Gate Crashers

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  The walkway slowed, subtly at first, but then enough that everyone braced their knees against the deceleration. It halted before a set of magnificent silver doors. Portraits as solemn as they were bizarre were carved into the polished surface, yet the alien faces only reached a third of the way up. The rest of the surface remained virgin territory, awaiting histories yet to be written.

  Everyone stepped onto the landing. Allison, Felix, and Jacqueline stood in awe of the doors, trying in vain to comprehend the depth of tradition the engravings represented. Maximus and Harris, meanwhile, were more concerned with the present. They sized up the guards, looking for weaknesses or oversights. None immediately presented themselves. Their escorts took up positions to either side of the entryway.

  A line of light shot from floor to ceiling as the left door opened, dramatically at first, but the rate was slow enough that drying paint would be tempted to sneak out for a smoke break. Finally, the door opened enough to let a slim figure squeeze through.

  He was Lividite, dressed in the resplendent vestments owed to his office and with a physique owed to his desk. He approached D’armic. “You are the frontier manager, yes?”

  “I am. And unless I have been absent for too long, you are Bloon Representative.”

  The elder Lividite gave a small bow. “The Assembly is ready to hear your petition. But, a note of caution: the Turemok representative moved to censure your codefendants.”

  “And the vote?”

  “Three for, three against.”

  “What does that mean?” Allison asked.

  D’armic turned to face her. “The measure fails.”

  “You need four votes to pass anything? Doesn’t that just invite deadlock?”

  Bloon shrugged. “Deadlock is preferable to actions that cannot win support from a simple majority.”

  Allison turned up her palms. “I mean no disrespect. I was merely curious why you would use an even number of representatives, when an odd number of votes would ensure there could always be a majority.”

  “That excludes inaction as an alternative. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most prudent action a government can take.”

  D’armic raised a hand. “Thank you for sharing your wisdom, Bloon Representative.”

  “The rest of the Assembly awaits. We should delay no longer.”

  “Of course. Lead and we will follow.”

  The Turemok guards remained fixtures in the hall as the group passed by. The door had opened enough to allow even Harris’s shoulders to pass. Past the threshold, the space opened into an airy, hexagonal chamber. The walls slowly arched inward until their corners intersected at a glowing hemisphere at the center of the ceiling.

  On the floor, each section of the hexagon was given over to a different landscape: one lush and tropical, another arid and rocky. A roof of heavy stone hovered above another, like a slice of a cave. It was this section where Representative Bloon positioned himself. At the center of the hexagon was a small neutral space arranged with chairs.

  D’armic moved to sit in one and motioned for the humans to do the same, but they were too distracted by the displays.

  Maximus glanced through the impressive array of flora in the tropical area. “Looks like a zoo.”

  “That’s a rather rude thing to say,” Allison chided.

  “Well, what’s it for, then?”

  “It’s supposed to be a slice of their home worlds,” Felix said while looking into the cave area. “Am I right, Representative Bloon?”

  “Nearly. These are not re-creations. They were cut from the six home worlds of the Assembly and brought here. They remain the sovereign territory of their respective races as if they had never been moved.”

  “Is this what your world looks like?” Felix pointed into the cave.

  “The interior of it, yes. The surface remains largely untamed.”

  As they spoke, other beings took up places in the slices of their homes. Once all were present, Bloon introduced them in turn.

  “I have already introduced myself. To my right is Ruckk, of the Turemok, with which you have already had experience.”

  Ruckk was gargantuan, standing almost three meters tall. While his eyes didn’t glow red with implants, they were still lit with a simmering antagonism. He stood among rocky outcrops and scrub brush that looked like it had been lifted off the set of a Western. He couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge them.

  “Next is Yugulon, of the Nelihexu.”

  Standing in the vibrant grove of flowering bushes and spongy mosses was a figure with four arms, two backward-jointed legs, and a tail thick enough to act as a stool. Extra limbs aside, the most disconcerting thing about the alien was its skin—or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Rather than the more traditional connective tissues, the Nelihexu’s muscles, bones, and organs looked as though they were held together out of a shared sense of duty. Yugulon smiled at the visitors, a feat made all the more noteworthy by an absence of lips.

  In the next section, another of the crab people scuttled out of the surf onto a shore of black volcanic sand.

  “This is Schee, of the Ish,” Bloon said.

  Schee clicked a claw in their general direction.

  Allison sat on a rock at the very edge of the second-to-last area. The slice was covered in crystalline formations of unimaginable intricacy and beauty. The entire scene was reminiscent of a coral reef carved of gemstones. She was mesmerized by it. Meanwhile, Felix tried to calculate the size of the treasury necessary to purchase jewelry elaborate enough to impress Jacqueline if she ever laid eyes on it. His final tally was not encouraging.

  “Who’s in there?” Allison asked. “I don’t see anyone.”

  Bloon pointed at the rock Allison was perched upon. “You are sitting on them.”

  Allison shot up like a bottle rocket and looked at what still appeared to be a rock. “I am so sorry, um, Representative.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Bloon said. “You probably weren’t sitting there long enough for them to notice. Their name is Rolled Down the Valley without Cracking.”

  “Um, are they asleep?”

  “No, they’re conscious, but the Grenic are silicon-based, essentially sentient crystal. They live on a somewhat longer timescale than the rest of us.”

  “How do you communicate with them?”

  “Our deliberations are recorded and replayed at a speed the Grenic can process.”

  Maximus had already moved to the final section, nothing more than a brownish cloud thick enough to give the smog over Shanghai an asthma attack. As he drew close, something startled him, leaving little jetty currents swirling about.

  “What the hell was that?”

  From somewhere in the fog came a voice. “One might ask the same about you.” The creature floated forward to present itself. It hung in the air, looking for all the world like the head of a giant morel held aloft by a goat’s bladder, with a bundle of confetti streamers trailing out the bottom. “But we already know who you are, Captain Tiberius.”

  Maximus stepped forward, his brain trying desperately to find a face on the surface of the floating sack. “You have me at a disadvantage, er, ma’am?”

  “I am Fenax; we are genderless.”

  “Damn, alien sexing just isn’t my thing. Is Fenax your name, or the name of your race?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Glad that’s cleared up.”

  D’armic slid between Maximus and the buoyant alien. “Forgive my companions, Fenax. They have lived long in a storm cloud and only now see the sky.”

  “Yet already they fly in it.” The alien’s voice didn’t seem to come from any one point in particular.

  “It is their way. They are … impatient to learn.”

  “To learn? Or to conquer?”

  Maximus scoffed. “I guess we know which way you voted.”

  “And impatient to cast assumption,” said the disembodied voice. “A most combustible mixture, I fear.”

  Allison stepped forwa
rd. “Please don’t judge our race on Maximus alone. Many of us are more cautious than he.”

  “You have already been judged, Captain Ridgeway,” said Ruckk sharply. “Our deliberations concluded weeks ago.” He spread his arms theatrically wide. “Perhaps you were arrogant enough to believe you wouldn’t be caught. But the truth is, one of our ships was watching your every move since the moment you crossed into our territory. It was very thorough chronicling your decaying spiral of criminality and barbarism. It began with your piracy of Assembly property, violation of our space, escalated into serial geocide, and finally reached its zenith with the destruction of the very Assembly vessel sent to contain your madness. Not to mention several dozen counts of murder of duly assigned peace officers while discharging their duties.”

  “Discharging their weapons is more like it,” Allison snapped.

  “Silence!” Ruckk barked. “This Assembly will not tolerate impudence from convicted criminals.”

  “And we will not tolerate having the fate of our home planet hinge on the results of a show trial.”

  “How dare you! You have the audacity, the utter gall to come here, to the heart of a power beyond your meager experience, and make demands of us? You are fortunate your pathetic vessels were not destroyed on sight. Were it not for your hostages, that would have been your end.”

  “I hold no hostages aboard my shi—”

  “Then release our officers at once!”

  “I wasn’t finished. I said we hold no hostages. We hold prisoners suspected in the destruction of Solonis B. Prisoners who will, in due time, be given a proper trial.”

  “Forgive the intrusion, Allison Captain,” said Bloon, “but what is a Solonis B?”

  “She means Culpus-Alam, Bloon Representative,” D’armic said. “The humans have another name for it.”

  “Ah, but Culpus-Alam was an Assembly world and, therefore, under our jurisdiction. Humans do not have authority in this matter.”

  Maximus had heard enough. “As far as I’m concerned, an entire planet covered in dead humans gives us the authority, Assembly space or not. Humans that were only there because your people kidnapped their ancestors.”

  Ruckk’s cranial crest had reached full height and rapidly turned a bright shade of purple. “You accuse our forces of geocide to cover your own crimes?” His chest muscles tensed. “In all my cycles, I have never heard something so preposterous and offensive.”

  “I take it you’ve never watched the BCS Bowl selection process at work.”

  This confused Ruckk, which only infuriated him further. “You will be silent, or by Dar, I will silence you by my own claws!”

  Maximus, who was accustomed to people being reduced to sputtering volcanoes of incoherent fury while conversing with him, simply shrugged. “I like my odds. I may have a goose egg sexing aliens, but Harris and I are two for two fighting Turemok.”

  Allison threw her arm across Maximus’s chest and pushed him back, then gave him an unmistakable You’re not helping look recognized by everyone in the room. Except Rolled Down the Valley without Cracking, but that was because their brain had only just started to address the fact there were other life-forms in the room.

  “We didn’t come for a fight. In fact, we came in the hope of avoiding one.”

  “You should listen to your mate, human. She might keep your hide intact,” Ruckk taunted.

  “I’m not his ‘mate,’ and you two posturing idiots can duke it out when we’re finished for all I care.” The venom in Allison’s voice surprised everyone, but no one more than herself.

  Maximus smiled at her and thought through the implanted com. Glad to know I can bring out such strong feelings.

  “But you are finished, Ridgeway,” Ruckk said. “If you are not here to negotiate the release of your hostages, then we have nothing to discuss.” He looked at Bloon. “I told you it was a mistake to bring them here. You can’t reason with the insane.”

  Bloon’s eyes remained on Allison. “Something is unclear to me. If you have not come to discuss your … prisoners, then what is your petition?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? To stop retaliation against Earth. We have evidence that exonerates us and proves that we were set up.”

  Ruckk laughed. A sound like two badgers with their tails tied together. “I’m sure you do. And I’m equally sure that you took great care in manipulating your sensor logs—”

  “Actually,” D’armic interjected, “the evidence is physical. I have seen it for myself, which is why I turned my investigation away from these humans.”

  The Fenax stirred. “You forget, D’armic, that you stand accused as a coconspirator. It is unsurprising, then, that you would claim evidence in your own favor.”

  “I accept that; however, it changes nothing. The fact remains that the human vessel Bucephalus is physically incapable of creating high-space portals of the size that destroyed Culpus-Alam, Okim, and Kulla. The patrol cruiser commanded by the deceased Vel Noric, by contrast—”

  “You’re mad!” screeched Ruckk. “You don’t actually expect us to believe that a Vel ordered geocide?”

  “What you choose to believe has no impact on the truth, Ruckk Representative. If I am telling the truth, then you have just as much incentive to suppress it as the humans would if the situations were reversed. Was it not you who tried to censure us before we even arrived? What are you afraid the rest of the Assembly might hear?”

  “This hall does not suffer conspiracy theories, Lividite.”

  “One moment, Ruckk,” Bloon said. “D’armic, you said the Bucephalus could not be responsible. But there are two ships.”

  Allison stepped up. “Magellan doesn’t have high-space tech.”

  “That is exceptionally dangerous this far from your home world. Why not send additional high-space-capable ships?”

  “Because we haven’t got any,” Allison said. “The Bucephalus is our prototype.”

  A gasp ran around the room.

  “As I said, Bloon Representative,” added D’armic, “they are impatient.”

  Bloon stood stoically for several seconds before continuing. “We are obliged to investigate this new evidence. However, even if it should result that you are telling the truth, I must tell you that we cannot halt the punitive expedition already authorized against Earth.”

  “But there are thirty billion people on Earth.” Allison’s voice cracked. “You can’t destroy our planet if you know we’re innocent. That’s monstrous.”

  “You misunderstand, Allison Captain. I did not say that we would not stop the expedition; I said that we could not. The armada was dispatched weeks ago, after the destruction of Kulla was reported.”

  “So recall them,” Maximus said. “Since getting out here, our people have nearly been drowned, shot, poisoned, blown up, crushed, burned alive, tortured … am I forgetting anything?”

  “Eaten.”

  “Eaten by cannibals. Thank you, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Asphyxiated,” Allison said.

  “Asphyxiated, another classic. We’ve lost three good men already. Do you actually think we’re going to sit around while you refuse to lift a finger, or whatever, to stop the destruction of our planet?”

  D’armic put a hand on Maximus’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, Maximus Captain. What he’s saying is there isn’t enough time left for a recall order to reach the armada. Am I right, Bloon?”

  “I wish it were not so, but yes. The Xecoron will be arriving at Earth shortly. If the schedule has been adhered to, the remaining ships will reach your colony worlds to begin enforcing the sequestration at the same time.”

  “The Xecoron?” Maximus asked. “You’re sending a single ship to Earth? I’m insulted.”

  Felix jumped to his feet. “That doesn’t matter. Just contact it with a hmmum mfmmumph rhmio.”

  That last bit was mangled by the sudden appearance of Allison’s hand over Felix’s mouth. Don’t think, she said into the internal com.

  “Hmm? Hmpf’s hu him
ihim?”

  “You’ll have to excuse Felix. He suffers from a rare condition that causes inappropriate outbursts. He was about to have a flare-up.”

  “A condition?” asked Yugulon. “It’s not contagious, I hope.”

  “Oh, no, he’s the only known case, but he should probably get medical attention.”

  Bloon looked at Felix appraisingly. “He does look distressingly pale and rather malnourished.”

  “Hrrmm!” Felix objected.

  “We have physicians here that can tend to him.”

  “Yes, but our doctors have experience with Fletcher syndrome.”

  “Fmmhr hymmrum?”

  “Very well,” Bloon said. “He may return to your ship for treatment.”

  “Thank you.” Allison turned Felix’s head to face her. “Okay, Felix. I want you to go back to the shuttle, then call Bucephalus to tell them you’re coming home and tell them that they might have to evacuate a bed for you in sick bay. Do you understand?”

  He stared at her for a confused moment. Then the light went on in his eyes and he nodded. “Mm-hmph.”

  “Good man. Off you go.” She dropped her hand, and Felix marched back to the doors under guard with the desperate look of a man in search of a bathroom.

  Bloon resumed. “As I was saying. If your evidence turns out to be genuine, we will of course try to compensate humanity for our … misjudgment.”

  “You sound like you’ve already accepted their story on faith, Bloon,” Ruckk said. “Have you already forgotten these are convicted world killers?”

  Maximus laughed. “Oh, come off it. The only inhabited world that was lost was full of our own people. What possible reason would we have to destroy it?”

  “Apparently it is up to us to give you a lesson in your own history, human. You cannot find a species more enthusiastic about killing its own members than yours. Religion, race, gender, nationality, money, land, sex, food, clothing, natural resources, ancient feuds. No pretense seemed inadequate. You even fought a war over a film dispute.”

  This was true. The Great Nerd War started innocently enough when an overworked Park and Rec employee in Portland accidentally double-booked a shelter with a Tolkien reenactment of the Battle of Helm’s Deep and a Star Wars LARP game. The two sides did their best to avoid each other until the reenactment’s Saruman was overheard saying that Christopher Lee “totally phoned-in his Count Dooku performance.” By early evening, seventeen lay dead. Eight years of bitter fighting later, a truce was signed in what became known as the Shelter C Accords.