by Marc Landau
The thick metal exterior grew larger as we closed in, and a small wave of relief to be back home mixed with the nausea of knowing my molecules were about to vibrate at an unnatural resonance as we passed back into the ship.
Maybe it's natural, but not for humans. We weren’t built to vibrate and pass through solid objects. That honor was reserved for aliens. And ghosts.
The closer we got, the faster the bubble moved. I thought things were supposed to slow down when they got close to slamming into a metal wall, not speed up. When piloting a star glider or hover-pod, you generally don’t punch the gas. You hit the brakes. Heading towards an asteroid? Slow down, or turn. Do not speed up and slam into it as fast as you can.
I guessed things worked differently for the aliens. What else was new? It made some sort of scientific sense. Tech-heads were always slamming protons and neutrons into one another. Science says SLAM! It has something to do with vibrating molecules. Supposedly it’s better to go fast and pass through than slow down and crash. But my body didn’t agree.
I stared wide-eyed for the hundredth time in two days as the transparent sphere careened towards the ship. From an outside point of view, it probably looked like someone had picked up a glass ball with a li’l man in it and thrown it a thousand miles an hour at a steel wall.
The sphere SMASHED into the hull of the ship at what felt like light speed. Which, of course, wasn’t possible. Except it was.
My body quivered and flickered out of existence. Then less than a millisecond later, it flickered back into existence. Was that what it felt like to die? I doubted it. But it was what it felt like to have all the molecules in your body vibrate at light speed and pass through twenty feet of metal. Everything from my toes to my teeth felt like loose corn niblets.
The sphere dissolved as we landed back in the control room. I stumbled on wet noodle legs and almost lost my hold on Kat. Luckily, she held my arm against her throat, keeping the act up. A few moments later, I got my bearings and my stability returned.
Kat and the two Pokas looked no worse for the wear. Like the trip was nothing different from taking a pod-lift from one level of the ship to another.
Clone-Poka didn’t seem impressed by the ship. She took it in like she’d seen it all before. Maybe she had. She was a direct match to the original Poka, so it was probable she had the same memories as the original.
The two Pokas shook their bodies in unison like they were shucking off water. Then each play-bowed and began chasing one another. Luckily, they scooted out of the command center and into the halls, where they wouldn’t cause any damage or mess up my already messed-up plans.
I’d gotten us back to the ship. Phase one complete. Now it was time for the big ask. I tightened my grip on Kat’s throat, and she spit out a choking noise.
“Do not harm the Ultra! We have done as requested and returned you to your vessel. Now, unhand the Ultra.”
“Sorry, Farmy. The second I let her go, you’re going to grab her and I lose all my leverage.”
“Leverage?”
“The thing that’s making you do what I say.”
The bot-alien beeped angrily. Sadly, the walrus was gone and the alien was back in control.
“What does the infernal creature require to return the Ultra?”
I took a deep breath and got ready to tell it what I wanted.
That’s when Kat cut in and ruined my big moment. “You will send us back.”
“Back?” The bot-alien replied.
“Yes. And you will allow the robot to live peacefully with you and never harm it in any way. Do you understand?”
The bot-alien processed the info, humming and buzzing.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” It was a deep, thundering voice that came from Kat’s soft human lips. It rocked the ship, shaking the walls and floors. Again, I almost lost my grip on Kat, but she held my arm tight to her throat.
It was a voice I’d heard before in my own head. It was the Ultra. Finally, it had decided to speak directly through its host. It was powerfully moving. I felt the urge to kneel at the power. But it was also disturbing to hear the Ultra’s voice coming out of my ex-girlfriend’s mouth. I’d definitely do anything she wanted if she told me to do it in that voice.
“WALK THE DOG!”
“Yes, Ultra.”
“DO THE DISHES!”
“Right away, Ultra!”
The bot-alien lowered its head in fealty. “Yes, Ultra. The brethren will do as you require.”
“Good,” Kat replied, and just like that the Ultra was silent again. Probably a good thing. A few more sentences from it, and the ship would tear apart.
“Now send us back.”
“As you require, Ultra.” It complied, but I could tell it wasn’t liking this command at all. The bot had a different agenda and it made me wonder if there might be a coup at hand.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Back to where we started,” Kat replied.
“What the frak does that mean? Prime? You can’t send us there. Not with the Ultra still attached. We don’t know what it will do.”
“Don’t worry. We can’t go there, anyway. I don’t know how to get there from here.”
“So where do you know to get us from here?”
“To where we started.”
“Ugh, you’re being oblique. Like the Ultra.”
“I am the Ultra. Silly.”
“How can you even send us anywhere? You have to be all emotional to activate your teleporter. Are you going to ask me to piss you off again?”
“You don’t need to do that. I don’t need to teleport us.”
“Then how are we going to get ‘back to where we started’?”
“They’re going to send us.”
Suddenly the ship was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of spheres. Again.
I hate those things.
“Hey. Those are my people.”
“I didn’t say it out loud.”
“You yelled it with your mind.”
“Sorry. So what are we going to do, once we get back to where we started?”
“We’re going to stop the Krin.”
What?
“Stop yelling in your mind. There’s no time to explain. We have to go, before the brethren change their mind and try a coup. And I don’t want to battle my own people.”
I was right! I knew I didn’t trust the bot-alien.
“We need to go now,” Kat urged.
“Okay. Let me just say goodbye to the walrus.”
“Fine. But hurry up.”
I walked us over to the robot, dragging Kat under my arm. “Can I talk to the robot again?”
The bot-alien didn’t resist or argue. Thankfully, it just glowed and disappeared into the background.
This was it. Time to say goodbye. Not something I’ve ever been good at. I usually use sarcasm or anger to cover up any real sentiment. But I didn’t want to do that shat. Not now. I cleared my throat. “So, it looks like this is where we part company.” I choked on the words, holding back a tear. “It’s been a fun ride. Good luck out there.”
The robot remained silent. It was probably trying not to cry because it was so overwhelmed with emotion, even though it wasn’t programmed to have emotions.
“Beep,” was all it said.
“That’s it? A beep?” After everything we’d been through, all the robot was going to give me was a damn beep?
“Beep. I’m not going. I will remain with the ship.”
“Why?”
“You will need me to battle the Krin.”
“It’s okay. We have the Ultra. You can go, if you want.”
“You will need me!”
“Okay, okay. We need you.” I slapped its shoulder. “Good to have you back on the team.”
“Do not touch me, or I will engage my defensive systems.”
The walrus was back.
“Wil. We have to go now,” Kat urged.
“Okay. Just tell the alien to ge
t the hellvian out of the robot. And then let’s get the hellvian out of this hellvian.”
Kat-Ultra closed her eyes and focused, and a few moments later the robot started glowing and flickering, then a multicolored fog expelled from its body like a demon being exorcised from the body of its host. Good riddance.
“See you never, Farmy,” I said as it dissipated into nothingness.
“Okay, time to go,” Kat said.
“Let’s do it!” I took her hand, and we both squeezed tight. There was a bright flash and I snapped my eyes shut. When I opened them again we were back where we started at the Outpost’s original location. The exact spot from where we’d teleported away from when the Prime fleet and the alien fleet were warring and trying to destroy us.
There was wreckage everywhere. Space was littered with the remains of a fierce battle. A horrible battle. Hunks of metal, remnants of the military’s greatest warships floated everywhere. And then there were the bodies. Hundreds. Maybe thousands of them.
All dead.
All floating, frozen in the vacuum of space.
All of them were human.
The Prime fleet had been totally obliterated.
Chapter Twenty-Six
BATTLE OF THE KRIN
It had been the Krin that found the Outpost and tried taking the Ultra before we teleported away. In our wake the Prime fleet had been decimated.
Prime’s military had come full force, and had been wiped out like bugs. They thought they were coming to retrieve a powerful alien artifact. They were being led to slaughter.
The Krin might be the galaxy’s greatest thieves, but they were also an advanced society with tech and weapons we could only imagine. They might’ve been weak in comparison to the Ultra or its brethren, but they were clearly hundreds, if not thousands of years more advanced than we were.
It was all laid out there before my eyes, but I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“I’m sorry,” Kat said. “This is all my fault.”
“It’s not. You had no way to know you’d be saved on Deliva, and then wind up floating in space where I could find you.”
“But that’s why I’m here.”
“Huh?”
“Once I was part of the Ultra, it came to find you.”
“Me?”
Kat nodded. It made sense, in a looney way. Her emotions had activated the Ultra and it honed in on what was meaningful to her. What was driving her. I guess she missed me and the Pokes. So the Ultra responded and brought her back to us.
And now there were thousands of dead soldiers floating in space and a powerful, technologically advanced alien species wandering the universe.
It wasn’t Kat’s fault, but we were all interconnected. Fate, destiny, free will. Who knows what was at play? Other than the Ultra.
The brethren had let us go. Or more specifically, were ordered to let us go. But I could tell Farmy wasn’t a fan of that decision, and while it wasn’t willing or strong enough to directly disobey the will of the Ultra, I was confident it was scheming. I didn’t trust it at all. It definitely had something up its alien sleeve.
The other aliens, the Krin, had just crushed the bulk of our fleet like they were made of paper maché and were likely searching for the Ultra.
The brethren versus the Krin. The rest of the galaxy was stuck in the middle.
One wanted to seat the Ultra on their throne. The other wanted to use it for universe-knows-what. If the brethren were correct, the Krin would use the Ultra to rule the universe. But I didn’t trust that. For all I knew, the Krin could be the good guys. Even though they’d just slaughtered our fleet.
If that’s the good guys, we’re in big trouble, the little voice said.
We were back on the Outpost and back at the outer edge of our system. At least the bot would know where we were and could communicate with Prime.
“Bot. Get Command on the line. We need to tell them everything we know about the Krin, the aliens, the Ultra, the planet. Tell them everything we know so they can prepare.”
The bot beeped and buzzed moving its finger appendages across the communication modules. “Outgoing systems are ineffective.”
“Ineffective? Like broken? Blocked?”
“Unsure. There is a high probability they are being jammed, as they were before. There is a similar energy pattern.”
Jammed? I turned to Kat. “Is it the Ultra?”
She nodded meekly.
“Gal frak it! Why won’t it let us communicate with Prime?”
She just shook her head.
“Can you ask it to please let us phone home?”
Kat closed her eyes and focused. A few moments passed, and she opened them again. Her downtrodden expression said it all.
“Frak it! Okay, fine. We’ll figure something else out. Thanks for nothing, Ultra.”
“It must have a reason,” Kat said.
“Except it won’t tell us, and we have no idea where the Krin are, and now that you’re out in the open they could try to snatch you again using their ninja dimension portals or whatever they use to kidnap an Ultra.”
“I know where they are,” Kat said.
“The Ultra told you?”
She nodded.
“Where are they?”
She looked away and wouldn’t answer.
And that’s when I knew.
They were going to Prime.
We had to get back home and warn Earth. But how could we get there before them? And if we did, could we defeat them? We did have an all-powerful Ultra. But we didn’t know how to use it. Its powers were wonky at best. Triggered by pesky human emotions and difficult to predict. Ironically, just like emotions.
And then there was the fact that the Ultra also seemed to have an agenda of its own. Oh, and let’s not forget the brethren who might be following to start a coup at any moment. For all I knew they would follow us back to Earth. So even if we got to Prime, we could be bringing the universe’s two most powerful alien species there. Sounded like a great idea!
None of it mattered. We were stuck in an Outpost trailer barely capable of the speed of sound. No way we could get to Prime before the Krin.
How’d they even know where Earth was? They must have jacked the fleet’s data. They knew everything. All our resources, defenses. All the planets and species we had charted. Both our allies and our enemies.
With the Prime fleet's databases, the Krin had a treasure trove of every planet and species in the known universe. If the brethren were correct, they’d found an incredibly rich set of planets to plunder. Even the most technologically advanced species would be at their mercy. No one was even close to having the weaponry of the Krin. Our entire system would be at their mercy.
So why Earth? Why go there?
“Does it matter?” Kat asked.
“Yes. It matters. And stop reading my mind!”
Her eyes lowered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between what you say and what you think.”
I’d hurt her. I didn’t mean to snap, but I was tired of having my inner thoughts being invaded. Even if it wasn’t intentional. I was tired of a lot of shat right about now. But that didn’t make it okay for me to dump on her. “I’m sorry too. This shat is all so fraking stressful. I’ll try to be more understanding.”
She was right. I wasn’t sure it mattered why the Krin were going to Prime. It only mattered that they were, and that there was no way to stop them. And Earth’s defenses would be no match for them.
It was up to us to stop them. Two dogs, one man, one woman, one robot, and the Ultra. That was our “army.” If it wasn’t for the Ultra, we’d have no chance at all.
It might not matter but it was bugging me that they’d decided to go to Prime. I thought they were obsessed with the Ultra. So why not head to the planet we’d just come from and try to steal it again? They’d already tried a billion times, according to Farmy. So why not a few more billion? Time was running out for them. On
ce the Ultra was back on the throne, that was it for them so why waste time going to Earth?
“Wil. What are you thinking about?”
“I’m trying to figure out why Earth. They could go anywhere. Why didn’t they go back to your planet? It’s you they want.”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
And that’s when it clicked.
“It’s you.”
“Me? What?”
“They know they’re running out of time. They’re trying to draw you out while you’re still human.”
“Why not just snatch me from the planet like they tried to before?”
“This is so much easier for them. They threaten our system and it draws you away from the brethren. It’s much easier to snatch you out here than back there with millions of your people defending you.”
“Makes sense.”
“Sneaky Krin. I gotta give them credit.” I said. “The Ultra must have sensed it. That’s why it told us to leave the planet and come back here.”
“So it knew it was heading into a trap and brought us here anyway? Weird. Why would it endanger itself, when I could be snug as a Rotillian bug on its planet?”
“Maybe it owes us. Maybe it cares. Maybe something evil. I don’t fraking know.”
“And why weren’t the Krin just sitting and waiting for us here?”
“Maybe they didn’t know we’d come back to this exact spot. So they picked the place they knew we’d go if they threatened it.”
“So they’re doing what you just did to the brethren. Holding Earth hostage in exchange for the Ultra.” Kat said.
“Ya. Except if the brethren are right, the Krin are definitely going to wipe out the Earth and plunder it, along with all the other planets in the known systems when they’re done.”
“I get the feeling the brethren are right,” Kat said.
“I get that feeling too.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Krin were going to hold Prime hostage in exchange for the Ultra. Once they got it, they’d wipe out the universe. And we were stuck on the slowpoke Outpost. We needed a way to beat them back to Earth, then we had to figure out how to use the Ultra to defeat them and not destroy Earth and the galaxy in the process. Easy as a slice of Raspan cobbler.
