by Archer, Mia
At least that was the plan. The only problem with that plan was the moment before I made contact with her I came to a halt. It was like I was hitting shields, but different.
There was no shimmer to indicate a shield up around Sabine. No, it was like no matter what I did I couldn’t hit her. Like I was doing the world’s lamest version of a mime doing the whole invisible wall routine.
“Oh dear,” Sabine said. “Is there something keeping you from hitting me?”
She held her arms out. Her chest was right there and I knew all it would take was one flick of my finger to her heart and this would all be over. A normal heart couldn’t take the kind of trauma I was about to visit on her.
It was something people never thought of. A lot of movies always had the bad guy ripping hearts out and looking intimidating, but that wasn’t necessary. All it took to make a body stop working was a good hit to the heart that screwed up its rhythm.
I knew all of this because I’d spent time studying exactly how to kill people so I knew what not to do if I was going to be walking around in a world that was so delicate compared to the power I was throwing around.
“Come on,” Sabine said. “What are you waiting for? Let the hate flow through you. Strike me down and become more powerful than you could ever imagine!”
“Stop. Quoting. Movies at me!” I shouted.
I figured that rage would’ve helped me push through whatever was blocking me. Only I couldn’t move. I pulled back and that was fine. I did a loop around her and flew in at top speed. And again right before I hit her it was like I’d hit an invisible wall. My body just stopped working.
Sabine floated in closer to me. She ran a finger along my cheek and her smile this time actually looked a little more pleasant than usual. Like she was actually worried about me or something.
“Come now Selena,” she said. “You know you want to do this. You see what it’s like here. Do you really want to leave all the other city states on this planet under my sisters’ thumbs?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, a tear running down my cheek.
I kept asking that question even though I knew the terrifying and frustrating answer.
“I’m talking about my sisters, of course,” she said. “They each took their city in their way. They thought the mind control would work well for them. They cast me out, and left me to myself. They thought I couldn’t do anything in exile, but I showed them. I found something far more interesting than cats they can use to mind control the locals!”
My eyes went wide. I mean I guess the signs had been there all along, but I’d either been so busy worrying about things trying to kill me or so distracted trying to save this world that I’d never stopped to do anything about all the warning signs.
“You’re one of them,” I said.
“I’m so much more than anything they’ve ever accomplished,” she spat, rage twisting her face. “They were all content to use the damned rethas to control this world. They never had any imagination beyond what they’ve used to conquer so many other worlds, but I’ve done something they haven’t in generations! I’ve bonded with something new, and I’ve become so much more than they could ever hope! I’ve conquered this world’s hearts and minds without mind control!”
“You’re one of them,” I whispered. “You’re one of them and you’re crazy.”
“Oh I’m not crazy,” she said. “I’m something new. I’ve bonded with this creature, and when I move to your world I’m going to take it over and I’m going to use my armies to take over the galaxy. Why bother infesting people when you can get their undying devotion by saving them from themselves?”
I looked over the city. There were still parts of it burning, and the blue aliens were doing their best to rampage and destroy the alien worms that’d kept them enslaved for so long.
That wasn’t all that was going on though. No, there was something else under all that violence. Something I hadn’t noticed before because they’d been so busy killing the cats enslaving them that they hadn’t had time for it.
Celebration. Cheering. They were gathering beneath us and cheering. I thought of Korval and the aliens we’d saved. How they were willing to go along with our plan because we’d saved them.
Why take over a world with mind control when you could convince them you were their savior?
“You’re disgusting,” I said. “I’ll tell them. I’ll…”
She kept stroking my cheek. Rage filled me, and it was so new and unpleasant and wonderful. I wanted to reach up and snap her arm off at the wrist. Show her what it meant to mess with me, but I couldn’t.
“Come on Selena,” she said. “You don’t want to do something like that. You know, deep down, that I’m right. Think about what life was like on earth. Think of all the violence. All the death and destruction. Are you really telling me you think what I offer isn’t better than that?”
“You’d enslave them,” I said. “That’s not…”
Only the more I thought about it the more I couldn’t help but think there was a certain elegant if brutal logic to what she said. There was so much death and destruction and fighting on earth, after all. So much pain and suffering. It continued because there was no one powerful enough to shut down all the fighting.
What if someone showed up who could do that? Someone who was benevolent in their conquest? What if I could help to lead something like that?
I realized what I was thinking. It came from that whispering in the back of my mind that felt like it’d been there for a few days now, and I recoiled in horror. It wasn’t enough to stop that whispering though. It was louder than ever.
“Yes, there you go,” Sabine said. “I think you’re starting to realize the true power of my method of conquest.”
“But you didn’t do anything to me,” I whispered, knowing what was coming next and horrified to hear it, but unable to not give her the opening she was clearly looking for.
Another manic grin split her face.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Because you’ve been spending so much time with me. You’ve slept in my volcano lair. Are you positive that in all that time nothing ever happened?”
I felt at my ear. Thought about the time I’d spent without Natalie’s protection in my ear canal. All because I’d wanted to help the people on this planet break free from the worms.
What if that had been the opening one of the worms needed to worm its way into my head though?
Pun totally intended.
“You bitch,” I said.
“You sure about that?” she asked. “I like to think of it as liberating you from some of your wrongheaded views of the world. Wouldn’t you agree?”
That whispering came into the back of my head again, and I recognized it for what it was now.
All the times I’d been thinking about how I wanted to get a little violent. All the times I thought about doing what needed to be done to save this world. It felt wrong because those thoughts literally weren’t my own. There was something in the back of my mind calling the shots and trying to tell me what to do.
“What have you…”
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go oversee conquering this world. Then we’ll move onto earth. I’m sure they’ll be very excited to see their greatest hero returning at the head of an invading alien army!”
I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. That even if we did appear on earth at the head of an invading army there was someone there who took care of invading alien armies.
Only I couldn’t bring myself to say it. It was as though the voices that’d been whispering in the back of my head for so long were ratcheting it up. They weren’t exactly screaming in my head, but it was close.
And the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was go with her. I wanted to make sure Korval and all the others were safe. I could only do that if I was there to keep them safe. If I was there to help them save these worlds.
No matter what it took to save this world.
I’d do anything to save it. I’d do anything to set things right. I’d do anything that Sabine asked of me, though I wasn’t sure if that was my thought or if it was the voice in the back of my head calling the shots.
Did it even matter what thoughts were mine and what thoughts belonged to the worm buried in my head at this point?
34
Invasion
I floated over Tretharol and looked at the fires burning in the distance. Great columns of smoke still burned even after a month of no fighting.
Well that was to be expected. Our sisters had no plans to go quietly into that good night, to quote one of the most overused trite phrases from an earth poet ever.
I smiled as I looked over at Sabine. She smiled right back at me. There was something beautiful about that smile. It encompassed the desire to conquer. To bend worlds to her will.
Those fools. They thought they could rule this world by using parlor tricks like mind control. Well we had shown them how wrong they were. All it took was a little bit of technology from another world.
A world we were about to conquer. A world that would have a bounty of super science that would allow us to rule the galaxy at long last.
“Are you ready for the big moment?” Sabine asked.
“I’ve been ready for all the years since we came to this world,” I said with a smile of my own.
“I’d hoped you would say something like that,” Sabine said. “Now let’s get on with this.”
She hovered over the city on a vast dark throne that bore more than a striking resemblance to the platform Frank Langella had used while playing a very stiff-faced Skeletor in the old Masters of the Universe movie starring that chick from Friends and that guy who was the old wizard in Willow.
Somewhere deep inside me something rose up. A sense of indignation that I was thinking of the world in terms of old ‘80s sword and sorcery movies. It was an impulse that I quickly pushed down on, though.
Becoming of one mind with Sabine had shown me how much fun it was to think of the world in those terms, after all. It was so much easier to describe a life that had become a series of science fiction tropes when I had those tropes to fall back on.
“I believe we’re ready Admiral Korval,” Sabine said.
He stood next to her on her platform. He gave a salute, a proper earth salute, and spoke into a comm unit. He looked very crisp in his bright white uniform, and that crisp white uniform coupled with his blue skin brought to mind the only Star Wars sequel trilogy that would ever matter.
I smiled. Natalie might even appreciate being conquered by a bunch of blue skinned aliens when she realized that obvious comparison to the Timothy Zahn classic.
More indignation. I didn’t even know who Timothy Zahn was. But everyone knew who he was. Everyone knew his villain was greater than anything the new sequels could come up with. Apologies to Andy Serkis and his motion capture work. Though I shouldn’t know who Andy Serkis was either.
Dizziness came over me, and then it was gone. I looked to Sabine. She stared at me with a thin smile on her face, and I smiled back at her.
“Thank you,” I said.
I could always count on her when I had those moments of weakness. She was always there to help me. To make us whole again.
She looked down at the massive fusion plant beneath us. It was one of the few that had survived the march across this planet. More would have to be built before we sent invasions to other parts of the galaxy, but for the moment this would be sufficient to get us the short distance to earth.
How odd that this entire time we had only been about four light years from my home planet. Sure they called it three light years here on this world, and it turns out that invasion force they sent was heading for signals they’d detected from my pale blue dot, but that was because they reckoned a year slightly different.
Duh. Different planet. Different path around the local star. I should’ve realized that, but I’d gotten that information before. When I was incomplete. Back before I had the understanding of the world and the universe that I had now thanks to being one with Sabine.
I smiled as the massive fusion generator powered up below us. There had been a moment when Sabine had suggested they simply put me on a treadmill and start running to generate the power needed to open these portals. Ultimately she’d abandoned that idea when it turned out there was no material on this planet that had the tensile strength to stand up to that kind of abuse.
Power arced down below. Lightning reached for the skies and it set a nice backdrop to the invasion fleet. Shock troops floated in the air over the city and flying saucers were arrayed behind them ready to move through the portal once everything on the other side had been deemed tactically sound enough for them to move in.
Not that I thought there was much worry of anything facing the troops that they couldn’t handle. No, there was only one person on earth I truly thought was a threat to this invasion, and I kept telling myself that she would come around when she saw what we were trying to do.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” Sabine said.
The thought echoed through my mind. Because of course there was no need for her to use any of the primitive communications we’d been using since I came to this world. Not when we were directly connected through the mind.
“She will come over to our way of thinking,” I thought back at Sabine. “She has to.”
“You said it yourself. She makes a habit of fighting off alien invasions. She’s not going to take too kindly to us coming to her city.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
“You have too much confidence in her anyway,” Sabine said. “She styles herself as the greatest villain the world has ever known. What right does she have to that title? What world has she conquered? Look at what we’ve done. We’re already far greater than she could ever hope to be, and we’ll be so much more by the time this is all done!”
I looked out at our vast military arrayed for the invasion. Sabine did have a point. Sure there was a part of me that screamed there was a good reason Natalie had stayed confined to Starlight City. That for all her puffed up rhetoric about how she was going to rule the world someday there was a part of her that seemed happy to be a whale in the biggest pond in the world, superheroically speaking.
I shook my head. That was a thought for another day. There was far more for us to worry about now.
Portals opened up around the city. Now those were a sight for sore eyes. They were large and pink and they crackled with the energies required to rip holes in the universe and fling people across large distances.
Sure it wasn’t a huge distance when you got down to it, but it was all about perspective. Four light years was a huge fucking distance when you converted it to miles.
Sabine hit me with a sharp look. Right. It was a huge fucking distance when you converted it to kilometers. Because kilometers were a more elegant unit of measure.
“Would you like to say something in this moment, great lady?” Korval asked, sketching a small bow on Sabine’s platform.
She raised a hand ever so slightly. She seemed to like the theatrics almost as much as Natalie. At least she’d taken to them since she went from the underdog lurking in a volcano lair to the undisputed ruler of this world.
Though honestly the volcano lair had been a bit of theatrics too, even if I was the only one to ever see the inside. Well, me, Korval and his people, a giant irradiated lizard, and Silvani shortly before she was blown to smithereens.
“You have done well, my troops,” she said. “We have conquered this world and freed you from the worm domination that threatened you for so long!”
I suppressed a smile. If they had any inkling that they were still being controlled by one of the worms, albeit one who’d taken a far different tactic than the other hive minds who’d gone for the old cat vector of mind control, they’d try their best to kill us.
But of course they didn’t know that, and the sharp look I got from Sabine made it clear that
she didn’t even like me thinking about them finding out about our little secret.
Not that I had much to worry about. They couldn’t kill me no matter what they threw at me. I’d already proved that time and again when I arrived on this world.
“I know that you will do me proud,” she said. “We’ve conquered one world, and now it’s time for you to go out and conquer the world of my origin. The world that your expeditionary force was sent to! We will find the woman who crushed them and we will bury her!”
I looked up at Sabine. A sharp look. I wasn’t expecting that. She was talking as though she was expecting a fight with Night Terror. She was talking as though the expeditionary force they sent to earth had already been destroyed, but she’d never mentioned that before.
There was so much of her mind that she still kept from me even as my own was laid bare to her.
Again there was a part of me, a very small part of me, that couldn’t help but think that Natalie was going to wipe the floor with these aliens. Korval had mentioned they sent a force to earth even though I hadn’t realized it was earth at the time.
Natalie had mentioned destroying alien invasions before. Had she destroyed the expeditionary force? Or was it still screaming between the stars with blue aliens in cold sleep awaiting their moment of defeat?
That small part of me that thought Natalie would be able to take care of them disappeared. As with all thoughts that were incorrect, one moment it was there and the next moment it was gone.
I knew if I looked up at Sabine she would be smiling at me, but of course I didn’t need to look at Sabine because I could feel her thoughts in my mind just as she could feel my thoughts in her mind and know when I was suffering from those incorrect thoughts.
“We will avenge your brothers!” Sabine said. “We will show this world what it means to be invaded, and we will rule the galaxy as is your birthright!”
Cheers erupted all around. From the city down below where people were gathered to watch the great invasion, from the shock troops in their power armor prepared to move through the portals hovering over the city, and maybe even loud enough that the cheering could be heard through the thick armor of the flying saucers arrayed around the city.
