“You heard me, David?”
Did I really want to go with him? Would I be standing here if I didn’t? “...yes, sir. I appreciate your checking, but I made my decision a long time ago. Plus, there’s nowhere for us to go. Like Alex said, ever since this whole thing started, humanity has done nothing but meet your kindness with betrayal and treachery. I’m done with humanity. I still owe you a debt as well.” Perhaps I misinterpreted Ka’thak’s intent. Perhaps my loyalty, my dedication was still under question?
Ka’thak chuckled. “No, my dear friend. If you think that you still owe me a debt, you’re fooling yourself. You’ve repaid your debt, more than once. I’ve never seen a being dedicate himself so fully to his honor. You’ve sacrificed so much for the lives of others. You’re more than free to go.”
I cursed my annoyance and distrust of the alien captain. I wanted to blame it on the stress of the situation but given the recent circumstances, I was feeling separated from my alien brothers and sisters. I felt like I didn’t belong, that I was a member of a traitorous species. Maybe they would never trust me. Maybe they already watched me with suspicious eyes, waiting to see when I would turn against them like the rest of my species had. Only one good way to find out.
Fuck it.
I stopped the diagnostics and turned to him. Unbuckling my ceremonial knife from my belt, I handed it to Ka’thak, handle first, and knelt on the ground. I looked up to him and grinned, pushing the very tip of the sword into my chest.
“You’ll have to kill me first, sir.”
Ka’thak guffawed and offered me a hand, pulling me up off the floor. “Fantastic! I’m happy your commitment is so unwavering. It’s good. I could always use more beings worthy of trust by my side.” He turned back to the terminal and continued typing, satisfied.
We both flinched at the sound of gunfire in the hallway. It sounded like it was getting close, fast. “Fuck,” I swore.
“It would appear that we have company,” Ka’thak said.
“Yes, yes we do.” I pulled my gun out and set it on the panel beside me. I tapped a few buttons and pulled up the security feed. The two guards we had left outside the engine room were back to back, fending off a company of soldiers with their guns and claws when they got too close. They were doing a valiant job, but two soldiers couldn’t stand against a dozen, no matter their skill.
“Sir? What should we do?” I fought the urge to run out there. This was my commander’s call. Ka’thak was silent, tapping away at the terminal in front of him. I watched a toe on his foot tap the floor. I could feel the tension thrumming from him. Down to the last minute and this might have all been for nothing. It was an impossible choice to defend two of our own, or risk the engine room falling to the enemy.
“We go to them. Escape means nothing if we leave our brothers to die out there.”
I nodded and picked up my beam pistol. “No matter what happens, your men will make sure Alex is safe?” I looked at him. If I wasn’t going to make it out of here, ensuring her safety was the only thing I cared about.
“They will. I trust them to know what to do,” he replied.
“Then let’s fucking get it, sir. Ooh rah.”
“Indeed.”
We picked up our guns and took positions near the door to the engine room. “I’ll count you down,” Ka’thak said. I nodded and readied myself. “Three...two...one!” Both sets of doors flew open and the smell of death and gunfire hit me full in the face. The soldiers we had set outside had their backs to us and were firing in bursts so close it sounded like they never took their hands off the trigger. One glanced back and yelled to his companion to move aside. Ka’thak opened his mouth in a roar and barreled out into the hallway. He fired off a few shots but abandoned his gun in favor of teeth and claws. Seeing the hulking alien commander rip their comrades apart served its purpose; several enemy soldiers backed away and appeared to forget they were supposed to be shooting. I know it was one hell of a morale booster for me.
Even if we scared the crap out of them, we were seriously outnumbered and badly outgunned. At least it would be a good fight, until the end. We had to come up with something, quickly.
15
Alexandra
Indecision thrummed through me as I watched the firefight unfolding on the security monitors. Ka’thak and David couldn’t see it yet but at least two squads of soldiers were on their way to the engine room. The fight was bad and it was about to get much, much worse. There were more shuttles arriving in the hangar by the minute. In the absence of success with the gas, whoever was behind this was sending everything he had at the alien ship. It took me a minute to figure out where the other half of the soldiers were headed. I tapped through the security feeds and found them—making a beeline for the ship’s bridge. Of course.
I punched the commands to start locking down as many doors as I could between us and the sea of very angry, very motivated men. I said a small prayer of thanks that they seemed to be leaving the unconscious aliens alone. No use wasting bullets on things that weren’t a threat, I suppose. I watched on the ship’s schematic as sections of the vessel started sealing themselves. They were shutting quickly, but I worried not quick enough. The soldiers Ka’thak had left with me had already headed to the door of the bridge, their fingers on the triggers of their pistols. They waited for the first sign of anyone making it through the door, bouncing gently on their haunches.
I felt completely helpless. As much as I wanted to play the warrior, I wasn’t anywhere near prepared to kill again. Even if it was for my own survival. The warriors with me didn’t deserve to die for my sake either.
I could still do what I came here to do. Try to reach out to Earth. There had to be someone down on the surface who could help us. I grabbed a radio and stumbled my way through getting a secure connection to Earth.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the alien ship. We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. Please, we need help.”
I was met with only static for a couple of minutes and repeated my call. What if whoever was attacking us had already cut the communications. I didn’t dare think about what that could mean for us if they had. I decided to try again.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Dr. Alexandra King, currently aboard the alien ship. We are being attacked by human soldiers and are suffering heavy losses. We need assistance.”
A crackle, and a voice. Finally.
“Dr. King? This is General Allen of the United States Army.”
“Oh thank God.” I clutched the radio in both hands. I was squeezing it so tightly I was surprised the plastic of the microphone hadn’t cracked. “General, we have armed men aboard the ship. The men have set off some kind of gas. Nearly every alien has been paralyzed and we have few warriors to defend the ship. I need to speak to President Wright, urgently.”
The voice on the other end of the radio sounded terse. “The President is understandably occupied right now.”
I resisted the urge to swear at him and settled for the tried and true damsel in distress instead. “Please sir, it’s an emergency. If these men take over the alien ship, they may use it to attack the human one. We need help up here as quickly as possible!”
The general coughed and mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“Hello?” I called.
“Please hold for the President.”
The alien warriors glanced back at me and I shook my head at them. I hoped against hope that this was some remaining piece of Proctor’s scheme—some branch of his organization that had been operating under the radar or in another country that we hadn’t been able to shake out when we had Proctor killed.
“Dr. King, it’s Max Wright. What’s going on up there?”
“Sir, we are under attack. Three shuttles of soldiers have landed on the alien ship and are proceeding to slaughter their way through to the engine room and bridge. Please, sir. They’re trying to take over the ship. We need help up here, as fast as you can send it!”
The
President chuckled darkly. “I’d be happy to send more help up Alex, seeing as it looks like three shuttles of soldiers have been insufficient. I’ll send three more. That should do the trick. You had best get yourself somewhere safe. Wouldn’t want you being mistaken for an alien with all that gas floating around.”
It felt like I had an icy cold bucket of water thrown over me. The shaking in my hands that I had felt when I watched those soldiers being jettisoned into space returned. The chill was quickly replaced with white-hot rage.
“You see, you idealistic naive little girl, there can be no compromise with those subhuman creatures. They are an abomination against God. Exterminating them now is my way of thanking them for their ship. After all, it would be simply inhuman to murder a creature while it could see the ax coming for its head. This way is much faster. Less blood.”
I stayed quiet, thoughts racing for some other explanation but I knew deep down there was none. Humanity was fundamentally evil. I flashed back briefly to my undergraduate thesis where I stood in front of a packed lecture hall emphatically making a case for the inherent good of humankind. Had I really been such a fool, all these years?
“You’re a monster,” I blurted. “You had the chance to make a better future for us all, and you’re killing the people who made it possible. You’re killing one of your own.”
“Hah! Killing one of my own? That lizard loving species traitor is getting exactly what he deserves. I’m appalled that Lee even let him join up with the aliens. I would have had him court-martialed and thrown into Leavenworth for the rest of his life. The man deserves whatever he gets from throwing his lot in with those creatures.”
A serpent of anger unfurled itself in my stomach and I snarled at the microphone. “You xenophobic piece of shit. You don’t deserve to be President, and you sure as shit don’t deserve to occupy the same space as that woman did. She died for cooperation between our people. You are a snake—no, an insect—and you will never be half the man David Jackson is. Give me one good reason as to why I shouldn’t use the orbital cannon to blow you into oblivion.”
Wright laughed through the radio. “I doubt you’d have the first clue how to use it. Go pray with your lizard friends, Doctor. You’ll be heading to meet their God soon enough.” He cut the transmission then.
I stood stock-still for a moment and slammed my fists into the panel. My alien guards turned in shock at the noise and stared as I opened my mouth in a roar. I screamed as long and as hard as I could, only stopping when my throat started to hurt. Tears flowed down my cheeks and I wanted nothing more than to crumple into a ball. I was tired, so tired. Too much had gone wrong and too many lives had been sacrificed for everything to end in failure. Our last hope rode on a progress bar which in the intervening time hadn’t filled up as much as I hoped it had.
“Doctor,” one of my guards said softly, making his way from the door of the bridge to where I stood. “Doctor, I know this is bad, but we need you with us right now. Look.” He pointed to a camera feed where I could see three more shuttles making their way into space from the human ship. “Wright wasn’t kidding. We have three more shuttles incoming. I need your help to make a decision.”
I took a deep breath and raised my head. “All right.” I turned toward the warrior. “We make one last plan.”
16
Jackson
Despite the aliens’ best efforts, we were seriously fucked. Ka’thak, the guards, and I grouped together to try and make a push for the bridge. Ka’thak and one of the guards took the front of the group, the other one and I took the rear, our backs pressing against the leaders. The human soldiers tried to rush us first. They must have assumed that I was the better deal rather than face two aliens head-on. They were very wrong.
The problem was that for every one I cut down, it was like two more took his place. Unless we could regroup in a secure area, this was going to be a short fight indeed. The soldier next to me fell when one of the humans managed to land a well-placed shot, so I took the central position, spraying a line of blaster fire into the soldiers. I knew that this strategy would only work for so long. The closer we got to the bridge the wider the passages in the ship would get. Eventually one of the humans would be able to sneak past me.
The human captain yelled from behind his men for them to cease fire. We didn’t stop and continued to back away slowly, keeping our guns trained on the soldiers. Ka’thak reached back and thumped me on the shoulder twice, his signal to move faster. I straightened and pushed back against them. I didn’t know why the humans had stopped coming and I didn’t care. Plenty of time to give a shit about it later. We made it to the crossway of the passages and set up security. If we made a bolt for the bridge and whatever was distracting the humans stopped pulling their attention, we couldn’t afford to be caught off guard.
I could feel the breaths of my brothers. We inhaled and exhaled as a group. Ka’thak’s toe claw tapped against the floor as we waited to see what would happen. I couldn’t hear what was being said but the crowd of humans murmured something as they clustered around their captain. Suddenly I heard the human captain shout a curse. Ka’thak chuffed.
“I locked them out when we left the room,” he said softly. “They can’t shut down the interstellar drive from that console. If they don’t want to travel to another star with us, they need to shut down the engines from the bridge.”
I laughed.
“They’re not going to like that very much.”
“No, no they are not,” he agreed. Sure enough, the human captain ran out of the engine room. He ordered his soldiers aside and made his way toward us. The soldier at Ka’thak’s shoulder swiveled, took his place next to me, and raised his rifle at the man’s head.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” The human captain held his hands up. “Take it easy there, soldier. You’re safe from me, for now. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with your computer, hm? I’ve already got my men on their way to the bridge. I’m betting you have men up there as well. There are two ways we can play this. Either you can help me down here, or I can have them override the system from up there, and guarantee that the rest of your men will die.”
Ka’thak opened his mouth in a hiss, making sure to flash every one of his impressive teeth. The men standing behind their commander shrank back. I grinned and shrugged. See what you’re up against, asshole?
“That really ain’t the way to play this, partner,” the man called. His fingers crept toward his gun and Ka’thak tensed. “Look, I know you’ve set the drive in motion already. I also know that we have limited time before it activates and this ship carries us to God only knows where. So here’s the deal I’m making. You tell your soldiers to stand down and you unlock access to the engines for me, or I can blow this entire ship out of the sky. I’d prefer option one, but it’s really up to you.”
I looked at Ka’thak and he nodded, gesturing with his head that I should speak. I stepped forward, careful to put my hands away from my gun.
“You know that’s not going to work out too well for you, right?” I called. “I don’t know if you and your men were there the last time one of these ships blew but it’s something else. You’ll melt us all into our base components. Gone. Zip. Zero. No survivors. Unless you’re here on a kamikaze mission, I think you’re full of shit.”
The man shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it to go, oh well. My instructions are to capture this ship but if I’m unable to accomplish that objective, my commanding officer will be happy to see it destroyed.”
“Bullshit.”
“You want to come down here and check? I’ll happily let you through, you can come see the explosives yourself.”
I glanced at Ka’thak. We had a brief interchange via non-verbal signals, the gist of which was figuring out how we were supposed to stop the installation of the explosives while keeping the rest of the soldiers from reaching the bridge. The truth was that there was no easy answer. The minute we tried to abandon the engine room we gave the enem
y the opportunity to rig the ship to blow and there was nothing to stop them from sending a group to chase us down. If we stayed, Alex was left alone with only two guards against odds that were getting worse by the minute.
After a flurry of movements and subvocal communication, the decision was made that we should stay. Alex was with two capable warriors, aliens who would defend her with their lives. Even though it went against my personal desires, staying to defend the engine was the right thing to do. Defending the collective had to take precedence over saving even one of us. I had to trust that whatever she was doing, Alex was coming up with some kind of brilliant scheme to get herself—and maybe all of us—out of here in one piece.
“Back your men up,” I called down to the human captain. “Have them put down their weapons and set them over there. Any man moves and they’re going to find themselves without intestines. Understood?”
The human captain smiled. “Understood. Don’t worry, Lt. Colonel Jackson. You have my word that none of these men are going to pull any funny business. I’m sure they’d like to keep their innards where they are.”
The soldiers lay their guns down and their commanding officer gathered them and set them in a line in front of the group. That wasn’t quite as out of the way as I would like but anyone who decided to run for their gun would definitely be falling into the range of our fire and claws. It was as close as I was going to get to see them disarmed. The three of us cautiously approached the group and the human captain stepped forward, his hands held away from his body.
“I’m going to ask you to set your weapons aside, Lt. Colonel. After all, we can talk to each other like civilized men without anybody going for a gun, can’t we?”
I looked at Ka’thak and he nodded. My fellow soldier and I set our pistols down slowly and kicked them to the side of us. The guns were out of our reach but weren’t so far that we couldn’t grab them if we had to. With any luck, we wouldn’t have to, but I wasn’t that stupid.
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