Dalton Kane and the Greens

by J. S. Bailey

  “Dalton, wake up,” he hissed.

  Dalton grumbled something about salads.

  “Dalton!”

  “Huh?” The sheriff sat up and blinked as he gathered his bearings. “Have we landed?”

  “I don’t think so. Step outside so I can get a second opinion.”

  “On what?”

  “Just come.”

  Dalton eyed him with some irritation and shook himself. “Fine. Next time you’re asleep, I’ll wake you up for no reason.”

  Outside the Cube, in the darkness of the cargo hold, Chumley flicked on the penlight he’d brought with him. The weak beam illuminated dozens of stacked crates labeled in Haa’anu script.

  “What do you think is in these?” Dalton asked. “Supplies for the listening posts?”

  “I’m not so sure.” Chumley ran a hand through his hair. “I want you to jump up and down a few times and tell me what you think. But do it quietly, so nobody hears us.”

  Frowning, Dalton complied, and then a look of apprehension spread across his face. “I feel floaty,” he said. “Like I’ve lost weight.”

  “That’s what I was worried about.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Chumley licked his lips. “You really don’t want to hear this.”

  “I really do.”

  “Well, erm, Leeprau isn’t a very big planet—I think it’s about the size of Mars, or something.”

  “And?”

  “The gravity is different.”

  Dalton’s mouth fell open, releasing the toothpick shard he’d stashed there prior to their exit from the Cube. “We’re on Leeprau?” he breathed.

  “I don’t think we are just yet. See, I’ve been on my fair share of alien ships. They usually set their artificial gravity to match that of their homeworlds.”

  Chumley watched Dalton’s face as this information sank in.

  “Shit,” Dalton said. Then, “Shit.”

  “I’m sure it’s not Keith’s fault—”

  “He’s the one who put us on a bloody spaceship!”

  “Shh! Dalton, you’re going to—”

  The door to the cargo hold whooshed open, blinding them with light from the hallway outside. A veiled Haa’la stood silhouetted in the opening, holding some sort of weapon that probably wasn’t a water pistol.

  Chumley shouted “Ha!” and tossed his penlight across the room, scooping up the Cube and stashing it into his pocket while the Haa’la was distracted.

  The Haa’la looked back at him—at least Chumley thought they looked back at him; it was hard to tell through the veil. “Pip-pip! Hee a’a’a mish aah!” they shouted in their own language.

  Both Chumley and Dalton lifted their hands to display their lack of weaponry. “We do not speak Haa’anu,” Chumley said carefully. “Do you speak English?”

  The Haa’la lifted their veil, revealing a stony, feminine face ringed in pastel hair. “I speak seven human tongues,” she said, her tone lacking any sort of warmth. “Why are you on my ship?”

  “We got lost.” Chumley looked to Dalton, whose sun-browned face had become tinged with dread. “Could you show us the way out?”

  The Haa’la grinned to reveal rows of pointy teeth. “We have an airlock. Would you like to leave by that route?”

  “Erm, no. Where are we going?”

  “Home.” Two other Haa’la appeared in the doorway behind her as she said, “I am Ashi’ii. What I assume to be your accomplice was dealt with most harshly.”

  “What did you do with him?”

  “Nothing that will cause him permanent damage,” Ashi’ii went on smoothly. “It is bad business to destroy any member of the workforce.”

  Dalton’s scowl deepened. “And what’s all this in here? Stuff you mined out of our planet?”

  “Of course. I’m overseeing its delivery to Leeprau.”

  “We can report you to the Feds.”

  Ashi’ii frowned at him. “How?”

  Dalton glanced to Chumley and said, “We have our ways.”

  “Of course you do.” Ashi’ii turned to her two comrades and exchanged a few words in Haa’anu, then stepped back as the others strode forward and seized both Chumley and Dalton as unceremoniously as if they were actual, literal criminals.

  “Ow!” Chumley cried as the towering Haa’la dug their fingers into his arm and guided him toward the doorway. “Have a bit of mercy!”

  “We are having a bit of mercy,” Ashi’ii said as she watched them leave. “If we wanted you dead, we would have killed you already. Have a nice day.”

  “All right,” Dalton said. “Now what?”

  “I’m thinking.” Chumley paced back and forth across the floor in one of the ship’s cabins, where the two of them had been locked after their removal from the cargo hold.

  “Well, think faster. I’m not spending the rest of my life trapped in some Haa’la prison.” Dalton folded his arms across his chest and glared at the cabin’s door, which looked solid enough to survive several nuclear blasts.

  Chumley halted mid-pace. “Oh, biscuits.”

  “What?”

  Chumley sank onto one of the narrow cots reserved for the ship’s crew. “I can’t go to prison, Dalton.”

  “Life of crime catching up to you, eh?”

  Chumley’s face grew long. “When I started doing . . . things . . . to pay for Gran’s expenses, I knew the risks. Always thought I was too smart to get caught, always stayed one step ahead of the police, and now I’m right where I deserve to be. Might as well curl up and die.” His shoulders slumped.

  Dalton sat up straighter, alarmed at Chumley’s change in demeanor. “Whoa now, let’s not give up all hope just yet.”

  Chumley lifted his gaze to glower at him for a moment. “Remind me again, Dalton, where are we?”

  “In a cabin on a spaceship. Maybe when we land, they’ll just put us to work again.” Dalton knew this was probably wishful thinking, and that life was easier when you expected the worst, but he didn’t think he could stand sitting here listening to Chumley moping for very long.

  “Ugh. I’m going inside my Cube. At least then I’ll be locked up in comfort.” Chumley pulled the device from his pocket, activated the doorway, and disappeared.

  “Where is your friend?”

  Dalton flailed awake. Ashi’ii stood over him wearing an expression of intense displeasure.

  “I don’t know,” Dalton said.

  “Is that so?” Ashi’ii planted her hands on her hips—an all-too-human gesture.

  “He does that sometimes,” Dalton added quickly. “Just up and disappears. He could be anywhere on this ship.”

  Ashi’ii showed her pointy teeth, then looked down at the empty cot across from Dalton, where the silver Cube gleamed in the glare of the overhead lighting. “What is that?”

  Dalton ground his teeth together as Ashi’ii scooped the Cube up with her pale fingers.

  “It’s my good-luck charm,” Dalton said. “I bring it wherever I go.”

  “It must not give you very good luck,” Ashi’ii commented, turning the Cube over in her hands with interest. Dalton prayed she wouldn’t activate the hidden button and push it.

  He would have to distract her from examining it too closely. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” he said. “I’ve survived more than anyone else I know. Well, my sister-in-law did, too, but she didn’t have her arm ripped off like I did.”

  Ashi’ii eyed him curiously. “You do not appear to have lost any appendages.”

  Dalton lifted his right arm and flexed his fingers. “I got a new one. We were attacked by the Greens. My entire family was killed, except my brother’s wife. That was forty-six people dead. Even my wife and kids.” A lump rose in Dalton’s throat. He tried to force it back down, but it wouldn’t move. “And . . . they ate my
arm, right in front of me.”

  “My supreme condolences.” Ashi’ii appeared contemplative. “And you credit your survival to this trinket?”

  “It’s just superstitious, I know,” Dalton said, trying not to panic. “I was just lucky.” If you could call it lucky.

  “I will take this object with me,” Ashi’ii said at length, pocketing the Cube. “We will find your friend—we’re about to make planetfall, and once we’ve landed, every inch of this ship will be stripped and searched for him.”

  The Cube made her pocket bulge. Dalton’s cantering pulse bordered on a gallop.

  “Could I . . . could I watch out the window as we land?” he asked weakly. “I haven’t landed on another planet since I was a boy.”

  “I suppose I see no harm in that. Come with me. If you attempt violence, you will be injured.”

  As Ashi’ii led him out of the room and down the corridor leading to the front of the ship, Dalton raced to think of ways he might reacquire the Cube from Ashi’ii’s person and came up with nothing other than tackling her and wrangling it away from her—an act which would surely get him locked up again.

  Three more Haa’la people sat or stood before viewing screens in the control room. One Haa’la operating a set of switches said something to their peers, and the blackness on all the viewing screens transformed into a star-studded field with an even brighter dot in the middle that was growing larger and starting to look an awful lot like a planet.

  Dalton tensed, remembering how he’d watched Molorthia Six grow and swell on the viewing screen of the shuttle that had taken his family there so many years ago now. Molorthia Six was just a tad bit smaller than Earth and had one hemispheric ocean encompassing roughly 35% of the planet’s surface area and another, smaller ocean close to its northern pole, which the young Dalton had thought resembled a watchful turquoise eye.

  Leeprau stood out in stark contrast to his home. As details began to appear on the looming sphere, Dalton noted that Leeprau had more water than Molorthia Six, and a substantial amount of cities—a sliver of the planet Dalton had thought to be in the sunlight was actually billions of city lights glowing on the night side.

  Dozens of space stations glimmered in their orbits about the planet. A few moons hung here and there, some of them also glowing with city lights. The right kind of person might have found the scene beautiful, but for some reason—probably the fact he and Chumley were not exactly here on holiday—it made him feel depressed and wish for his empty bed back home.

  The ship shuddered as it angled toward the thin band of twilight dividing night from day. A Haa’la voice spoke through a speaker, and one of the crew replied into a microphone and shifted course a few degrees.

  Dalton shoved his hands into the pockets of his trench coat, which he’d been able to launder in the Cube’s bathroom prior to their escape. The space traffic controller said something else to the pilot, who shifted course yet again.

  “What’s going to happen to me when we land?” Dalton asked, beads of sweat forming on his scalp. He wondered how Chumley was faring in Ashi’ii’s pocket.

  “You will be taken in for questioning. We have many interpreters at our headquarters in Vehenna. Someone there will speak your language, as I do.”

  “And after the questioning is over?”

  “That depends on the results of the questioning.”

  He coughed lightly. “Who will be doing this questioning?”

  “A Nydo Base representative who has more free time than I do.”

  Dalton’s mind raced. If these Haa’la here were truly “businesspeople,” as they claimed, that meant they were an independent enterprise, not sanctioned by any government. If he could get away from this lot and find the authorities . . . but could he pull it off?

  He would see.

  Chapter 18

  Carolyn had woken Jill Benedict, the hardware store’s proprietor, so she could unlock the door for them, and now she squinted in through the plate-glass windows before going inside. Shadows filled the store, not entirely dispelled by the single security light glowing behind the counter.

  Jill stood aside in her dressing gown as Carolyn and Errin prepared to enter the shop. “I don’t see anyone in there,” Jill said doubtfully, her arms folded across her ample chest.

  “Neither did I,” said Errin. “But hammers don’t just lift themselves off of hooks.”

  “Have a look, then.” Lines appeared on Jill’s face. “Should I stay here, or do you want me out of the way?”

  “It might be safer for you if you went back to your house,” Carolyn said. “We’re not entirely sure what we’re dealing with.”

  Jill gave a nod. “All right. Let me know if you learn anything.”

  “We will.”

  The proprietor vanished into the night, and Carolyn and Errin faced each other.

  “Ready?” Errin asked.

  Carolyn sighed. “I don’t have another choice.”

  They stepped through the door, Carolyn straining her ears for the slightest sounds out of the ordinary. The intruder had probably gone away as soon as they heard the door unlock, but they might have left behind clues that might help determine their identity.

  The floor creaked as they crossed the small, open space between the door and the ends of the aisles perpendicular to the front wall. A faint tinkle from elsewhere in the shop made Carolyn put her finger to her lips. Errin tensed beside her.

  Very carefully, Carolyn removed a stun gun from her pocket. She’d borrowed it from the police station, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it, but hoping had never really done her much good.

  Errin withdrew their own borrowed weapon, and on an unspoken cue, the two of them stepped lightly through the hardware store past racks of shovels and sandblowers and spackling compound and whatnot, toward the place where the sound had come from.

  Many shelves had already been emptied.

  A light cough up ahead made Carolyn freeze for a moment. In the faint illumination from the security light, she watched as a box of nails rose from a display and disappeared, as if the air itself had swallowed it.

  She set her jaw, aimed her stun gun, and fired a glowing burst of energy toward the vanished nails.

  The air in front of them let out a startled yelp. There came a clatter, and a sprawling figure appeared on the floor next to a bulging sack of stolen wares.

  The figure was dressed all in white. Carolyn did not feel surprised.

  “Get the cuffs,” she barked, striding forward with stun gun still in hand.

  “Already have them. Here.”

  The figure moaned. Carolyn yanked the veil from over their face and regarded inhumanly-white skin. The being drew their lips back from razor-sharp teeth in a grimace but kept their eyes closed.

  “What is that?” Errin whispered.

  “I’m not sure, but I’d bet money they’re not from around here. Help me sit them up.”

  Carolyn and Errin got on either side of the intruder and forced them into sitting position, then cuffed their wrists together behind their back before laying them back on their side.

  “Look at this.” Errin unclipped a white metallic object from the intruder’s belt. “Do you think it’s a comm unit?”

  “Let me see that.”

  Carolyn took the object from Errin and found a button on the back. She pressed it—perhaps foolishly—and Errin let out a gasp.

  Carolyn stood, alarmed. “What is it?”

  “You’ve disappeared.”

  Carolyn looked down at herself. She didn’t seem to have become invisible, but she would take Errin’s word for it.

  She hit the button on the object again. “What about now?”

  “I can see you again. That’s some interesting tech.”

  “The pulse from the gun must have switched it off the first time,” Carolyn sai
d, pocketing it. “Clever little intruder, hmm? Let’s get them down to the station and wake them up.”

  In the long and dreary months following the annihilation of his family, Dalton had, under the urging of one of his old employees, sought counseling to help him work through this new and unpleasant life he found himself living.

  His counselor had been a peppy young woman named Candace Murdock, who wore only pink and didn’t believe in frowning.

  One of the exercises she’d had him practice was “finding his happy place.”

  “Dalton,” she would say in a voice typically reserved for puppies and small children, “you absolutely must find a place of calm inside of you. If you ever feel overwhelmed, you can go there to reset and recharge yourself.”

  Dalton had tried—he really did—but as the months passed, it became all too clear that finding his happy place was not meant to be.

  Now, given that he was a prisoner on a Haa’la ship heading straight down to a Haa’la city where even more Haa’la might potentially torment him, finding his happy place might be ideal.

  He thought of lying out on the veranda in the portable universe while digital plants glowed harmlessly just meters away from him, and imagined himself sipping at a glass of whiskey.

  Angry shouting jarred him back to reality. Leeprau did not appear any closer on the viewing screen, and his alien captors in the control room were desperately flicking switches and stabbing buttons as if for dear life.

  “What’s going on?” Dalton asked Ashi’ii, who was bellowing orders at her subordinates.

  She whipped her head toward him, eyes blazing. “Space Traffic Control shut down our trajectory. We’re locked in place.”

  “They can do that?”

  “We have to jettison in the life pods before the ship is terminated.”

  “What?”

  “They. Are. Going. To. Blow. Up. This. Ship,” Ashi’ii said, as if she were speaking to an incredibly stupid child.

  “But why?”

  “Never mind why!” She turned to her crew and barked more orders at them. They abandoned their controls and sprinted past Dalton down the corridor—this lot must not have been equipped with teleports.