The threat was neutralized, however. The traitor pilot and the alien captain had disappeared. He had sent men to search the nearby areas of the ship but they were nowhere to be found. He could only hope they had found their way to a short and preferably painful death. He shook his head. The bridge was theirs, and that was what mattered. There was only one more thing to do.
He strode into the command center of the ship with his hands linked behind his back. A couple of the more experienced soldiers were tapping away at terminals, trying to unlock the firing sequence for the interstellar drive the aliens had started. Two alien bodies littered the floor, blue blood pooled beneath their still forms. He wrinkled his nose at the smell. Disgusting vermin. He slid the legs of one out of the way with his boot and jerked his head up at the sound of a scuffle. Kneeling before a group of two of his men was a woman, her hair disheveled and her clothing torn in places. One of the men had his fingers wrapped in her hair, pulling it just hard enough to keep her from moving. Dalton strode up to him and wrested his other arm behind his back. The man yelped and dropped his grip.
“Private,” Dalton growled. “This is not how we treat prisoners. Especially women. Get out of my fucking sight before I decide to let her take your balls for treating her like an animal.”
“But sir—“ the man griped.
“GET THE FUCK OUT, NOW,” Dalton yelled. The private scuttled away, mumbling under his breath the whole time. Captain Dalton turned to Alex. “My apologies for my man’s conduct, ma’am. He’s a little pigheaded but that’s not an excuse for touching you in such a manner.”
She spat at him, a gob of saliva hitting Dalton on the cheek. He closed his eyes and wiped it off with one hand, the other toying with the handle of his pistol. “Are you finished?” he asked sweetly. “I’d say I could do this all day, but we’re on a schedule, miss.”
“Fuck. You,” she snarled.
“How sweet. I assume you’re the famous Dr. Alexandra King, savior of mankind and lover of all aliens great and small?”
“I’d love to tell you, but it won’t matter anyway. I hope you and your men really like the view of the stars, whoever the fuck you are, because in not too many minutes from now that interstellar drive is firing, whether you like it or not.”
“I'm not worried about it,” Dalton responded, examining his fingernails. “We are trained soldiers, Doctor. If you’ll look to your left, you’ll see that one of our fine technicians has stopped the process to fire the drive. We’re here for as long as I say we’re here, sweetheart.”
That hit the mark. “You heartless bastard. Don’t you understand what’s at stake here? For God’s sake, you’re going to murder an entire species and for what, so a thousand of the President’s best friends can get their ticket to a new life? Surely even a meathead like you can see how incredibly wrong that is.”
“I’m here on the orders of the President of the United States. I don’t typically look into things much past that.” Dalton picked a piece of dirt from under one fingernail and flung it at Alex, hitting her in the chest. “And I won’t be murdering a single human or animal today that hasn’t tried to murder me first.”
“Then what’s the plan? Space them? That gas your men deployed has got to be starting to wear off by now. Pretty soon you’re going to find out what these people are like when they’re angry and I, for one, can’t wait to watch.”
“I’ll hand it to you, girlie,” Dalton noted, flashing a predatory grin. “You’ve got some bark. I bet your bite isn’t nearly as bad though. No. We won’t be spacing anyone today—that is, anyone who doesn’t give me a reason to. My orders are to take them all planetside. The lizards are going to live out the last of their days in their natural habitat. We’ve got a nice little island picked out for the lot of them.”
“You’re going to dump them on Earth? That’s fucking worse than blowing them out an airlock. It’s inhuman. You’re going to leave them to fry and suffocate while you speed away. You’ll be damning them to a torturous death. Not just their warriors, but their women and children too. Are you going to be able to sleep at night knowing you killed children?”
She didn’t see his hand before it connected with the side of her face, sending her tumbling toward the floor before a soldier hauled her back up. Alex shook her head to clear the shock but Dalton grabbed her by the chin. He squeezed, making sure to apply pressure to the sides of her jaw. She twisted, trying to break his grip but he held on too tightly.
“Listen, lady.” He bent down so that his face was scant inches from hers. “I’m following orders. It’s my job and I’m damn good at it. Perhaps if you had done your job in the first place instead of siding with these disgusting creatures you would be sitting pretty on the other ship, right now. I hope it was worth it.”
Alex stayed silent. Smart woman. Dalton thought. She knew the fight was over.
“What do you want done with her, sir?” the man holding her asked.
“She can join her friends in a shuttle and take a nice trip home. Wright can find her there for all I care, if he wants to keep her alive. For now, I want her off my bridge and out of my sight. If she gets too mouthy, I’ll look the other way as to how you’d like to shut her up.”
The man nodded and hauled Alex to her feet, and the two of them walked from the bridge. Dalton plunked himself down in the captain’s chair and surveyed his new domain. “Not a bad deal,” he said to himself. “Not a bad deal at all.”
20
Alexandra
I seethed during my frogmarch to the shuttle hangar. I wanted so badly to fight, but I wasn’t so stupid to think that I had any chance. All the way to the hanger, it looked like an infestation had made its way aboard the ship. There were human soldiers every few feet collecting aliens. We passed by a room where I saw a half dozen aliens bound and gagged. Muzzled might be the better term. There were wide strips of plastic zip ties ringed around each alien’s face in such a way that they could breathe but speaking—and more importantly biting—would be impossible. No one was spared this treatment and I shut my eyes in grief as we passed by a group of children laid out in the hallway, their eyes stuck in that blank stare. Any aliens discovered in their quarters were similarly bound and tossed into the hallways like luggage. Another team of humans was making their way down the hall with a large equipment cart. They stopped by each pile of bodies and hauled the aliens onto the cart, stacking them like logs. Visions of illustrations from the Atlantic slave trade came to mind.
When we arrived at the shuttle, I wasn’t surprised to see piles of paralyzed aliens already inside. The soldier holding me forced me to walk up the ramp. Once we neared the door he shoved me through and I landed hard on the studded metal floor. I got up and raced back to the hatch but the soldier shut it in my face, the door missing my nose by an inch. I pounded the thick metal and screamed, the noise echoing around the chamber and making me dizzy. I sat in a corner of the ship and hugged my knees to my chest. I wanted to crack a joke to myself, something about defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory, but I was too tired. The events of the past year had aged me considerably. I wasn’t a spring chicken by any means when this whole thing started, but now when I looked in the mirror my hair was more than a little shot through with silver. I had gotten thinner, too. For me this meant the loss of what little muscle I had managed to gain while maintaining a teaching schedule. I barely slept anymore and was eating only when my body demanded it of me. For all of this, I had managed to keep fighting. Until now.
Still, doing something was better than sitting here and waiting for these goons to dump me in the middle of nowhere. I stood but was knocked back down by the rumble of the shuttle taking off. Shit. I took stock of my surroundings. The assholes invading the bridge had managed to mess up my clothes, but they were mostly still intact. I gingerly prodded my right hand with my left. It still stung like hell from the one good punch I managed to land. I could flex all four fingers and my thumb, so if something was broken, it wasn’t broke
n that badly. I had become the proud owner of a few bumps and bruises but those were the least of my worries. Getting shoved into the shuttle had opened up a couple of cuts here and there but overall I was in one piece and reasonably functional.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say that for the captive aliens. Being trapped in here with them gave me the creeps. It was like wandering into Ko’s downed shuttle without the blood. Everyone looked dead. I bent down toward the nearest alien’s mouth and shut my eyes. It was barely discernible over the roar of the shuttle’s engines but I could hear and feel shallow breathing. Not dead, just deeply sedated. All right, that was something. I distantly noticed that the shuttle had leveled out. It didn’t take that long to ascend and descend from orbit. I had maybe a couple of minutes, tops. I winced and slapped the alien’s face lightly. No response. Damn. I really wished that would have done the trick.
I turned my head and winced as I prodded the poor unconscious being right in their eye—hard—with my index finger. I waited, expecting the alien to wake and be furious at the idiot that had just poked them in the eye but nothing happened. Before I could try to scheme another way to wake the aliens up but the shuttle was already starting to shake with the air resistance of re-entry. I crawled back to my corner and managed to wedge myself between two alien bodies so I wouldn’t get thrown around. The shaking got so violent it felt like the fillings were going to be shaken out of my teeth, and then it stopped. I felt the shuttle turn a few times as it landed. The hatch opened and I got a breath of beautifully clean air. Wherever we were it was definitely out of the way. I risked raising my head from where I lay and caught a glimpse of green hills and blue ocean. That didn’t tell me much.
Teams of soldiers came into the cabin and started hauling alien bodies onto another cart. This time they didn’t go far—I could hear the thuds the bodies made as they hit the ground. I shut my eyes and let my head loll back. Better to let the soldiers think I was unconscious, knocked out the ship’s shaking. As I lay there, I heard them speaking.
“This is a fucking waste of time, man,” a young private complained to his friend. “Why are we pulling shifts hauling space lizards onto a beach when we could have just shoved them through an airlock. It would have been a hell of a better show than this crap.”
“Yeah man,” his comrade agreed. “Shame to waste this place on a bunch of aliens, too. I know Earth isn’t going to be around for very much longer but I’ve always wanted to vacation here. Maybe I’ll find a place like this on whatever planet we end up on and get me some alien babes. Stretch out on a beach, get me some alien tail...”
The first man laughed. “You sick fucker. I didn’t know you were into the freaky shit.”
“Fuck you man, help me lift these heavy fuckers.”
When the army grunts finally made their way to me I “woke up” and shifted. The soldiers smirked and looped their arms through mine. “Finally awake, sleeping beauty? Let’s go.” The men hauled me to my feet. I pretended to be dizzy from the landing and limped along with them. They took me to the pile of alien bodies and shoved me down next to them. I made a show of being blinded by the sun and pulled myself into a sitting position against a tree. I took advantage of the soldiers’ distraction to try and figure out where I was. We were on some kind of tropical island. There was no sight of land as far as I could see. I heard the calls of birds but that could be hundreds of islands. It was damn humid, though. I could feel my hair start to adhere to the back of my neck after just a few minutes in the open air.
The soldiers finished unloading their shuttle and took off to retrieve more aliens from the ship. Once they were out of sight I got up from my spot and started searching for something sharp. Those zip ties were thick but they were only plastic at the end of the day. I went to a nearby palm tree and pried my fingers underneath a piece of bark that was sticking away from the tree. The sharp needles of bark bit into my palms and I hissed as the splinters drove themselves deeper into my skin while I pulled. I managed to break off a piece about the size of my hand and set to work at freeing the aliens. The palm bark rasped against the plastic restraints and left scratch marks but didn’t penetrate.
“Damn it,” I muttered. It was just my luck that nothing had fallen off the ship either. I searched the beach and nothing. The sharpest thing in reach was the aliens’ claws themselves, and they couldn’t move. But I could. Damn it.
It would have to be one of the children. I couldn’t lift an adult, but one of the kids should be easy enough to drag. I found an alien child small enough for me to lift and dragged their body toward one of the adults. Once I had brought them close enough I lifted one of their hands and pressed a finger claw against the adult’s wrist bindings. The claw worked just as well as I had hoped and the plastic split, freeing his wrists. The adult stirred and I backed away quickly. He woke up and his eyes bugged as he discovered that his mouth was bound.
“It’s all right!” I yelled, keeping a good ten feet away. “It’s all right, just listen to my voice, all right?” The alien struggled for a moment but went still. “You’re bound and gagged,” I told him. “Your hands are free but your legs are tied together and you have a strip of plastic around your mouth. Stay calm and you can slice them off.”
He nodded and freed his legs before using his fore-claws to rip the plastic off his face. I stayed far back and it turned out to be a good idea. The alien leapt to his feet and hissed, his mouth open wide. “What in the hells is going on?” he demanded. “Dr. King? What are you doing here?”
“I promise I’ll explain everything, but I need your help. We need to free the others.” He nodded and we set to work.
21
Jackson
We had to make a plan, but what plan was there to be made? It was three of us against an armada. The cloaked ship hadn’t been detected, but that was the extent of our luck. I paced back and forth in front of a window like a cat stalking a mouse. The determination to do something was overpowering my ability to think. Ka’thak and his soldier stood behind me, speaking quietly. I couldn’t take my eyes off the alien ship. Gods only knew what those scumbags were doing to my people. So far it didn’t look like they were spacing the aliens. That was something. I didn’t have high hopes for the next hours that things would stay that way. The minute an alien woke up and pissed off any of the humans, well. Tensions would boil and people did stupid things when they were angry.
Clearly, this attack had been planned out far in advance. The launches and the mission were never meant to proceed without conflict. Now the enemy had both ships and as far as I knew our people were still paralyzed—or dead. Our small group gathered at the window with me as the human ship fired its massive engines and pulled alongside the alien vessel. More boarding parties? Or just stripping the alien ship of its resources? No matter what was happening, it was over. We were powerless. If we revealed ourselves we would join the captured, or be blown into the vacuum. Red hot anger flooded through me. I raised both fists and slammed them into the glass.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Gods fucking DAMN it!”
I sank to my knees and the anger was swept away as a wave of grief crashed over me. I started to cry, the tears flowing freely down my cheeks. My fingernails dug into my palms and I dimly felt them break the skin. I punched the glass of the ship’s window over and over again, hoping against hope that it would crack and put me out of my misery. Ka’thak and the soldiers with us stood well back from me, giving me space while I heaved with sobs. It all felt so fucking pointless. Alex was dead or captured, thousands of aliens were dead or about to be, so what the hell was the point of continuing? The three of us were stuck in a shuttle that would keep us alive for a little while, but after that we were shit out of luck. Was I really about to die from suffocation in a spaceship? I briefly debated which was worse. If I put myself out an airlock, would death come more quickly? Did I deserve a quick death when so many were doomed to an agonizing one? Ka'thak should have just blown me out of the sky all those months ag
o when I shot his ship into the dirt.
The grief crystallized into a cold, unyielding rage. I had spent my whole life living the experience of the ‘other’. I had been beaten up in school, called the n-word by adults, had my house vandalized, and all the perks of growing up as a poor black kid in the south. For all the hatred and bigotry I endured throughout my life, I would never understand the experience of these people. They had come to us with an offer of help. We in turn killed and abused them. They showed us nothing but patience and understanding. We abused them further and slaughtered them. Despite securing a ship for humanity, we showed an endless capacity for greed and wanted to take everything. Co-existence was never an option. I wanted to scrub my skin off. I felt repulsive. I was a member of a traitorous race, one that deserved all the revenge the universe could provide.
I felt a squeeze on my shoulder and whirled, fists raised. Ka’thak put his hands up and backed away a few paces. “I know what you must be feeling,” he said. My head shot up and I glared.
“With all due respect, no you don’t. Sir.”
It was hard not to snap at him. I had heard that same phrase for years. People who tried to sympathize with me, trying to identify with the discrimination I experienced, to sympathize with my problems. I knew it was their way of trying to make me feel like I wasn’t alone, but the truth was that nobody knew what it was like to be me. They didn’t know what it was like to be a black man growing up in the southern states and they sure as hell didn’t know how hard I busted my ass to get into the Air Force. No one could ever know what it was like to now be one of the remaining members of the most treacherous species in the galaxy. The shame was overwhelming. I would have given my left arm to turn right back around and run into the ship with guns blazing, if it meant I could have taken as many of those fuckers with me as possible.
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