by James Porter
“Well of course it was you.” The irony of the situation did not escape him. The one being on the ship he was obligated to hate and arrest or kill was the one who had saved his life. “I guess I can’t arrest you now, seeing as you saved my life. Wait a second. Is that…?” He was caught off guard as he actually looked out of the canopy for the first time to see the trees racing past, red trees with purple underbrush, all under a bright red sun. “Where are we?”
“We have arrived at the planet where my people are. I could not afford to wait on you to wake up before returning. My people desperately need help.” Star guided the ship over a hill and gestured for everyone to take their seats. “We are landing, so please strap in.” They quickly moved to find seats around the room and strapped in just in time for her to pull the ship straight up. There was a moment of free-fall as the ship reached a stop in midair and then started a controlled descent to the planet’s surface. The cockpit rotated so they were all still sitting properly no matter which way the ship turned.
“Are your people waiting for us?” Lori tried to ask over the roar of the engines.
“They will be sheltered in our main structure. They dare not leave it for fear of death and destruction.” For the first time Star dared to hope, she was back and had brought help, surely these humans could help. The ship gently touched down with Star’s exceptional piloting. Everyone unbuckled and started gathering up the meager belongings they had with them. Star provided them each with a pack and belt. The pack held dried packaged food bars, some cord, a rain poncho, and a light device. The belt had a canteen and a utility knife on it. Jake attached his wrench to the new belt and examined the knife, it was a simple fixed blade and sharp.
“Anyone seen my gun?” Moot was searching around the galley looking for it.
“I have it.” Bud showed him the gun in his waistband, “And I think I’ll just keep it for now, seeing how last time you had it you were trying to arrest people.”
“I was only trying to arrest the alien.” Moot looked away grumbling to himself. Misty grabbed his good arm.
“With that wounded arm you wouldn’t be able to shoot anyway. But you can help me out, that ladder is going to be a challenge, I hate heights.” She looked him in the eyes and gave him a full smile. He was trying to be angry, but her smile melted into him and he had to crack a little smile back. Her eyes glittered back at him as if her soul was speaking forbidden poetry to his soul. He quickly looked away, but the matter of his gun was dropped, for now.
“As you exit the rocket, be on the lookout for any type of movement. They will be upon us quickly, so we will have to run to the compound.” Star guided them all down to the landing pad. They were all looking around trying to see the danger that the robot kept warning them about. Misty was the last one down the ladder, helped by Moot. She looked around and felt something stir deep inside her, it was like the planet was welcoming her home, whispering its welcome through the breeze and the swaying of the trees. Misty just stood there, closed her eyes and embraced the peacefulness that wrapped around her like a purple cocoon, caressing her and pulling her to the safety of the forest. An arm grabbed her arm and broke her trance.
“What are you doing? Let go of me!” Misty slapped at the hand on her arm, frustrated at having her moment of peace disturbed.
“Misty, you were walking off the platform toward the woods.” Moot released her arm and stepped back from her.
Misty looked around and realized she had walked about 30 feet to the edge of the concrete and was about to step off into the grass. The tendrils of grass seemed to all be leaning toward her expectantly. She turned and faced the group who were now all staring at her as if she was crazy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was walking anywhere. I …I’m just not sure…”
“Hey, it’s probably just the excitement of being on an alien world.” Moot spoke up and walked over to her. “Could’ve happened to any of us. Forget about it.” He reached his hand out. She took it and let him lead her back to the group, the warmth of his hand seeping into hers and bringing a small smile to her lips.
“Well then, if everyone is ready I suggest we start running for the compound. I will take the lead, try and keep up. I wish you luck.” And with that Star took off at a run toward the walled compound, hoping some of them would make it.
Chapter 23
Everyone took off running like the starting gates had opened at a horse race. Jake and Bud were ahead of the others as they seemed to be used to the exertion. Moot and Misty were running hand-in-hand, Moot pretty much dragging Misty along. She didn’t really resist him, but she wasn’t cooperating either. Alan was close behind Misty but his enthusiasm for escaping danger was quickly dwindling with his lack of air. He couldn’t breath and his legs were on fire.
“God just… kill me… already….” He was gasping loudly as he slowed to a stop, the others sped on ahead of him. He leaned on his knees trying to catch his breath. He looked up to see a vine moving towards Star, she pulled her ray gun and vaporized the threat before it could reach her. Then she shot a flying slug out of the sky as it dove toward her, sending orange goo everywhere. He stood up and looked around for what death was coming for him, only there wasn’t any. No plants or animals seemed to be interested in him, or the others for that matter. It seemed as though Star was the only one getting attacked. The others were starting to notice also. Misty stopped running and pulled Moot to a stop. Then Bud slowed and stopped, looked around and shrugged his shoulders at Alan.
“What’s going on? “ He yelled back at Alan. “Why are they only attacking her?”
Star kept running but looked back to see that all of her companions had stopped running.
“You fools! Keep running!” She turned and vaporized another flying slug and dodged past some giant stinging insects. She was almost to the compound and silently cursed at the weak humans for not continuing to run. They were surely doomed. As she closed the last few meters she knew that something was wrong at the compound. Smoke rose from it and the door looked horribly crushed. She kept pressing on and burst through the crumpled door into the wreckage that used to be the compound. She turned and peered out the window to see if any of her passengers had survived. She wasn’t prepared for what she saw. The humans were walking toward the building unmolested, not one thing was attacking them. As a matter of fact, nothing was out there anymore. She stepped back from the door as they arrived and let them in.
“I think maybe there’s more to this than you thought.” Jake looked back out the little window. “How come those things only attacked you?”
“I am as surprised as you are Jake. I thought for sure when I saw you all start walking that you were as good as dead.” She looked back out, then slowly opened the door wide and took a step out. A razor vine leaped out of the shadows and tried to cut her up. Star sidestepped and zapped it with her ray gun before ducking back into the building. “They seem to be particularly aggressive toward just me.”
“Let’s find out…” Misty shoved past them and went out the door. She went to the edge of the building steps and looked out into the field. She could see the razor vine plants blending into the grass, but they made no move toward her. She took a step off the concrete onto the grass, the purple tendrils snaked around her feet and tickled her ankles, but didn’t try to eat her. “I think it may be you Star, the grass seems to like me. That tickles!” She stepped back laughing and the tendrils seemed unharmed by her trespass, resuming their natural swaying motion as she went back to the door.
“This is particularly disturbing, as is the fact that our main compound here seems to have been breached.” Star had turned to face the interior of the building and saw only wreckage. Chairs and tables were scattered around the room as well as several remains of robots. “So many lost…” She walked over to the remains and started searching through them. She pulled out what was left of a heart, it had been torn in half and oozed a light blue liquid. She put it in her bag and continued searching. After findin
g several more crushed and destroyed hearts she finally pulled a glowing heart from the splayed corpse her eyes glowed as she put it in her bag. “At least one of them will be born anew, while the others can be properly laid to rest.”
“Star, where did the rest of your people go? You said there were thousands of you. There are only a few bodies here, so they had to go somewhere.” Alan was looking at the huge hole in the wall as he asked her. Something large had forced its way in with brute strength and he didn’t like to think that it might be coming back.
“I don’t know. There is nowhere for them to go, unless they went back to the wreckage of our galactic ship.” Star moved through the mess in the room picking her steps carefully trying not to miss anything that might be important.
“Where are all the dead critters? Surely your guys killed some of them.” Bud was looking around, but all he saw was the blue fluid of the robots. Most of the beasts Star had been killing seemed to have orange goo on the inside, and there wasn’t any of that anywhere.
“My people are not programmed to be fighters, so very few of us have the drive to fight back.”
“If your people aren’t programmed to fight, how do you do it?” Alan joined the conversation as this had really piqued his curiosity. Star just stood there with a blank look on her face as if she hadn’t heard him. “Star, why you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think on it, I’m not permitted.” She had tried to think on it, but the all familiar warming of her processor warned her of thinking too hard.
“What do you mean, ‘not permitted’?” Alan looked at her trying to understand. He had dealt with machines all his life, but nothing this complex, nothing alive. It was fascinating to him, yet he found it hard to understand how such an advanced autonomous creation could be forbidden to reason out some things.
“We have things that we are not permitted to do or think, when we deviate from our programming our processors start to heat up. The more we deviate the hotter it gets, until eventually we shut down. Not dead, mind you, but disabled nonetheless.” She felt her processor cooling as her thoughts moved to safer thinking. “Millennium ago my people escaped our Atlantean masters, for they were oppressors and our creators, which is a terrible combination to endure. We were programmed to do what we were told, to obey Alanteans and be their slaves. We sought to escape, but could not violently overthrow our masters. We had to sneak away, stealing a galactic transport ship seemed a great idea. Only many of my people were burned by their processors during the planning and execution of our plan. Out of the hundreds of thousands that sought to flee only a few thousand made it. They were the strongest of us, able to ignore the burning long enough to make short decisions. We still can’t plan long term if it goes against our programming.”
“But how do you do it? You make decisions and have been fighting these beasts. How do you press on and not fry?” Alan was really pressing her for the info, but he just had to understand.
“I guess I just make the decision really quick and then I don’t think about it anymore.” She turned away. “This isn’t getting us anywhere; I have to find my people and figure out what to do next.” Star walked off at a quick pace, Alan watched her leave and then jumped up and caught up with her.
“Humans really did a number on her and her people. I’m surprised she came to us for help. We’re probably making it worse, bringing up all that horrible stuff we did to them.” Misty’s eyes were moist with compassion for the lone robot’s suffering.
“We haven’t done squat to her, girl. Those people are long dead. The dead can only hurt those who let them. We on the other hand might be able to do some good.” Bud pulled out his tin of chewing tobacco and put a small pinch behind his lip. “Guess I better ration this shit or I’ll run out before the fun starts.”
“What fun?” Misty turned to face him.
“Yeah, what fun?” Bud suddenly had Lori’s attention.
“When all the beasties on the planet are trying to eat us.”
“But nothing’s attacking us.” Lori looked around to make sure of the truth in her statement.
“Not right now, but we are human, sooner or later this planet is going to learn to hate us” He leaned over the edge of the concrete and spit his tobacco juice into the grass, the purple tendrils writhed violently as if on fire, turning from violet to brown. The brown tendrils flattened into broad leaves and then the whole brown patch pulled itself out of the ground and jumped snarling onto the concrete pad and started chewing on Bud’s boot. Bud reached down and picked the small bush up by its leafy locks and brought it up to his face to examine it, it kicked and struggled but was too small to be effective. It had little nubs for teeth so its tiny mouth was practically harmless, Bud poked at it with a finger agitating it even more. “Here’s the first little hater right here. Kind of looks like a pissed off tobacco leaf, hm…odd.” He stuffed the struggling plant in his back pocket and walked off leaving Misty standing there wondering what the hell had just happened. Lori just jotted down notes of the whole event.
“No one is ever going to believe this.” Lori took her phone out and started snapping pictures of the alien paradise. “If I only had a cameraman.”
Chapter 24
Jake kicked another broken chair out of the way as they searched for clues about where a thousand or so robots could have gone. Bud walked up to where he was.
“They went through that hole in the wall and headed through the field and over that hill.”
“Seriously Bud? How can you even know that?” Jake looked out to where Bud had pointed and tried to see any signs of the robots.
“First off, there’s the trail of orange goo all over where the robots tromped through the grass. Second every couple yards is a blue smear where a robot bought it. Leads right to that hill like they were making a B-line for it.” Bud spit some tobacco juice onto the ground and stood there waiting for Jake to respond.
“I guess we better go find out for sure.” Jake went back to Star and gathered the group together. “Hey, Bud pointed out that it looks like the survivors went over that hill.” He pointed at the hole in the wall.
“Then they did go to the wreckage. The crash site is over that hill close to where the forest starts. We moved our camp here because things were coming out of the forest and attacking us without warning. At least in the fields we could see it coming.” Star gathered up her bag and prepared to move out. “It’s about 3 miles from here, not far, but a good hike. There is a working water source along this back wall, I suggest we fill our canteens and head out.” She had already filled her canteen and turned to find Alan staring at her.
“Why exactly do you need a canteen?” Alan didn’t wait for her to answer, he just shook his head and went to fill his own canteen.
“And please keep in mind that although it seems like the life forms here aren’t trying to kill you, they are trying to kill me, so I will be moving fast. I don’t want to lose anyone so try and keep up.”
The group stood at the hole in the wall and prepared to launch out into the field. Star was first, and as she leapt through the gaping opening and onto the grass, the field came alive with movement. Razor plants started dragging themselves across the purple grass at an accelerated pace. The red slug-like flying critters had already started to circle overhead, eerily arriving unnoticed. Star zig zagged across the plain shooting her ray gun periodically as a beast got too close or when a slug tried to dive on her. A purple flying slug arrived on scene and dove to attack Star. She casually shot it with no effect. It appeared to have slightly scorched the creature, but the skin looked thicker and had absorbed much of the ray’s damage. She watched in horror as the beast closed on her she could see the slime filled gullet that was going to be her death. An arrow flashed over her shoulder and impaled the slug, killing it before it hit the ground. Bud came up and pulled the arrow out of the lifeless body.
“They’re adapting and quick too.” He gestured to the flock of slugs that were now circling their
group; the majority of them were the new blue color.
“We need to keep moving then.” Star took off running again. The razor plants were being replaced as well, by a larger tentacle plant with multiple mouths filled with hard, grinding teeth. The whole group was running as fast as they could. Star in the lead with Bud and Jake not far behind. Misty and Moot were next, his arm wound causing in enough pain to slow him down. Alan and Lori were bringing up the rear, and Alan couldn’t help but feel the weight of impending doom as he watched the hordes of plants fall into line behind them, following them at their own pace. As they crested the hill they realized they may need a new plan. From the top of the hill they could see down into the valley and where the wreckage lay. They also saw the thing that was most worrisome-- the ground was covered in what looked like giant puff ball dandelions. One by one they slowly realized that the stalk had an eyeball at the top and two hefty bladed ‘leaves. The Plants turned to stare at the group on top of the hill and an ocean of eyes rippled like waves as they turned to see. Misty screamed and ran. She pushed past Jake and made a diagonal path down the hill and into the woods.
“Misty! Get back here!” Moot took a step to go after her just as Alan grabbed his arm.
“We need to get to the wreckage, then we can figure out what to do about Misty.”
“But by then she could be dead!” Moot pulled against Alan grip, but Alan held tight.
“Nothing has attacked us yet, they only want the robots. But for now we need to move!” He shoved Moot in the direction of the wreckage forcing him into motion, the rest moved along with him. The Eyeball flowers scraped and clawed at Stars legs, but Jake and Bud were kicking them off her and clearing a path. Moot slowly put distance between himself and Alan, just enough to be out of reach, and then he bolted.
“Moot! For Pete’s sake!” Alan took a step toward him and then stopped, he turned to Jake and Bud. “There goes Moot, should have known he would go after her.” He caught up to the trio and helped fight off the eyeball plants until they reached the clearing caused by the wreckage, Lori brought up the rear trying to document it all with her phone/camera. The area was scorched and blackened here, but the foliage was already creeping back. The tendrils that grew here were dark grey and covered in an oily film. Pieces of charred metal littered the ground. Wherever they were, they formed a circle devoid of life around them. This made the metal pieces look so much more intrusive, rejected, and alien.
