by Anna Carven
“Any of you so much as twitch and your boss dies. And so do you.” It’s not an idle threat. We’re bigger. Faster. Stronger. Our technology is better. They’re outmatched, and they know it. “As I said before, it’s not a request. It’s a demand. And I am not interested in your ‘protocol’. We will not disarm. We are not going anywhere.”
The Human captive glares at me with her odd, icy blue eyes. But she’s smart enough not to resist.
“You stay here,” I add, “as security. Any one of you decides to do something stupid, she dies. Rykal, that’s your responsibility.”
“Sir.”
I point to another Human, a male, who is staring at us with a look of dismay. No doubt the ease at which Rykal took their commander hostage has shocked him. “You. What’s your name?”
“Uh, Jacobs.”
Such strange sounding Human names. I resist the urge to close my eyes and drop my face in my hand. My headache is getting worse. “You will show us the way. Call ahead and warn them not to mount any resistance. Any attempt to attack us will be met with consequences. Do not try my patience, Human. The rest of you stay here. And drop the weapons.”
A muscular Human steps forward, outrage twisting his features. “Fuck you, alien. Think you can just enter our territory and do whatever you want?”
“Yes.” My response is matter-of-fact, and honest. But it sends him over the edge. He raises his cannon.
“Stand down, private, stand down!” The female commander shouts at him, straining against Rykal’s strong arms. “They’re fucking Kordolians. What do you expect to achieve here? You want to get us all killed? Stand down. That’s a direct order.”
The Human looks at us, then at his boss, then back at us. There’s anger in his eyes, but he can’t disobey her command.
He lowers his weapon, laying it on the floor. His comrades follow suit.
I issue orders to my troops in Kordolian, selecting two of my more experienced soldiers to accompany me. The rest will stay behind to guard the ship and keep an eye on sthe Humans.
A nervous silence has settled over the Humans as they watch us, fearful and unsure of themselves.
It’s a look I’m used to. Our reputation is well known throughout the nine galaxies, even in this shitty backwater of the universe. Lucky for the Humans, they seem to have above average intelligence, or at least their leader does.
Some species would have attacked by now, inviting all-out slaughter.
“Jacobs.” I motion to the Human I’ve randomly picked out.
“Sir.” His response is instinctive, an automatic reaction to my tone of voice. Military personnel are the same, the universe over.
“What are you waiting for? Lead the way.”
He looks back and forth between me and the female commander. She signals for him to move with an irritated flick of her head. Under the armor, he looks young. I don’t know much about Human lifespans, but he seems to be little more than an adolescent.
With small, hesitant steps, he starts to lead us out of the dock. I come up behind him. “I’m impatient today, private,” I whisper in his ear. He shudders and picks up the pace. Two of my soldiers, Arkan and Kalan, follow behind, their plasma cannons ready.
If anyone tries anything, we will set them to vaporize and blow a hole out the side of this fucking rust bucket.
“Speed it up,” I growl, taking position at the back of the formation. It’s my preferred location in any team. I like to guard the back and see what’s going on at the front.
My headache is pounding now. It’s almost unbearable, but I grit my teeth and force myself to ignore it.
We’re running out of time.
In the middle of a firefight with enemy Xargek, we were accidentally sucked into a wormhole, and it spat us out in this remote corner of the universe. Now, the unstable wormhole is collapsing. We need to get off this station. Somewhere out there is a ship full of Xargek monsters that I need to hunt down and kill.
And I’ll die before I end up stuck on some poorly maintained Human outpost in the middle of nowhere. The sooner we’re gone, the better.
Abbey
On the way back to the lab, I hear footsteps behind me. Because we’ve just been invaded by terrifying aliens, I’m a little bit on edge, so I whirl around, and come face to face with the very last beings I wanted to see.
Three Kordolians glare at me, accompanied by a very scared looking peacekeeper. The poor kid looks barely seventeen, his eyes nervous and wide in a pale, freckled face.
The alien commander looms at the back of their little convoy, silent and scary. He wears a thunderous expression on his face. I freeze in shock, taking in his otherworldly appearance. Up close, he’s even more striking, his luminous grey skin almost shimmering under the artificial light. His eyes, I realize, are a deep shade of red, the color of wine. They’re hard, brutal eyes. He has the look of a killer. And he looks pissed off.
These Kordolians are huge. They tower above the kid and I, filling the wide passageway, making it seem small. A claustrophobic feeling works its way into my gut, and I press my back against the wall as they pass, trying to appear as insignificant as possible.
I hope to hell they don’t notice me. I pray that they’re too busy with whatever it is they’re doing and they’ll just get on their merry way.
But at the last minute, the commander turns, his harsh gaze fixing on me. My heart sinks. He gives me a quick up-and-down, and I do my best to keep a neutral expression on my face.
Stay calm, I tell myself. I figure these guys are like most predators. When they smell fear, it only encourages them.
The Kordolian narrows his eyes, his nostrils flaring slightly.
Why do I suddenly feel as if he’s the hunter, and I’m dinner? It’s making me squirmy. I get an overwhelming urge to sidestep him and scurry off back to my lab. But I don’t think he’d take that too well.
Don’t make any sudden moves.
I don’t want him to think I’m about to try something reckless. The last thing I want to do is end up as Abbey mincemeat, splattered across the service corridor in sector 9.
The Kordolian inclines his head. He really does have pointed ears. Like an elf.
A stupid, irrational giggle threatens to burst from my lips. I suppress it with all my might.
Wrong place, wrong time. Being scared out of my wits is probably making me delirious.
Stop it, Abbey. Don’t make the big, bad alien angry.
Is this what happens in life-or-death situations? I think I’ve read about something like this. Detachment from reality. Inappropriate hysterics. Those are the symptoms of temporary insanity.
Say something. Make him go away.
“Er, hi there,” I say, in Universal. Everyone who goes into space has to learn Universal. It’s Federation requirements. “You guys seem to be in a hurry, so I’ll just get out of your way.” A tiny laugh escapes me. And immediately, I’m kicking myself.
Seriously Abbey? Was that the best thing you could could come up with?
I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction. I try not to stare at his pointy ears and menacing red eyes and rather overwhelming, muscular torso. Because that nano-armor stuff is quite, ah, sculpted. It doesn’t really leave much to the imagination.
“Is something amusing, female?” His deep voice resonates in the confines of the corridor. It’s exactly how I was expecting him to sound. Arrogant. Authoritative. A guy who always gets his way.
Urgh. If he weren’t so intimidating, I’d find him annoying. I hold up my hands in what I hope is a placating gesture. “I’m not amused,” I blurt. “Far from it. I was just thinking about all the things I have to do this afternoon. You know, DNA splicing, plasmid engineering, cleaning oxygen filters, that kind of thing. So I may have come across a little preoccupied.” It’s half-true. I was thinking about those things. And the fact that we’ve just been overrun by some of the most dangerous beings in space.
He stares at me blankly, saying nothing. As if he
has no idea what I’m talking about.
“I’m a scientist,” I elaborate. “Cleaning biomeric oxygen filters isn’t glamorous, but someone has to do it.”
Still, he says nothing. I have a bad habit of saying too much when I’m nervous.
The deep, red stare never wavers. He narrows his eyes, reaching out with a black-gloved hand. I flinch.
You’ve gone and done it now, Abbey.
Then his fingers are plucking something from my hair. It’s a piece of greenery. A bit of leaf, from a passionfruit vine, probably stuck there when I crawled through the hydroponic vents, looking for fruits that had been missed in the harvest.
He stares at the leaf critically, then at me, then back at the leaf, shaking his head. He mutters something under his breath in his native language.
Then, in a rush of weapons and armor and sharply issued commands, they’re gone, storming down the passageway, disappearing from view. And once again, the service corridor feels empty, as if their departure has left a vacuum. It’s as if my little encounter had never happened.
And on a positive note, at least I didn’t get killed.
“Crazy Kordolians,” I grumble, running my fingers self-consciously through my hair. Why should I care about what some muscle-bound, galaxy-colonizing, silver-skinned asshole thinks?
Why is my heart still pounding?
Stupid aliens. I sigh, shaking the tension out of my body, blowing a puff of air through my lips. I don’t know what they’re doing on our station, or what they want, and I really don’t care.
I just want to get back to work. As long as they’re not here to colonize the station in the name of the Kordolian Empire and ship us all off to some remote outpost for whatever nefarious purpose, then I’m fine.
They haven’t blown anything up yet, or shot at anyone, so I’m secretly hopeful that they’re just passing by.
Maybe they just want a place where they can fix up their battle cruiser, before taking off to carry on with whatever they were doing in the first place.
They aren’t here because they want to be. We Humans and our little planet don’t rank very very high on the intergalactic desirability index.
Ever since the nine galaxies were mapped, we’ve come to the realization that we’re actually not the center of the universe.
Far from it. Most aliens consider us a far-flung, underdeveloped backwater, not worth even fighting about. We’ve already damaged enough of our planet on our own, without the help of aliens, thank-you very much.
I’ve never even heard of Kordolians traveling this far out of their way. Has a Kordolian even set foot in the Solar System before?
I sure as hell hope they’re just lost. Maybe their Galactic Atlas malfunctioned.
Because with everything that’s happening on Earth right now, the last thing we need is a dominant alien race coming and recruiting us under the guise of benevolent rule.
I shudder a little, before pulling myself together. I catch the errant thoughts before they spiral downward into full-on scary territory.
No point in worrying about things I can’t do anything about.
On the other hand, the oxygen filters won’t change themselves. And I have chocolate stashed in my locker. It always does wonders for curing feelings of imminent doom.
Ah yes, chocolate. Just the thought of it is making me feel better already.
CHAPTER TWO
Tarak
The boss of the mining station occupies a floor high above the Human workers’ factories and offices. There’s a reception type area at the entrance, and for a utilitarian industrial station such as this, it’s surprisingly opulent.
The floors are made of rare, black Jentian stone, polished to a high sheen, and there is green vegetation trailing up the glass walls, attached to metal trellises.
Again, the lights are irritatingly bright, serving to perpetuate my headache.
Humans must have poor dark-vision. It has to be the only reason they insist on illuminating the entire place like a flaring star.
The space is seemingly empty, but from a distance, I hear something.
Footsteps. Arkan and Kalan sense the same. We’re at a kind of junction, the passageway stretching out in both directions in front of the cavernous space.
“They’re trying to cut us off.” Kalan hefts his giant plasma cannon over his shoulder, and gets down on one knee, pointing it down the still empty corridor.
I sense it now, the tiny vibrations that come from dozens of Human footsteps.
Arkan takes the other direction, drawing his twin rapid-fire plasma rifles.
It seems as if the Humans are stupid enough to try and ambush us, after all.
Their loss.
“Full armor,” I snap, and the nanites of my exo-suit whirr and click, forming a helmet that protects my face. I get some relief from the harsh lights as the combat visor covers my eyes, its datafeed throwing up numbers and graphics in my vision. It tells me Human enemies approach, from both directions.
Just as we’d sensed.
I grab Jacobs’ arm and he whirls to face me, in a panic. “If you don’t want your comrades to die, get your ass up to wherever your leader is hiding and tell him to call off this death wish. Otherwise the fifty or so Human soldiers who think they’re about to get the jump on us will end up painting the walls. Don’t you know that your weapons can’t penetrate our armor? There’s nothing your soldiers can do.”
“I have nothing to do with this,” he stutters. “I swear.”
“I don’t care. Get your Station Boss down here now. I’m out of patience.” I turn to my subordinate, who is now similarly decked out in full battle armor. “Kalan, fire a warning shot. You know the drill.”
“About time you decided to go hostile, general,” Kalan replies. “These Humans are just fucking around.” He steadies himself, and pulls the trigger. A loud boom follows, and screams echo down the corridor.
Jacobs looks back and forth in alarm.
“Run, Human,” I tell him. He wastes no time, scurrying off to enter an elevator.
Although the visor has dimmed the effects of the harsh lights, it hasn’t helped my pounding head at all. A small part of me wishes I could retreat to the cruiser and pop a few of the pills I normally take to help me sleep. I squash that weak, pathetic voice in disgust.
We’re running out of time, and I need results, fast.
Cold logic tells me I should kill all the approaching Humans. But death is a punishment best saved for last, when there are no other options left. I need the Humans co-operative, because I need their machinery, their resources, and their expertise.
We’re soldiers, not mechanics.
Basic military strategy dictates I should gain co-operation of the leadership first. Only once that option fails do we go on the offensive.
So I need these Humans to understand that one does not make an enemy of Kordolians.
The female soldier down in the dock understood it.
The strange female scientist I encountered in the corridor understood it.
This so-called Station Boss had better understand it. For their sake, and ours.
We need to repair our battle cruiser and get back into the wormhole before it collapses. Otherwise we’ll have to return the long way, stuck on a six-orbit long roundabout trip across the outer sectors of the nine fucking galaxies.
I don’t have time for that shit. There’s a Xargek warship floating around out there, and we need to hunt it down.
“What in Kaiin’s name is taking so long?” The pain is in both of my temples now, insistent and merciless. I’m in a mood to fight. But I need a worthy opponent, not some slow, feeble Human.
Killing these weaklings would just be a waste of plasma cartridges.
We wait, tense and ready, and the footsteps of the Human reinforcements become louder. They’re approaching.
Still, that damn Jacobs doesn’t appear. Perhaps he’s run off to hide, like a coward.
I clench my teeth in frust
ration. “I’m going up,” I announce, drawing my twin Callidum blades from where they’re sheathed at my back. They’re better for fighting in close quarters. There’s a staircase to the left of the elevator. I head towards it. If the Station Boss doesn’t want to come out, I’ll hunt him down. “Hold the position.”
Kalan and Arkan nod in agreement. We’ve done this sort of thing a hundred times before. As a crowd of Human soldiers converges on us from both sides, I disappear into the stairwell, taking the steps four at a time. I use the synergistic movement of the exo-suit to my advantage, passing four or five floors to reach the top of the stairs.
I figure the Station Boss will be hiding at the top. Most leaders like to position themselves high up. I’m assuming this Human won’t be any different.
Intelligent lifeforms are the same, throughout all the galaxies.
The doors at the top are sealed with some sort of security code. I stab my blade into the glowing panel on the wall, the sharpened Callidum slicing through the components with ease. A shower of sparks flies out and an alarm goes off, bathing me in red, flashing light.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I kick the twin doors and they shudder open, sliding to reveal a dimly lit hallway.
There’s thick, plush carpet underfoot. I snort in grim amusement. It’s a wasteful, indulgent choice. As I make my way down the corridor, a faint hum causes me to turn. I raise my sword and slice through a flying drone, a shower of sparks cascading to the floor as the cut halves of the machine drop noiselessly onto the dark carpet.
In the same motion, I turn and bring my sword down through a second drone that has approached me from behind.
Sparks go everywhere, spitting onto the dark carpet. Small fires start to burn, emitting chemical smoke.
I start to run, heading for the big, ornate doors at the end of the passage. Two Human guards are stationed at the entrance, and they start firing at me with their laser weapons as I approach.
Their shots glance off my armor as if they’re nothing. I hold my blades low and close to my body as they raise their weapons for another shot.
“Don’t,” I order, running straight past them, kicking open the wide double doors. In a place where space is at a premium, they’re the old-fashioned swinging type.
