Guardian Ship

by Mark Wayne McGinnis

  “I feel like I’m six, and I’ve just learned there’s no Santa Clause, and there never was,” Matteo said.

  I heard a sniffle to my right. Lori, her cheeks moist, hadn’t been able to stem the tears—tears I too now felt brimming within my own eyes. But this sadness was turning to anger. My gaze fell upon Hannig. “You couldn’t have warned us? Maybe given us a choice? Like, you can take the red pill, or you can take the blue pill?”

  “I don’t think Hannig is familiar with the Matrix movies, Dommy,” Georgina said. “But it’s a good question, just the same.”

  Hannig said. “Yes, perhaps I should apologize. But please know, I thought on this for some time. Ever since I met you, Dominic. After rescuing you from the WM cistern.”

  “Cistern?” Gordo repeated.

  “I think he means the apartment Waste Management dumpster,” I clarified.

  “Without the knowledge you now hold, that you all now hold, your chances of success, survival, were close to zero. The learning of the Wikk language was a good first step, but it was not enough. What you were just given was the equivalent of a college education—a doctorate degree, on my homeworld of Khantam Lom. You have yet to realize all that you have acquired with that one particular lozenge-cache. But you needed to request it from me.”

  “Is there a name for it?” Elmo asked, then held up a finger, as if telling us all to wait. He said, “This particular lozenge-cache is referred to, by your people, as Plenteous 9345.”

  We all nodded in unison. We too had found that same memory reference—there, deep within our recently enhanced minds.

  “So, you tricked us, but it was for our own good, is that what you’re saying? Caputo said. “Well, I don’t see what the problem is. He looked to Matteo. “I never believed in Santa Clause. And I’ll take the bare, unvarnished truth any day of the week.”

  Hannig was still standing. Again, he looked down to the open seat situated in front of the console. I sat down and let my eyes take in what had moments before been an impossibly complex layout of touch buttons and multi-colored readouts upon a control panel. To my left were the manual nav-controls. And what had seemed a never-ending waterfall of obscure virtual symbols flowing down before me I now knew were little more than ship diagnostics data, just background info, unless something went wrong. I brought my attention to the portal window. Approximately three hundred yards away was the ugly Wikk vessel. My understanding of that vessel, its capabilities, its far-less-advanced method of propulsion—there was so much more now for me to draw upon. I glanced up to Hannig, who I knew was watching me. “We would have fucking died. All of us. Without that pill.”

  “Lozenge,” Lori corrected.

  I said aloud. “System, enable manual navigation.”

  A simple one-note tone indicated the command had been obeyed. I scooted to my left and took the nav controls in my hands. “We’ll start on the upper decks. There’s a lot we’ve learned, but there’s a lot we still need to know.”

  “Like how to kill those green motherfuckers,” Caputo said. “All two thousand, three hundred and six of them.”

  I accelerated the little Watcher Craft forward, steering toward the bow of the Wikk ship. With a glance toward the cascading symbols I had mentally deemed as a DataFall, I saw the Wikk ship had a name. It translated, it seemed, to Terrorize, Subdue, and Dominate—but was typically referred to as just the Dominate. I communicated this bit of trivia to the others, in case they hadn’t been following the DataFall’s readout. I also noticed multiple messages coming in for Hannig, regarding what amounted to him being AWOL. He hadn’t mentioned just how much trouble he was in. But that was his business. I had enough to worry about with Earth’s predicament.

  Hannig was now at my side, seated in the only other seat. “You’re doing fine, Dominic. There will still be holes in your knowledge, aspects of the Wikk and the Dominate that I may be able to fill in for you.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  “The Wikk, as you have learned, have highly acute hearing. Although this Watcher Craft’s outer skin and the inner bulkhead should provide an adequate sound barrier, it would be best not to make noise, not to speak above whispers. We do not want to be detected.”

  Hannig was right. This little factoid had not been something I was aware of, and searching my new memories I could not find it there either. I nodded. I lined up the bow of the Watcher Craft with the much larger bow of the Dominate. We were nose-to-nose. A tiny guppy poised before a monstrous serpent. Still too low, at the mid-point of the Wikk ship, I brought us up to where I estimated the upper-level deck would be. I glanced over my left shoulder and then my right, taking in the faces of those around me. “Guess this is it. Anyone want to change their minds? Now’s the time to speak up.”

  No one spoke. I goosed the Watcher Craft forward. Moving at a snail’s pace, the bow of the little craft passed into the hull of the Dominate.

  What I wasn’t prepared for was the mass of green bodies, a jittery flurry of life so alien to me that I found myself holding my breath. Our new-found micro-DNA-assimilating constructs provided the knowledge of what we were looking at.

  Georgina whispered the word aloud. “Barracks.”

  I silently thanked her for heeding Hannig’s advice on noise. This was one of the Dominate’s sleeping main quarters. No top and bottom bunks here. The Wikk evidently did not require much in the way of bedding. Like countless pieces of kindling stacked and heaped askew. There they slept, within confines not so dissimilar to an oversized matchbox.

  The Watcher craft slowly moved through the mass of bodies, in some places stacked four or five high. Spindly, long legs twitched while always-smiling, gaping mouths repeatedly yawned as if gulping for air. Like fish stranded out of water.

  Suddenly, an errant leg, mostly translucent and certainly not solid, twitched itself into our realm within the control center. I knew that was one interesting aspect to the Watcher Craft’s dynamic countenance while in this mode of operation. The Watcher Craft occupied a separate quantum reality than that of the outside world. And though we could see them, the outsider would have no awareness of this alternate quantum realm they’d passed through.

  A Wikk’s over-sized head and upper body unexpectedly rose up from the deck plates. The ghostly image caused those standing nearby to unnecessarily jump away, as if to give it space. The Wikk, with its insectile compound eyes, proceeded to look about its surroundings. It did not see us, nor our horrified expressions. Then, lazily, the Wikk crewmember lowered itself back down through the Watcher Craft’s deck, gone from view and soon returning to sleep.

  Our vessel continued on through the throngs of bugs. Hannig brought up the 3D virtual model of the Wikk ship. “Soon we will be moving out of the barracks and into the ship’s Mess, or the Wikk equivalent of such a compartment.”

  “What is it?” Georgina asked, seeing Hannig’s concern.

  “It’s just interesting,” he said. “Earlier I directed System to covertly breach the Wikk onboard Artificial Intelligence. It seems to be having issues . . .”

  Chapter 33

  The text callout I was now seeing suspended over this section of the virtual model, “Activity Mess,” did not relate to any kind of mess I’d encountered in my years in the military.

  “This is by far the largest compartment on the Dominate,” Lori said, reading the same meta-tag information I’d noticed. “Spans the full width of the vessel, almost a half-mile across.”

  But instead of finding row after row of dining tables, and perhaps a large galley kitchen, what we were viewing was more like some kind of conservatory. It was extraordinary. Had I not known better, I wouldn’t have believed that what we were seeing wasn’t down on the surface of Earth, or even on a similar exoplanet within the galaxy. Jungle-like, the foliage was both thick and tall. Great fern leaves, canopied high overhead, hung twenty feet in the air, while broad-trunked trees rose from gnarly, above-ground root systems. Humid air filled the compartment, along with the dank
smell of rotting wood and something foul—something animalistic.

  “It’s like the Amazon out there,” Matteo said.

  Startled, Lori screamed as a human male from outside, naked and black, ran straight through the middle of our veiled ship. He came close enough for me to see the droplets of sweat glistening on his broad, muscular shoulders. Lingering sounds, like whimpering, accented the pure terror he must have been experiencing. Close to a minute later, long after the man had disappeared deeper into the jungle, two Wikk creatures passed by us: one on our starboard side and one on our port.

  “They’re tracking him. Hunting him,” Caputo said.

  I veered left, slightly changing our course. I’d noticed on the virtual model that there should be a clearing up ahead, but the jungle had only gotten denser.

  “Listen,” Georgina said, turning her head and leaning closer to the portal window next to me.

  Then I heard them too. Distant yells. A woman was calling out someone’s name—perhaps her husband’? No, it must have been her child. “Tommy! Tommy! Oh, God, Tommy? Mommy’s here, can you follow the sound of Mommy’s voice?”

  “She shouldn’t be making so much noise. Stupid bitch,” Gordo said.

  “Fuck you, Gordo!” Lori spat back. “She’s obviously desperate.”

  Hannig said, “Please, as I told you, we must remain quiet ourselves, if our presence here is to remain undetected.”

  Lori continued to glare at Gordo, who purposely was avoiding eye contact.

  Suddenly, light streamed in from both sides of the ship as we broke free from the foliage and into the clearing. Gone now were the tall fern canopies and the stout-trunked trees. Huge grasses, easily six or seven feet high, swayed and undulated as breezy gusts coming from somewhere unknown added to the ultra-realistic environment the Wikk aliens had created here. And it made sense, this place. The Wikk preferred to eat their meals still alive—still kicking and fighting.

  Another hunting party, this time composed of six Wikk insect creatures, moved silently through the tall grass. Only the tops of their diamond-shaped heads peered up above the reeds. They moved with stealth, their heads always pivoting, scanning the terrain.

  “Oh my God,” Lori said, covering her mouth. She pointed to the closest Wikk, some ten feet away.

  I hadn’t noticed it, at first. A human hand, with its five fingers still intact, protruded out of the corner of the Wikk’s mouth. The creature knocked its head back with a definitive jerk, and the rest of the severed hand disappeared into its gullet.

  The six Wikk suddenly stopped all movement. Their heads turned in unison to the left, perhaps hearing something in the distance. My thoughts went immediately to the frantic woman. Had they heard her calling? Or perhaps they’d heard her son, Tommy? The hunting party dashed off, disappearing into the tall grass in a synchronized, six-legged pursuit.

  I continued navigating the ship farther into the clearing. Here, the grass wasn’t so tall, and appeared to be heavily trod upon. I slowed our progress, seeing movement just ahead. More humans, no less than fifteen—all were naked and winded, breathing hard.

  One woman, with long, brown hair cascading down to the middle of her back, had a small Tweety Bird tattooed on one shoulder. She said, “I think we’re safe for a while. Let’s stop and catch our breaths for a minute.” It was the same voice as before, recognizable even without the desperation. I noticed a small boy, maybe six or seven, at her side and holding her hand. She’d found her Tommy.

  A balding, middle-aged man with a large paunch said, “We can’t stop—they’re picking us off, one by one!”

  The veiled Watcher Craft hovered several feet above the cluster of humans below. None of them saw what we could see from our lofty perspective. No fewer than a dozen insectile heads were peering at them from behind the tall, encircling grasses. They’d been corralled; they had no way to escape what was to come.

  An elderly, gray-haired woman with large saggy breasts began weeping into her palms. She eased herself down to the ground.

  It felt as if someone’s fist was gripping my heart. Dual emotions of sadness and anger competed for dominance within me. “We have to do something. We can’t just let them get—” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the dreaded words.

  Caputo said, “I know it’s horrific. But can we afford to just announce to the Wikk that we’re here? This is a big decision, Dommy.”

  “So what then . . . we just let them die?” Lori asked, incredulous.

  “We need to think about the bigger picture,” Caputo said. “Sacrifice a few to save the many later.”

  I shook my head, feeling my heart pounding as blood coursed through my veins. I stood and looked at the others within the control center. Other than myself, Lori had proven, back in the tunnel, to be the best shot with a rifle.

  She looked at me, anticipation shining in her eyes.

  “You and me, Lori . . . we’ll grab our assault rifles from the aft compartment.” I looked at Hannig. “When I give you the word, be ready to close the rear hatch fast. Lori and I will climb up onto the ship’s roof and start picking off as many of those bastards as we can. Then we’ll hop back inside as Hannig hightails it out of here and hide somewhere else in the ship.”

  “Why don’t we all go?” Gordo asked.

  “Because now isn’t one of those times when more is better. We don’t want to be tripping over each other, have someone fall off and get nabbed by a bug.”

  “Looks like those Wikk are about to pounce,” Georgina said, staring out the portal window.

  Lori and I hurried through the interconnecting passage and grabbed our respective rifles in the aft compartment, then held up at the hatch. I glanced down at her. She looked scared but also determined. “Ready?”

  She nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  I slapped the big button to the right of the hatchway. The hatch rose fast and we scurried outside. “Close it!” I yelled over my shoulder to Hannig. There were enough nooks and crannies—handholds for us to grab onto—to climb up the aft side of the ship. Reaching the roof first, I helped Lori, extending a hand down toward her. Within seconds, we both were looking through our rifle’s scopes, sighting insect enemy heads. I was distantly aware of the trapped humans gathered nearby on the ground. Their faces were turned upward, studying us, trying to make sense of what the hell was happening.

  Tac Tac Tac Tac . . . Lori fired off the first automatic burst of gunfire. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a distant plume of pink mist. Adjusting her aim, she shot again.

  With my back to her, I scoped my own quarry and fired. A geyser of blood spurted out and a Wikk bug died before dropping to the ground. What I found most interesting was their lack of movement. Perhaps these creatures were just too astounded to duck and take cover. Prior, I’d witnessed them move with incredible speed from the videos back on Earth. So what’s going on with them? It seemed as though they’d truly been taken by surprise, were befuddled beyond belief. Whatever the reason, I knew we had a limited window of time before they snapped out of it. We continued our combined assault until there were none alive to shoot at. I estimated we’d killed twelve or thirteen Wikk.

  I continued to scan around our perimeter as Lori knelt low to speak with the hostages. What I didn’t expect was her telling them to hurry, to head around to the back and get inside the ship. But of course they couldn’t see our veiled ship. All they could see were two armed human combatants floating fifteen feet up above the ground.

  “Just trust me. Come over here and around to the back!” she said.

  “Lori, that wasn’t the plan,” I said. “There’s no room in this little ship for every hostage!”

  “Well, there is for this bunch!” she said, directing them toward the rear hatchway.

  “We’ve got a whole lot of company en route,” Gordo’s voice came over my comms. “Get back in . . .” His voice trailed off, undoubtedly due to him now seeing the dozen or so naked hostages filing inside.

  Chapter 3
4

  I was the last one to enter, and I had to shove my way inside. “Move it along, people!” I said.

  I hit the button and the hatch closed inches behind me. The aft section of the Watcher Craft was a mass of naked bodies. The air was thick with body odor and the loud voices of too many people talking at once. People from different countries, different languages—and I understood them all.

  I said, “Okay—settle down everyone. You must be very quiet.” I repeated myself in Spanish, French and Russian. I heard Hannig’s voice in my comms and remembered he too had been outfitted with our combat gear, including the TCAPS headsets.

  “Dominic, would it be appropriate for me to offer our new guests some clothing, uniforms such as ours?”

  “Yeah, um . . . if you can squeeze in back here, that would be good.”

  I moved through the hostages, hushed questions coming at me from everyone, desperate pleas to find out what was happening, who we were, if we would we be taking them back home.

  Lori was kneeling down; she held the hands of Tommy and his mother and was talking to them in a soft, soothing voice. On my way forward, I saw the first of the new garments being produced from within the kitchenette. Suddenly, LOP snatched it up and, somehow walking upside down upon the ceiling, skittered aft to deliver it.

  Gordo was the first to accost me as I entered the control center. “What the fuck!” He flung a hand out in the direction of the aft compartment. “Really? You invite the lot of them into a space the size of a shoebox?”

  “We’ll have to deal with it. Just take a breath, Gordo.”

  The seat next to Hannig was occupied. “Out, Elmo! I need to get us the hell out of here. I glanced out the portal window and saw solid green. Hundreds of agitated Wikk forms were now milling about out there. Of course there would be. There must be security cameras everywhere.

  “So much for us going undetected,” Georgina said.

  I looked around. “Where’s the virtual model?” I looked to Hannig to my right and raised my brows.