Treason

by Kevin McLaughlin

  I screamed around the human ship while my co-pilot told the ship’s computer to acquire all weapons targets. Once our guns were charged I pulled the ship through a nauseating maneuver in front of the mothership, letting loose fire at just the weapons systems. After all, humanity still needed the ship, and guns can be repaired. There was nothing to be gained from mindlessly killing the humans aboard, either. As good as it might feel right now, it would only give any humans left alive a reason to seek revenge.

  The plan of attack was complicated. We didn’t have any tactical advantage with just the one combat ship so we were flying by the seat of our pants on this one. We had to play it right—keep the timing regular enough to draw fire from the ship without giving away our position, creating a space for Alex to sneak past and make it to the alien ship.

  It felt good to pilot something again. The ship’s controls danced under my hands like reuniting with a long lost partner. I was born for this. The cloaked ship was almost as fun to fly as one of the fighters or lightships. Humanity didn’t have anything on par with one of these. It was almost fun—if we weren’t trying to avoid being vaporized in the middle of space.

  We kept at that strategy and signaled Alex to advance past the blockade. Her pilots slid as closely as they could to the larger ship, continuing to stay out of the firing range of their hull guns and their cameras. It worked, right until the ship accelerated to put some distance between them and they came into sight of the hijacked alien ship’s radar. I don’t know if it was the flash of their engines or just simple bad luck that attracted the attention of our attackers. The cannons on the alien ship swung toward the shuttle, spewing a line of fire at them. I maintained the cat and mouse with the human ship as best I could but I had to go after them. Even with some maneuvering, they wouldn’t last long out there.

  “Captain, if you’ve got anything up your sleeve, now might be a good time to use it!” I shouted back to Ka’thak. He came into the cockpit with us and smiled. A panel on the arm of his powered armor popped open and he tapped at a touchscreen within. All fire from the alien ship stopped abruptly. I could see Alex’s shuttle slow its speed.

  “Jackson, you see that, right?” Alex’s voice came over the radio.

  “Yeah, I do. It’s Ka’thak, Alex. He’s shut down the ship’s weapons.”

  “Among a few other things.” Ka’thak laughed. “It never hurts to have a backup plan, in case of things like mutiny, or invasion. What’s the human saying? ‘Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice...?”

  We rocketed toward the shuttle and took position behind it, fending off the remaining halfhearted shots by the human ship. They had to know we were out of range but I suppose the humans aboard felt the need to take a few potshots solely to extend an ideological middle finger toward us. I shot them the very same finger as the human ship fell out of view. Fuck you too, assholes! Both of our ships sped toward the alien ship, which opened its doors at Ka’thak’s remote command. We stayed tucked behind the shuttle to act as backup while the shuttle opened its doors.

  27

  President Wright

  President Wright felt a blood vessel pop out of his forehead. He gripped the rail of the command terminal inside the alien ship, white-knuckled. How fucking dare those filthy beasts kill his men and damage his ship? Now they’d boarded? He wanted them stopped. Now. This little stunt needed to be nipped in the bud. He cursed his weakness in letting the aliens live at all. None of this would be happening if he had just blasted them out an airlock. Hang appearing humanitarian, it was time to get it done.

  What an incredible clusterfuck. This should have been a simple plan without any incidents. The catch was that you could never count on humans—not really. The alien captain coming aboard wasn’t just a setback. The President’s plan was now crumbling around him and worse, he was standing on the ship that was being attacked! Being the commander-in-chief of the military had its perks but he wasn’t a soldier or a general. He was a politician. He had rested easily on the laurels of his father and his grandfather, both successful businessmen who had built their fortune long before he was born. He wasn’t cut out to be so close to the action. He hated to admit it, but he was starting to get scared.

  “Sir,” Captain Hughes saluted as he approached the President. He was the other company commander of the human troops in space and had replaced Dalton when Wright ordered him off in command of the shuttles. Wright was already beginning to regret the decision; Dalton had at least been competent. “I recommend that we deploy our remaining soldiers to key points on the ship until backup can arrive from the human ship. We need to be strategic with our resources at this point.”

  “With all due respect, I know where you can kindly put your suggestion, Captain. We are under immediate threat of losing this ship. Get your men to neutralize the threat. Now.” The last word was uttered with a snarl.

  Hughes left the bridge, furious. It wasn’t in his nature to question his superior officers. He had joined the military because he craved the order of it all. Now he was serving under a man who had barely stepped into his position before ordering the wholesale slaughter of an entire species. When he signed up he knew he might have to kill people, but this was above and beyond the call of reasonable duty. Still, it’s not as if he had a choice. He organized his men and sent them to the hangar to confront the aliens.

  28

  Alexandra

  I had the pilots open the shuttle doors as soon as we touched down. The adult aliens gathered the children toward the front of the shuttle and organized themselves for the fight ahead. They knew this was the last chance, for all of us. It went without saying that the children would be kept in the shuttle until it was safe to come out, or until it was time to leave. One of the pilots volunteered to stay behind to evacuate the young ones if needed. I wished there had been time to replace the kids with additional warriors, but time was against us.

  I waffled about going out with the adults. Unlike the aliens, I didn’t have teeth and claws to defend myself with. I busied myself for the moment by keeping the children calm and occupied. If that was the only thing I could do, it was something.

  As soon as the hatch opened the unarmed adults were repelled by a blast of gunfire from Dalton’s soldiers. Several fell immediately. Dalton’s men had plenty of time to sprint to the hangar and entrench themselves in heavy cover. A few aliens rushed the firing line and they too were gunned down. Others dove for cover. There was relatively little, the hangar was kept clean in the landing areas for safety. The enemy had dozens of machines and pieces of equipment to hide behind and our people only had the struts of the shuttle’s landing gear or whatever else they could sprint to. Jackson’s shuttle hadn’t joined us in the hanger yet. He insisted on staying behind in the cloaked ship to act as backup. I initially wanted him in here with us, but considering how this was going down, I had to admit that he had the better idea, as usual. I wondered what the hell he was waiting for.

  I stayed behind with the children and the pilot shut the aft hatch most of the way. I heard the engines of the cloaked ship and smiled as I saw Jackson strafe the opening of the hangar with cannon blasts. He managed to hit some of the human soldiers but they were well entrenched. Taking them down was going to be harder than I liked.

  Still, it kept the humans shooting at something other than the aliens, who took advantage of the distraction to speed toward the soldiers and do what they did best. Once the aliens had closed the distance between them and the soldiers, the tide changed rapidly.

  Fueled by rage and with little left to lose, even the civilians fought hard. They ripped into the soldiers with abandon. Blood sprayed across the floor and I saw more than one enemy soldier lose a limb—or their head. The enemy was tired and spread thin. The aliens saw this and used the humans’ fear to their advantage. They took extra care to dispatch their enemies in the most gruesome ways they could imagine.

  Before all of this, I wouldn’t have considered leaving that shuttle. My job was to
look out for me, myself, and I. Social work had brought me into the service of others. Even when I was pulling late nights in my office putting together discharge paperwork for patients I felt motivated. I could, so I should. They couldn’t, so it was my job to help them. Again I had the chance to do my part by putting my life on the line. I took a deep breath and made a decision.

  I told the pilot to keep the children safe. If things went to hell, they would take off and run to the nearest place they could find refuge. I stepped out of the ship and grabbed a rifle dropped by a human soldier on my way out. One of the human soldiers hiding not far from where I stood gawked at the woman emerging from the ship full of aliens. I lifted the rifle and shut his mouth permanently, quelling the urge to vomit as blood and brains painted the wall behind him.

  I guess you got over that quick, Alex. I thought. I sprinted behind some cover and backed into a corner behind a bulwark. The firing from Jackson’s ship stopped as he dropped the cloaking and flew the ship into the hangar. A few human soldiers stood to take pot-shots at Jackson but thought better of it and fled as soon as the landing gear deployed.

  The aliens that came out of Jackson’s ship were primed and ready to go. What had started with a few dozen aliens using their natural weaponry to take down soldiers turned into an image straight out of a nightmare. A dozen warriors streaked out of the ship and ran full tilt at the enemy. The cloaked ship wasn’t stocked well in the way of weapons or armor, so the warriors were at a disadvantage tactically but they had the element of being scary as hell. Ka’thak led the charge in his powered armor, mounted guns spitting shots at the human forces. Jackson joined them but stayed back, preferring to fire from the rear of his ship with a rifle. The fatigue the human soldiers had been grappling with quickly morphed into terror at the addition of the red-crested aliens and they started getting sloppy with their shooting. All of a sudden I heard movement in the passage outside the hangar. Ka’thak’s warriors heard it as well and finished off the last of their quarry as quickly and efficiently as possible. While the fighters were looking to the corridor I surveyed the hangar.

  A flash of motion caught my eye as a human soldier who had managed to weather the fight streaked toward the group of aliens. They were distracted by the commotion outside and didn’t turn. The man slowed his pace and lifted his rifle. I didn’t even think about it, just turned, tracked his trajectory, and fired. The shot hit him center mass but he kept running, a kamikaze soldier intent on destroying his enemy even when it meant losing his life. The noise had caught Jackson’s attention and he turned and met the man halfway to his target, smacking the muzzle of the rifle away and burying his combat knife deep in the man’s abdomen. The soldier stayed standing, gasping like a fish as he clutched his guts. Jackson reached up and knocked the helmet off his head. He then grabbed the man by his hair and slit his throat.

  29

  Jackson

  As we used to say in my infantry days, this was a fairly fucked situation. We had lost a good number of our people in the initial firefight. The human forces had enough advance warning of our arrival that they made it to the hangar and set themselves up with good cover. Now President Wright had decided to throw his remaining soldiers into the fray and we were trapped in a very large room with no shelter. We had been gone so long there was no telling how many forces he could have brought aboard. The long corridors that made up the passageways through the ship made it impossible for our warriors to get into close-quarters combat. They would be gunned down long before they reached the first soldier. We had Ka’thak’s powered armor and a few guns that our little group brought with us when we escaped the ship the first time. A few guns against soldiers who would come at us fully armed and very angry. Not the best odds by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Sir,” I turned to Ka’thak. “We’ve got to go around them, flank them, or something. There’s no way we can take on even a small human contingent this way. We’ll get blown to pieces and we’ve already lost too many to hold them. Please tell me there’s another way.” I hadn’t made it this far just to die at the finish line. We had to come up with something.

  Ka’thak looked thoughtful for a moment but he shook his head. “This is where our designs seem to have fallen short. The hangar was designed to have only one passage in and out, that way if there were an invasion or explosion it would be easier to contain the damage.” I couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t a situation that anyone would have thought of in advance.

  “Hah.” I laughed. “Fat lot of good that’s doing us now, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I did not expect that we would ever have to attack our own ship.” I heard the frustration in his voice and wished there were any words of comfort I could offer.

  “There’s nothing at all? Not even an air duct?”

  Ka’thak looked dubiously at me. “No. The ducts are too small...” He trailed off and then looked at me with an idea in his eyes. “They’re too small for me, but they might not be too small for you, little brother.”

  “I guess. It’s certainly worth a shot. Better than sitting here waiting for them to come and send us to the next life.” I had one of the alien soldiers boost me up and I ripped the grate away from the airflow system, tossing it to the floor of the hangar. Next came the filtration system. It fell to the ground with a bang. The soldiers were getting closer now; I could hear their footsteps echoing down the passage. The soldier gave an extra push and I hopped into the air filtration system head first. I tried to shimmy further into the small pipe...and got stuck. I flexed my arms and felt the metal groan against the strain. Shimmying didn’t do a thing. It would have been hilarious were there not dozens of soldiers on the way to shoot us.

  “I’m too big!” I called back. I felt a tug on my feet as the soldier pulled on my boots and yanked me out. “What now?”

  “I can do it,” Alex said. “I’m skinnier than he is. I think I can make it through.”

  “Alex, it’s not worth it. You’d be putting yourself in too much danger.” She shot me a glare. I really should learn one of these days. “Or...you can hop in the air vent.” I heard Ka’thak laugh behind me.

  “She’s more scary than you are, Jackson. Perhaps I let the wrong human join our military forces!” He guffawed.

  Alex strode forward and poked me in the chest, ignoring Ka’thak. “Who coordinated an attack against a shuttle full of armed humans?”

  “You did,” I muttered meekly.

  “Who organized alien civilians to evacuate the island they were dumped on and made sure they had supplies and shelter?”

  “You did.” I was starting to feel like a student being lectured by his teacher. I didn’t deserve this. After all, it’s not my fault that I was just trying to protect her, even now.

  “So fuck right off with that risk bullshit, David Jackson.” A few of the warriors snickered from behind me. “Now, boost me up. Let’s go. Chop chop.” I looked at Ka’thak and he shrugged helplessly.

  “Best to do what the lady says, Jackson.”

  I rolled my eyes and accompanied her to the wall. I knit my hands together to form a step for her and pushed her up into the vent. She fit, even if her feet did stick out of the wall. “What do I need to do?” she called from inside the vent. Ka’thak handed me two small grenades.

  “Put your hands by your waist,” I said. An alien came to boost me up and I handed them to her. She clasped her fingers around them, fingers probing to figure out what I had just given her.

  “Grenades?” she stated, sounding alarmed.

  “We need a distraction. Something to get the soldiers’ attention away from the hangar so we can bolt out of here. They’re not explosives, they’re flash-bangs. They’ll stun anyone in range of them. If you can get to an air shaft exit close enough to the soldiers and toss them, it should disorient the humans long enough for us to get close enough. We’ll take care of the rest of it. When you set them off, shut your eyes as tightly as you can. Otherwise, it’s going to blind you.”


  “Got it,” she said. “Don’t look if I enjoy being able to see.”

  I passed her another object. “Here’s a radio. We’re going to have more casualties even with the flash-bangs so you’ll need to stay put. If things go to shit, make your way back here as best you can and get the hell out, okay?”

  “Okay.” Her voice had a quaver to it. This was a lot to ask of her, even now. I admired that she had the courage to step up.

  “Now, to set them off, they work like any other grenade. Pull the pin, release the lever, and throw.”

  “All right, let’s do it,” she said.

  30

  Alexandra

  “This is the worst fucking idea you’ve ever had, Alex,” I muttered to myself as I shimmied down the exhaust shaft. “This is so very fucking stupid, you’re going to get yourself killed. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  I was scared shitless, but it was my anger that kept me moving forward. Ka’thak had trusted us with alien technology and we had betrayed him. He lent us his people’s time, effort, and energy, and we betrayed him. They had trusted us by letting the proverbial Trojan Horse aboard, and we had stabbed them in the back. I hated everything about it. All the years I had spent in the service of others, for what? Even now, even as I struggled toward the exit from the air shaft that I knew could change the tide of this war I wanted to believe that humanity was good. I felt tears prick my eyes and I squeezed them shut to avoid rubbing them with my now dust-covered hands. The truth was that when you stripped us down to our baser instincts, we would turn against those who would help us faster than you could believe.