by Archer, Mia
Only when I looked up they weren’t closing in on us. No, they were here, and they were turning their weapons on us. It looked like I was about to do some of that destruction stuff to save Sabine, though oddly enough that didn’t seem as bad either. It was like there was a voice in the back of my mind whispering at me to take them out. That it had to be done.
“How close are you to activating that thing?” I asked. “Because it looks like the hive mind has an ace up her sleeve, and their weapons are charging.”
“Fuck,” Sabine said. “They got here a lot faster than they usually do. This is going to take me at least another five minutes. If we’re lucky.”
I looked down at the pint-sized giant irradiated monster that’d started trying to scramble up the side of the second highest building in the city, then up to all the military flying saucers that were turning all their weapons to bear on that building.
I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be the second biggest building in the city for long after they got done firing those weapons.
“Sabine, you need to get the hell out of there!” I said.
“What the…”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off as every military flying saucer in the city fired at once.
Shit.
32
Local Forces
“Huh,” Sabine said. “That’s one way to take care of those things.”
I stared down at the giant hole in the side of the building that had been a smaller giant irradiated lizard. Apparently it was small enough that it wasn’t as invulnerable as the big ones.
“I guess I should’ve seen that one coming,” I said.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Sabine said. “The last minute thing where you think the bad guys are firing on you but then they fire on another bad guy is a classic trope, but considering all the crap we’ve been going through lately I can understand why it comes as a surprise.”
“You’re telling me,” I said.
One of the flying saucers floated in closer. The thing looked like it was armed to the teeth, and it was definitely larger than the one Korval had been commanding before. That was clearly Korval who came floating out of the bottom of the thing in one of those open air flying saucers like the ones I’d faced down on my first day here.
He smiled as he stepped onto the building. I floated down there as well. Mostly because with that big hole in the side of the thing I was worried I might have to pull off a rescue and snatch him up if the thing collapsed out from under us.
“It looked like you ladies could use some assistance,” his voice boomed out across the city.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you alive and well,” I said, shooting a dirty look to Sabine who shrugged as though it didn’t really matter to her whether they were alive or dead.
Though I thought I sensed a tiny amount of relief. That’d been a little too close for comfort.
“I’ll admit it was touch and go for a little while there,” Korval said. “But in the end we managed to do what needed to be done.”
I reached a hand out. He eyed it for a long moment as though he was unsure of what he was supposed to do.
“Different world,” Sabine muttered just loud enough that I could hear her through the earpiece. “Different customs. He has no idea what you’re trying to do there.”
“Oh, right,” I said, blushing. “You take my hand and shake it.”
Korval eyed me for another long awkward moment before he did just that. He reached out and took my hand, and then started vigorously shaking it from side to side.
Okay then. He was shaking it, I guess. Just not in the way I’d expected. I figured I’d go with it, though. Better than trying to explain to him exactly where he’d gone wrong.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything. You have no idea what you’ve done for us. What you’ve done for this world!”
He looked out over the city and took in a deep breath. He let it out, and his eyes did an odd fluttering thing. I glanced to Sabine for some explanation.
“As far as I can tell that’s how they smile on this world,” she said. “I’ve never been able to master it. Our eyelids don’t move in the right way to pull it off.”
“Stop what you are doing!”
The pleading was sudden, sharp, and I didn’t give a damn. I looked out over the city and figured there were blue aliens out there standing next to cats that were sending out their mind control mojo the same as they had ever since they conquered this world decades ago. Only it wasn’t enough. Not now. They were losing their grasp on this world even if we didn’t disrupt the signal.
“Right,” Sabine said. “In my experience when the bad guy has resorted to begging it either means there’s nothing left in their arsenal or they’re about to unleash something you’re really not gonna like. I suggest we go ahead with this plan before either of those eventualities happen.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Korval?”
“Execute,” he said.
I can’t say that I cared for his choice of words, but then again maybe that was an oddity of the language. The thought that they were speaking English at all was weird enough.
I guess the whole alien hive mind thing was a great way to learn things. Assuming the learner didn’t have a problem with the whole alien worms taking over your brain thing.
“Right,” Sabine said, a manic grin crossing her face. “Time for us to rock and roll!”
She hit a button sequence on the controls. There was no single huge button this time around, but she was operating on alien technology so maybe she didn’t have the time to put something like that together.
She hit one final button and that was that. A humming electricity filled the roof, and my hair stood on end. Meanwhile Sabine threw her arms out and her head back as she let out the kind of laugh that would’ve rivaled Natalie when she was really in her element.
“I fucking love this!” she shouted.
The results were immediate. One moment the alien hive mind was telling us we were making a terrible mistake. End of the world, end of the universe, that sort of thing.
The next moment there was silence. It was odd after hearing all those voices crying out as one and then nothing. Which sounded a lot like a line Natalie had used on me a few times which led me to believe it was a quote from some movie or something.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked.
“Freedom,” Korval whispered.
“It’s going to take a moment for everyone to work through all the weirdness. They’ve been under the alien hive mind’s influence for a few years now,” Sabine said. “I figure they all just blue screened and now they’re going through the process of rebooting.”
Another one of those expectant looks at me. I sighed. This was getting exhausting the way she expected me to understand all of her geeky references.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Y’know. When computers have trouble they get the blue screen of death and then they reboot?”
My nose wrinkled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I use Apples. They don’t crash or get viruses.”
Sabine’s eyelid twitched. It looked for all the world like she was trying to do that weird smiling thing that Korval had done with both of his eyes, but in her case it was just the one eye that was twitching.
“Whatever,” she said. “The point is everyone out there is dealing with the sudden reassertion of their individuality, and I bet that’s causing a hell of a lot of confusion.”
“Especially for the ones who have been under the hive mind’s control since their birth,” Korval said. “We’ve noticed some oddities with those who were stationed on our ship.”
It definitely seemed like something was happening out there. The noise was faint at first, but it was getting louder and louder with every passing moment. Like the fury of a crowd at a sporting event, but
it was filling an entire city rather than an arena.
It sent a chill down my spine for some reason. A chill that didn’t seem right considering that was the sound of an alien civilization breaking free from the yoke of wormy bondage.
“Listen to that,” Korval said.
I glanced at him. Moisture was working its way down from his eyes. I glanced to Sabine to see if she had anything to tell me about that particular alien emotion, but she merely shrugged as though to say she had no idea.
I’d go ahead and assume moisture leaking from the eyes meant the same thing with these aliens that it did back on earth. It was a heck of a lot easier than interrupting the moment by asking him wht that particular physiological response meant.
And it was a heck of a moment. The first truly good moment I’d had since I arrived on this world. We’d set out with a plan to save these people from alien invaders, and it’d finally worked.
Standing there on top of the second tallest building in the city, so recently promoted to the tallest building in the city, with some of those liberated aliens looking out at everything with tears in their eyes was pretty damn incredible.
“The battle cry,” Korval said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“The beauty of the battle cry. They’re killing them.”
I floated up and then flew down low over the city. As I moved lower I was hit with the crowd’s roar all over again. And this time I could see what they were doing as they roared at the top of their lungs.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. Those cats that’d ruled this world for so long had clearly lost. The blue aliens were piling over them and ripping them apart, and suddenly the good mood I’d been in was gone as I looked at the carnage.
It was enough to make me want to lose the breakfast I’d had that morning before we headed out to take on the alien invaders and free these people from their bondage.
“Not pretty, is it?” Sabine asked.
I looked up in surprise to see her floating next to me.
“Their mental slavery is over,” I said. “Why would they do something like that to those cats?”
Sabine sighed as she watched the carnage. For a wonder she didn’t seem like she was enjoying it all that much either. Which shocked me.
She seemed like the kind of person who’d get off on violence like that. Maybe she wasn’t as villainous as I’d thought.
“They’ve been enslaved by these things for a few decades. Their lives, their civilization, hit the pause button while these alien cat worm things ran the show. Think about how pissed off you’d be if you discovered you’d lost a couple of decades of your life and the only thing that saved you in the end was the random chance of a couple of aliens from another world showing up to save you?”
“That’s a hell of a hypothetical there,” I said.
Sabine turned to me and gave me an odd look. “No jokes. Seriously. Think about it. How would you feel if you were taken over like that?”
“I…”
I tried to think about it, but every time my mind went to that idea it was like my thoughts slid around it. For some reason the idea didn’t bother me at all. It was like I couldn’t think about it.
I put a hand to my head.
“What the…”
Movement distracted me. I looked up to see the flying saucer fleet moving out again. It looked like they’d decided they were going to join in on the liberating fun now that the worms had been dealt with. I thought about them using those weapons to take out those poor cats and oddly the thought didn’t twist my stomach like it should’ve.
I didn’t like the idea of killing things if I could avoid it. That was something Natalie had always bagged on me for. She’d always said there were some people who could only improve the world by leaving it, and the sooner I got used to that idea the better I’d be at the whole hero job.
Only now I found myself thinking that yeah, those worms and those cats totally deserved anything they got. After all, they were the ones who played with fire by taking over this world.
“They’re going to kill those cats, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Sabine said. “They’re going to invade the next nearest city and overthrow the hive mind there with the new toys you helped me build.”
My mouth fell open. “What the fuck?”
I didn’t even think about the fact that I’d apparently developed a potty mouth in the past few hours. If ever there seemed like a time for a potty mouth this was it.
She turned to me and this time her grin was more than unsettling. It was the smile of someone who’d had all her plans finally come together.
“Come on Selena,” she said. “You can’t tell me you don’t like the idea of liberating the other cities on this world, right? They’re all being controlled by their own hive minds, and I’ll teach my sisters what it means to cross me!”
33
Villainous
“I’m sorry, but what did you just say?” I asked.
She grinned. Though we were interrupted by something crackling next to her. She pulled out a communication thing that looked like a walkie-talkie, though of course as with everything on this world it was the strange alien equivalent of a walkie-talkie and not at all what the thing would look like on earth.
“We have advanced on the perimeter and are awaiting orders,” a voice came through. “Ready to begin the assault at your approval.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “But remember that you need to avoid taking out as much of her military as possible. I want this to be nice and clean so we can reuse some of those toys for the conquest.”
“Affirmative,” the voice said. “We’ll try to keep the damage to a minimum. We’ll need to with all the damage that was done liberating Kevas.”
“Kevas?” I asked, my mind reeling.
“The name of the city down there,” she said. “We sort of really screwed the place up trying to save it, right?”
“But what are you doing out there?” I asked.
Explosions sounded in the distance. I looked out over the purple desert and saw fire rising. They didn’t last for long, though Sabine cursed as she looked out across the sand.
“I told those bastards to be careful!” she groused.
“Sabine,” I said. “What are you talking about? Your sisters? The conquest?”
“Oh that’s simple,” she said with another grin. “We’re going to take the time to conquer this planet and take out all the little hidey holes my sisters have put together, and from there we’re going to open a nice portal and go back home where we can keep right on conquering things.”
Ice settled in my stomach. I didn’t like the sound of that at all. What she was saying sounded downright villainous.
“You bitch,” I growled, again not caring that I’d developed something of a potty mouth in the past few minutes. “You were using me all along, weren’t you?”
Sabine shrugged again. “I mean I was sort of waiting for something that would come along and tip the balance of power in this city in my favor. It didn’t necessarily have to be you, but you did nicely.”
I balled my hand up in a fist. There was a villain in front of me, and if there was one thing I knew how to deal with, it was a villain. I wasn’t going to deal with her in the fun way that Night Terror got back on earth, either.
“I’m going to make sure you can’t hurt anyone else on this world or on ours,” I said. “I don’t care if it means being stranded here for the rest of my life!”
Her grin grew even wider. “Thinking about killing me, are you?”
“If that’s what it takes then that’s what I’ll do,” I said.
That was wrong. Killing was wrong. Natalie had shown me a way where killing could be right though. And that voice. It wanted me to kill her. Wanted me to…
I shook my head. What the fuck was going wrong with me?
She raised a finger and wagged it at me. If anything she seemed even more amused.
“Such a sha
me you’re getting so angry over something so simple,” she said. “This world needed to be conquered so that its warlike people could be put to more efficient use. After that earth needs to be conquered so its people and their warlike impulses can be put to better use too! There’s a whole galaxy out there that’s ripe for the picking, and a couple of worlds that’ve perfected the art of fighting amongst themselves instead of singing Kumbaya at international summits are the perfect launching point for a bit of galactic conquest!”
She threw her head back and laughed. The sort of villain laugh that Natalie always seemed to really enjoy. Only there was something chilling about Sabine’s laugh. It’d always been endearing when Natalie did it because I always knew, deep down, that she’d ultimately do the right thing.
I couldn’t be sure about that with Sabine, and that meant I had to do what had to be done.
“Oh go ahead,” Sabine said with a dismissive wave. “Kill me if you have to.”
I blinked. Okay. That wasn’t what I expected.
“Wait, so you’re not going to beg for your life or anything?” I asked.
“Do you want me to beg for my life?” she asked. “Because you’re getting more and more villainous if that’s the kind of thing you’re into now.”
“You’re not going to try and convince me this is how it has to be or something?” I asked.
“I mean this is how it has to be. I’m doing a good thing by taking the violent impulses the people on this world have and channeling it into something constructively destructive,” she said. “Besides, I figure we need to whip earth into shape before the idiots these bastards sent to conquer them come out of their long sleep and start powering up their flying saucers.”
Things were starting to hit me way faster than I could deal with them.
“What are you… Y’know what? I don’t even care. This ends now.”
I flew at her as fast as I could. I needed to move fast, because I was about to do something that went against everything I believed about being a hero. If I didn’t move fast then I was going to do something stupid like think about this and let her live.
