel. I guess it was pretty easy for her to tap into whatever Natalie had been using for comms when we were back on earth, though it was a little staticky thanks to the local radiation issue.
“Nothing so far,” Sabine said. “They’re sitting with their thumbs up their assholes at the base.”
“Do they even have butts to put their thumbs up?” I asked.
“Did you seriously just ask that question?” Sabine asked.
“What?” I asked. “I figured it’s a natural question considering.”
“That question isn’t natural at all,” Sabine said. “And I don’t know enough about their anatomy to give you an answer on that one.”
“Probably a good thing,” I said. “If you did have answers to that question it would create more questions than it answered.”
“Uh-huh,” Sabine muttered. “Could you do something interesting please? We’re supposed to be distracting the aliens and getting them to scramble their military.”
“Got it,” I said.
I accelerated. I couldn’t say how I did it any more than a lay person could explain how they were ab
le to lift their hand. It was just something that I’d figured out through trial and error until it was second nature to me.
That’d been something that annoyed Natalie to no end when she was trying to figure out the source of my powers.
I accelerated until I felt a familiar pop all around me. A pop that I knew would be a loud boom echoing through the city down below.
It even happened a little sooner on this world than it did back on earth. Sabine said it was something about the atmospheric composition being different on this world which meant the sound barrier was broken at a slightly slower speed than back on earth, but I’d only been half paying attention when she told me about it.
“Anything that time?” I asked. “Because there’s no way they didn’t catch that.”
“Still nothing at their main base,” Sabine said. “You think they have any idea what’s going on? What if one of those aliens was still connected to the mind control and this is a trap or something?”
“I mean if that’s the case it means they were all still under mind control, but you heard what they said. They’re not directly connected to the network like the cats are. It’s not like they’d be able to transmit anything back to home base or anything,” I said.
“That’s what Korval told you though,” Sabine said. “Do you really want to trust what he’s telling you when it comes to this stuff? If he’s trying to hit us with misinformation then that’s exactly the kind of thing he’d tell us. I mean think about their English ability. That isn’t something you pick up through the power of suggestion.”
“Huh,” I said. “Hadn’t thought of it that way. That is a pretty big plot hole right there.”
“Yup,” Sabine said. “A big enough plot hole for the hive mind to steer a big win through. Or it could be that the worms have something else planned for our next incursion into the city.”
“I mean what could they possibly have planned that would be better than sending the local…”
