He let out a yowl. "I'll show you cute and quiet! Bloody hell, Addy. This spaceship cost me every last dime I kept after my divorce. We could have bought another house on Earth!"
She nodded. "And then you'd be the same miserable old bastard you always were." She placed her hands on his shoulders. "Look, Poet. Maybe I only found out about the baba from my freak book. But he does have wisdom to teach. He can help you—us!—find peace. I believe that. We need that." Her eyes dampened. "I don't want it to be like in Haven. Dealing with shell shock and nightmares. I know you still get nightmares. I do too. We both saw too much shit. We both suffered too much. And if the baba can teach us inner peace, well, it'll be worth it."
Marco sighed. "Oh, Addy. You really are a nut."
She grinned. "That's the way you love me though, right?"
"You're not bringing Freaks of the Galaxy with us to meet the baba, you know."
She gasped. "But it's my favorite book!"
"And what if Baba Mahanisha sees it? If he learns he's in a freak book?"
Addy shrugged. "Maybe he'd be happy. He's in the same book as Pillowman! I'd be honored."
"You're a bigger freak than all of them," Marco muttered.
She nodded. "If I keep eating cookies, I will be. Addy, the Amazing Blob Girl! Mmm . . . cookies." She pulled one out of her pocket and began to munch.
Marco sighed. He looked out the viewport. The planet Durmia was visible now, green around the equator, white at the poles, tan between. A peaceful, Earthlike planet. Wikipedia Galactica's entry on Durmia was only a stub, giving the planet's dimensions and chemistry but nothing more. Marco only knew what Durmians looked like based on the photo on Addy's books. Were these aliens technologically advanced? Urban or rural? Friendly or fearful? As far as he knew, no humans had ever visited this world.
We come as meditation students, but also as explorers, he thought.
He turned back toward Addy. She had torn into a bag of Bugles now, and had put the conical snacks on her fingertips like ten salty claws. He smiled and placed a hand on her thigh.
"I'm glad we're doing this," he said.
She smiled and mussed his head. "Me too."
He cringed. "Addy, you got Bugles in my hair."
Yet despite his groan, and despite Addy licking crumbs from his hair, he was happy. He had never been happier.
I'm with my other half. I'm with Addy.
And yet, just below that joy, terror lurked.
He still remembered Kemi dying in his arms. He remembered the foul Malphas, lord of the marauders, murdering Anisha and his father. He remembered his friends—Elvis, Beast, Singh, Diaz, Caveman, Jackass, so many others—dying around him in the wars. And whenever he was with Addy, whenever they laughed, hugged, made love, that fear was still there. Buried, but still there, always threatening to bubble up.
I can't bear to lose you too, Addy, he thought. I want to grow old with you, but monsters fill the cosmos, and I'm scared.
Addy placed her hand on his, and she smiled at him.
I know, her eyes said. We're together. It will be good.
And when she looked at him like that, Marco saw that beyond the mask she wore, there was deep wisdom and kindness. On the surface, she was all cigar smoke, cookie crumbs, dirty laundry, swinging katanas, Bugle claws, curses and belches and books about freaks, a crazy little tornado destroying everything in its path. But Marco knew that was just an act. When they gazed into each other's eyes, silent, they said more than words. He saw the true Addy then—the courageous, noble woman he loved. And it eased his fear.
"All right, let's prep this puppy for landing," Marco said. "According to your book, we should land in—"
A light blinked on the dashboard, and an alarm beeped.
Marco frowned and glanced at Addy.
She opened her mouth to speak, and—
The saucer came charging from the darkness, guns blazing. Blasts slammed into the Thunder Road, tossing the small starship into a spin, nearly ripping open the hull.
For an instant—panic.
For an instant—frozen dread.
Then Marco gripped the controls.
"Addy, I fly, you fire!" he shouted.
"Roger that!" she shouted, pulled the triggers, and bullets flew from the Thunder Road's front cannon.
She was firing aimlessly. The saucer was out of view. The Thunder Road was still spinning madly, and Marco wrestled with the yoke, struggling to steady the ship. Lights flashed all around. More blasts flew their way, and explosions filled space around them. Marco glanced at the ship's radar, desperate to locate the enemy, but piles of comic books and candy wrappers covered the display. With a groan, he swiped them off.
Another blast hit the Thunder Road.
The ship jostled, and smoke filled the cockpit. Books and food fell off the shelves. Again they were spinning madly.
"They're destroying Shippy McShipface!" Addy cried.
"The ship is called Thunder Road, damn it!" Marco shouted, finally steadying them again. "And get those Bugles off your fingers!"
Alarms blared. The front viewport was cracked. He could barely see a thing. He glanced again at the radar, brushing off crumbs.
There.
He saw it.
A bleep on the radar—just one ship.
Sneering, he spun to face it.
"Get 'em, Ads!"
She pulled the triggers again.
Massive bullets flew from the ship's twin railguns, moving at hypersonic speed. Marco kept spinning the prow, and a curtain of their bullets blazed out.
The saucer charged toward them, swerving around the bullets.
Marco sneered and flew toward it, taking it head-on.
Laser blasts flew their way.
Marco swooped, then raised the Thunder Road's nose, soaring toward the enemy.
Addy's railguns pounded the saucer with electromagnetic destruction.
Holes burst open in the enemy ship. Fire blazed. Railguns made regular machine guns seem like peashooters, and their bullets tore through the enemy like meteors ripping through clouds.
"Fuck yeah, I love these guns!" Addy shouted.
She fired again.
More bullets pummeled the saucer. More explosions rocked the enemy ship, and its hull cracked open.
Marco flew higher, dodging shrapnel. He glimpsed several grays float out from their cracked vessel. The creatures careened through space, most already dead, only one still floundering. Marco and Addy watched.
"What the hell are those things?" Marco whispered.
Addy stared with hard eyes, and her lips peeled back with a snarl. "It's the bastards who kidnapped Steve. Who broke his soul. I hate them. I fucking hate them."
She prepared to fire again, to slay the living gray that floated through space. But Marco placed a hand on her arm.
"Let's save our bullets," he said. "He'll be dead in a moment. And more saucers might show up."
Addy turned toward him, and Marco was taken aback. Her eyes were red and damp. Her fists were shaking. Her cheeks flushed a furious crimson.
"I hate these bastards," she whispered, jaw clenched. "More goddamn, fucking aliens after us. Can't they leave us alone? Can't those bastards ever leave us alone?" She looked at the floating alien corpses outside. Her voice rose to a shout. "Who are you? What do you want?"
Outside, the wounded gray stopped moving. He floated among the corpses of his comrades.
"Addy." Marco put a hand on her shoulder. "Addy, it's all right. They're dead. They're gone. It's all right."
Tears flowed down her cheeks. She turned toward Marco and embraced him. He held her in his arms, and he stroked her hair.
"I hate fighting," she whispered. "I hate it. I want it all to stop."
He kissed her forehead. "I know. I hate it too."
He wanted to tell her they would never fight again. That they would finally find peace. But it was a lie. She would know it was a lie. The galaxy was vast, dark, and full of monsters. Life in the cosm
os was an eternal Darwinian struggle. He and Addy were the survivors. But every year of life, they had fought, bled, suffered. And perhaps for every year still ahead, they would have to bleed again. He had no words of comfort for Addy, so he only held her in his arms.
When there is no cure for what hurts us, there is still comfort in love, he thought.
"All right," Addy finally said, wiping her eyes. "Let's land Shippy McShipface and see how badly her hull is damaged. I—"
The ship jolted.
A thud reverberated through the hull.
Marco frowned.
"That wasn't an attack," he said. "Something hit us. Some debris from the battle, maybe, and—"
A red light flashed on the dashboard. A message appeared on the display: Airlock Open.
Marco and Addy didn't waste a second. They grabbed their oxygen masks from under their seats. Addy grabbed the pistol she kept there too. They leaped out of the cockpit, leaving the ship to float aimlessly, and raced into the hold.
The airlock contained two doors around a controlled pressure room. The outer door had opened, letting the air blast out into space. The inner door was rattling.
"There's something in the pressure room," Marco whispered.
"One of them." Addy raised her pistol. "One of those gray sneaky fucks survived the saucer's explosion. You should have let me shoot him."
The door's handle shook madly, then tore free.
The door creaked open.
Damn! The alien hadn't even closed the outer door. Marco was thankful for his oxygen mask. Air began whooshing out of the ship. Candy wrappers, books, clothes, and countless other items flew everywhere, funneling toward the airlock.
Addy fired her pistol.
A creature screamed.
A shadow leaped.
Alarms blared across the ship, and a robotic voice intoned: "Losing pressure, losing pressure!"
Marco could barely see past the storm of debris flying everywhere. He made out a towering creature, easily seven feet tall, clad in a black space suit. Addy stepped back, gripping her pistol with both hands, still firing. The lights died, came back on, died again. The creature reached out toward her, claws glinting.
A gray.
The bullets didn't even faze it. The air kept rushing out of the ship. Addy kept firing until her gun clicked, and the creature reached out, grabbed her, and she screamed.
Marco stared in horror.
No. No. His head spun. I won't lose you. No!
Every step was a struggle. The debris flew against him. He reached out blindly, and he grabbed one of the clotheslines Addy had slung across the hold. He shook off her wet clothes.
"Die now . . ." the creature hissed, leaning over Addy. "Die, human . . ."
Marco leaped forward, vaulted off a fallen shelf, and slung the rope around the gray's neck.
He yanked back with all his strength.
It was like trying to take down a horse. The gray dwarfed him, his massive head grazing the ceiling. The creature thrashed, struggling to tear off the clothesline. Marco clung hard. The gray lurched forward, pulling Marco off the ground. But Marco clung on, pulling the clothesline back, and the creature gurgled, unable to scream. Marco piggybacked, clinging on hard, twisting the garrote.
The gray released Addy. She struggled to her feet. Items were still flying everywhere as the air shrieked out of the ship.
A shelf overturned.
The katana came flying toward the airlock.
Addy reached out and grabbed the sword in midair.
She drew the blade and swung with both hands.
The katana sliced through the gray's belly, and blood and entrails spurted.
Marco released the rope, fell to the floor, and stumbled toward the airlock. He slammed himself against the door, groaning, and slammed it shut.
He fell to his knees, gasping. His oxygen mask kept air flowing into him, but the pressure was so low that his skin was blistering. He shuddered as the cabin's life-support system pumped more air into the hold.
"Addy," he gasped, limping toward her.
She stood before him, eyes hard. The gray knelt before her, clutching his belly, still alive.
And the creature began to laugh.
"You weak, pathetic ape!" the gray hissed. "You do not know the pain that awaits you. You do not know the wrath of my goddess. But you will. You will, ape. You will scream!"
Addy raised her katana high.
"Addy, no!" Marco shouted.
He tried to stop her, but he was too slow. Addy plunged the blade into the gray's chest, and the tip burst out from his back.
Marco stared, panting. Damn it! He had wanted to interrogate the gray. It was useless dead. Anger filled him, but when he looked back up at Addy, that anger melted.
She dropped her sword. She stared at Marco, blood covering her—the soldier again. Her eyes were dry now. Filled with cold fire. Eyes harder than her sword's steel. They were the eyes of a killer.
This is how she looked in the wars, Marco thought. This is the famous Addison Linden who led the rebellion against the marauders.
He stepped around the corpse of the gray and held her hand.
"You all right, Ads?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Fucker caught me off guard is all." She snorted. "Chose the wrong ship to break into."
Marco smiled thinly. "Only a ship with two of Earth's most infamous soldiers, right?"
And suddenly Addy was crying. Her body shook with sobs. Marco wrapped her in an embrace.
"I wanted this to be over," she whispered, trembling in his arms. "I never wanted to be that woman again. The warrior. The killer. The veteran with scars on my body, a brand of my slavery on my hip, a heart of steel and fire. I wanted to be silly Addy who eats cookies, who reads comics, who jokes around. Not this person again. Damn it, why do they keep pulling us in?"
Marco wiped away her tears. "They can't change who you are, Addy. Not the person deep down inside you. The person I know and love."
She gasped, and a smile broke through her tears. "So you love how I get cookie crumbs everywhere?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I didn't say that—"
"And you love how my hairs get on the shower wall?"
"Definitely n—"
"And I know you love how I hang laundry everywhere!" Addy said, grinning now. "And my laundry saved your life. Saved your life, Poet! If not for my clothesline, that creature would have gotten you for sure."
"Actually, the gray was after you," he reminded her. He sighed. "But okay. I forgive you for the laundry."
"And the cookie crumbs," she reminded him.
"And the cookie crumbs," he agreed.
"And my book about freaks."
Marco held up a finger, hushing her. "Don't push your luck, Linden."
They blasted the dead gray out of the airlock. Sadly, most of their food and supplies had been lost to space too. But there, just below them, Durmia awaited. A new planet. A place that perhaps could teach them wisdom and peace.
And maybe more about these creatures, Marco dared to hope.
The small, battered ship dived toward the new world, leaving the wreckage of its enemy above.
CHAPTER THREE
Epimetheus barked madly, tail in a straight line, as the saucers pursued.
"I know, I know!" Lailani said. "I'm flying as fast as I can!" She looked over her shoulder. "HOBBS, you still with us, buddy?"
The ESS Ryujin, Lailani's small spaceship, was dented and rattling, wounded in battle, fleeing for its life. She had retrieved the azoth hourglass, a powerful artifact, from the jungle world of Mahatek. It was in her backpack, wrapped in cloth, jangling as the ship veered left and right. Yet Lailani could not use the artifact to bend time, not without careful calculations and robotic precision.
And her robot, which contained the hourglass's algorithms, lay dying.
Dying. Yes. For he was no true robot. HOBBS, Lailani had learned, was a cyborg, and inside his chest beat a human heart.
The cyborg did not reply. He was a hulking creation, tall like a basketball player and wide like a wrestler, a beast of hardened steel and brute power. Yet now he lay on the floor, unconscious, his eyes dim. His body was dented, cracked open, exposing the arteries within. Lailani had taped shut the punctured arteries, and his blood still flowed, but slowly. Too slowly. His heartbeat was too weak, his body too broken.
I must find his master, Lailani thought. I must repair him. Only HOBBS can tell me how to use the hourglass. Her eyes dampened. And he's my friend.
Alarms blared on the Ryujin's controls.
"Enemy ships approach," intoned a robotic voice from the starship's systems. "Hostile ships approach. Hostile—"
Lailani switched off the sound.
"I know!" she shouted. "Damn it!"
She saw them in the radar. Sixteen of the buggers. Saucers.
She had met them before. She had fought them at JEX's junkyard, then again in the jungle of Mahatek. She had fought Abyzou himself, their prince, had heard the truth from his own mouth. The grays were no aliens. They were highly evolved humans—humans from a million years in the future, a time when Earth no longer existed.
And they wanted Earth in this timeline. Lailani's Earth.
They also wanted a monopoly on time travel.
"But you can't have my hourglass," Lailani said. "I need it to travel back. To save Elvis, my friend whom I killed." She rubbed her tears. Those goddamn tears. "I'm going to do this. I'm going to escape you, grays. I'm going to heal you, HOBBS. And I'm going back in time to save you, Elvis, Sofia, Beast, Caveman, Kemi, all my friends that I lost."
She shoved down the throttle as far as it would go. She stormed forward, traveling faster than light. Behind her, the saucers followed.
And they were gaining.
Soon they were more than bleeps on the radar. Soon she could see them through the rear viewport. Sixteen massive ships, each the size of a soccer stadium, large enough to easily swallow the RV-sized Ryujin.
"Come on, faster, faster!" Lailani said, shoving the throttle. She could barely even reach the damn controls. This ship, obviously, wasn't built for a four-foot-ten woman who drowned in her seat, whose feet didn't even reach the floor.
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