Last Night on Earth

by James Peters

  “You swear you had nothing to do with it?” I asked.

  “That explosion put this entire mission in jeopardy. Trust me, when I find out who was responsible, I will make them pay.” Fayye tightened a paw into a fist.

  I stood and leaned against the table. “Whoever did it is still out there, and if they connect us to that team, we could be next. Keep in mind, Jekto is with us, and, no offense, but he arrived with them, so if he’s a target, we are too.”

  Jekto puffed out his chest, growling like an angry badger. “If anyone is brave enough to come after me, I pity their next of kin who tries to identify their remains! That goes for any of you if you think I was involved. Those people were my friends.”

  “Easy, big fellow. Nobody is accusing you of anything,” I said. “I’m just saying we may be safer for the time being, away from here.”

  Jekto crossed his four arms. “Then we launch.”

  “You heard the man,” I said, immediately regretting it.

  Ginn wagged a finger in my face. “You don’t make that call. I do.”

  I nodded in agreement. “My apologies. I just think we all agree waiting around to see if the migrun try to pin this on us is a bad idea.”

  Ginn paced around the room several times. She stopped and said, “I’ve made my decision.”

  “What’s your call?” I asked.

  “I expect we’re going to regret this, but we launch,” Ginn said. “We’ll work on a plan while we travel. If any of you cause trouble, I’m not above spacing you.”

  Everyone but Jekto and I left the room.“Is that bad?”

  “Spacing? Yes, that’s bad. How long can you live without an atmosphere?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe a minute.”

  “That’s because your skin is like paper. Dichelon skin is tough. My people have stories of our warriors floating for days in space before being found. No long-term effects, other than their nails turned purple.”

  “Don’t you need to breathe?”

  “My ancestors had to survive on a world with a thin atmosphere and strong storms. We auto-hibernate when air pressure drops to dangerous levels.”

  That could certainly come in handy. The rest of the crew had wandered off to find bunks or areas to claim as their own. My thoughts went back to Ginn and Jekto meeting. “Let me ask you. Would Ginn’s gun kill you?”

  “Not likely. It’d take several shots to penetrate my hide. If I were dumb enough to show her the same side as she was firing, I’d deserve death.”

  “Lucky you. What do you think it would do to me?”

  “Hard to say. You probably have a similar build to a holtian. I’ve seen a plasma gun remove a Holtian’s head once. I never laughed so hard in my life. It stood there convulsing for a solid ten seconds before falling over!” Jekto laughed and acted like his hands were searching for a missing head.

  “That’s comforting,” I said.

  “There are worse ways to die. Get me drunk some time, and I’ll tell you about them.” He walked away from me, turning back as he reached the doorway. “I hope they have something to eat on this barge. That and a bathroom properly equipped for me. Otherwise, things could get ugly.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  Jekto raised his head up proud and high.. “Round pellets. Thirty pounds or more apiece, dense as a stone.”

  “You could hurt somebody with one of those. That or yourself.” Jekto walked off without a response. I tried in vain to get the image of him crapping a cannonball out of my mind, wondering if he was serious or not. I did some quick estimates of his size compared to my own and what I’ve seen a buffalo leave behind and concluded he wasn’t joking. Thankfully, Rhuldan appeared at the doorway.

  “Are you all right? You have a pained look on your face,” he asked.

  “Nothing like I imagine Jekto gets.”

  “What?”

  “He told me he makes thirty-pound pellets.”

  “Yes. Dichelon’s are legendary for that. The bigger the droppings, the higher the pecking order in their society. That size would put him high in the hierarchy.”

  I rubbed my head. “Do they have some official measuring system?”

  “It goes by weight, or so I hear,” Rhuldan said. “This is grade-school stuff. Didn’t they teach you the basics?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Have you found your bunk?”

  “Haven’t left this room.”

  “Follow me. There’s a free room next to mine. It’s not first class, but it beats the grinkun dungeon.” He showed me to a doorway with rounded edges and a heavy latch.

  As he opened the entrance, sealed released and air hissed. I was surprised to see how thick the door was. Are all the doors here airtight? I walked inside to find a flat bed with a padded cushion, a bench I couldn’t move sitting before a table that folded out from one wall, another wall was completely reflective like the finest mirror.

  Rhuldan pressed a button on the side of the bed, and the top lifted, providing access to a storage area underneath. He then turned to the mirrored wall and said, “Current events.” The mirror changed into a screen displaying dozens of moving images, each accompanied by someone speaking about what was happening. I saw ships launching and aliens talking about them and how the war was affecting supplies in various sectors. I couldn’t comprehend all the information I was seeing, and I was overwhelmed, like a hundred people were talking to me at once.

  He pointed to one of the pictures and then moved his hands apart. That section expanded in size and filled the entire wall. A gray scaled turtle talked about a battle somewhere and how the migrun were making headway every day to eliminate the crystalline threat. Rhuldan watched for a moment and shook his head without making a sound. I saw concern in his eyes for an instant. He made a hand motion at the screen, and a new image replaced the news report. Two aliens who looked like furry puppets with eyes glued to the top of their heads started talking about getting along with your neighbors.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s a program for the kids. You should watch it. It will teach you a lot about our society, and the songs are catchy. You can pause the program by holding your palm up toward the screen. To start it, move your finger quickly from left to right. I’m going to work on some ideas to keep us from getting killed during this job.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I sat down to watch a green, four-eyed puppet try to steal a red furry slug’s food before getting blasted into a pile of smoking rubble, then he re-materialized, and they sang happily together:

  Never walk behind a flatulon if you have a sense of smell,

  Never deal with a dracnarian — you’ll know not what you sell.

  When you eat or drink or defecate, remember: wash your hands,

  Always bring your space suit, when you visit foreign lands.

  Most people don’t like snitches, parasites or lice,

  When you speak with your elders, remember to be nice.

  The migrun are our protectors against the crystal blight,

  If you steal somebody’s cookies, be ready for a fight.

  For the next several days, we traveled inside this ship called Sarge. I explored every area I was allowed inside, but I found a few doors I couldn’t open. I assumed there was a reason they didn’t want me in the “fusion reactor,” so I didn’t push my luck.

  Fayye, Rhuldan, and Ginn met for several hours a day discussing tactics. Slowhand mostly slept, hanging upside down from a horizontal bar near the cockpit, and Jekto kept to himself, eating like a platoon of soldiers who’d just marched double-time for a month. That boy could eat.

  I tried to follow the conversations and the ways they thought they could infiltrate the migrun base. Every plan seemed to end up in at least one of the three of them saying, “This is a suicide mission.”

  I sensed Ginn was avoiding me, for whatever reason, but I wasn’t exactly going out of my way to be around her, either. I went to my bunk and watched several hours of puppets
telling me not to lick a slime trail, what constituted a “bad touch,” and why I should always look both right and left before crossing a transit track. I was bored out of my gourd, so I paused the program and tried something. “Hey, Sarge, can you hear me?”

  “Five by five, soldier. What is your need?”

  I had trouble knowing where to look while talking to Sarge, so I just spoke up like I was talking to God. “Just needed someone to talk to. Do you have a minute?”

  “I have lots of minutes. I’m capable of concurrently carrying dozens of conversations without diminishing my ability to run the ship. What do you want to talk about, Private Lee?”

  “Have you been listening in on the team working on tactics?”

  “They have the Situation Room set to cloistered mode. I cannot listen in there.”

  I noticed his voice sounded like it was coming from a panel with dozens of holes in it, so I spoke to that. “But surely the conversation has carried on outside of that room.”

  “Aye, it has, Private. I’ve picked up a few bits and pieces.”

  “Are you familiar with the target location?”

  “Refinery base Khutanga.”

  “Yes. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Just the normal statistics. I haven’t intercepted any unusual communications from them.”

  “Wait, you can listen to them too?”

  “Of course. I have the highest level of migrun clearance. Just this morning, I picked up a message they were having difficulty with their waste treatment facility. A team of two nebatian repair engineers were requested. Their ship is several days out.”

  I pressed two fingers on the panel he spoke from. “Sarge, you are like finding a vein of gold in a silver mine. If you had a face, I’d kiss you!”

  “Hey, now, none of that talk is allowed in this man’s army. But I’m glad I could be of assistance. I hope this mission aids in our efforts to kick some crystal skulls!”

  “Me too,” I said before running to find the crew. I found Jekto in the mess with a pile of something orange and chunky sitting on a platter before him. “Come to the Situation Room. I have our answer.”

  Jekto raised one eyebrow toward me, shrugged, and shoveled food into his mouth. Orange gobs dribbled down his chin as a huge tongue circled his lips to snatch any remaining morsels. Some of the goo dripped from his golden horn, and he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  I found Slowhand hanging from his perch in the cockpit. “Hey, Slowhand, come with me. I have our answer.”

  Slowhand opened one eye just a sliver. With the speed of a dying turtle, he raised a middle finger in the air. The message was clear.

  “Fine. You’ll find out later, you lazy sloth.” I left him there. Everyone else argued around the table. Plans had been written on glass-like boards and crossed out multiple times, and someone had drawn dead bodies in fine detail next to several options. Fayye stood toe to toe with Ginn, both of them speaking faster than I could follow and in tones to send a chill down my spine. Rhuldan had a look of disgust on his face that made me wonder if he might kill both of them, just for some peace and quiet.

  “Excuse me,” I said. Nobody responded. I doubt they could even hear me. I glanced over to see Jekto watching me. He had a dopey-looking grin on his face, the orange goo still on the side of his golden horn. I pointed toward it and made a motion of wiping the side of my own nose. He didn’t understand my pantomime, so I shrugged and walked toward Ginn and Fayye, placing a hand on each one’s shoulders, pushing them apart. “Ladies, I said excuse me.” A silence fell upon the room. It was the quiet you hear just before a gunfight begins. I knew I had to talk fast. “I have our solution.”

  “You have our solution?” Ginn asked. “Unless it involves you and all your friends volunteering to space yourselves, I sincerely doubt it’s worth listening to.”

  “Give him a chance,” Fayye said.

  “Thank you. Now I don’t pretend to understand what Sarge is, but somehow, he’s able to listen in on the base we’re trying to infiltrate.”

  Ginn crossed her arms. “That’s impossible.”

  “Then explain how he knew they had just requested an engineering team to repair their waste systems. He said something about having the highest level migrun clearance, and two nednations are on their way to fix it. Something like that.”

  Rhuldan shook a bony finger in the air. “Ginn, it’s time to come clean about Sarge. Where did he come from?”

  Ginn’s face paled, and she sighed. “Fine. We’re already in over our heads. When Solondrex and I were putting together this ship, we needed an A.I. to run it. We couldn’t find one capable for what we needed on the open markets…”

  Rhuldan said, interrupting, “I’m assuming you mean the black markets?”

  “Yes. Everyone knows trading in A.I.s is prohibited. We had the ship pieced together, but it wasn’t space worthy without an advanced controller. We ran multiple simulations trying to control the ship manually. We could fly it for a while and even land it. But we needed a ship to make Null Space jumps. Without an A.I. to make those calculations, we were more likely than not to die on our first jump. Then we got word of a destroyed migrun dreadnought, the Zammarius. It had been damaged beyond repair in a border skirmish, and the migrun towed it to one of their junkyard asteroids. We hired on as temporary scrappers until one day, Solondrex was able to phase shift himself aboard the ship when no one was looking. We stole the A.I. canister, snuck it into our personal cases, got ourselves fired for insubordination and sent back to Panadaras.”

  “And you installed this illegally obtained A.I. into this ship,” Rhuldan said. “Which would incur a penalty of no less than death, if caught.”

  “No less than death?” I replied. “What’s worse than death?”

  Rhuldan’s eyes squinted a dire warning. “The migrun can be quite creative when it comes to punishment. Trust me, they have penalties worse than death.”

  “Their penalties are only a concern if we get caught, and I don’t intend for that to happen,” Ginn said.

  “You realize that each of us, just by being aboard this vessel, would be considered guilty of high crimes against the migrun, don’t you?” Rhuldan asked.

  Ginn’s voice softened. “Solondrex and I did what we had to do. Besides, we didn’t invite any of you aboard, remember?”

  “Understood. In any case, there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. Meantime, can someone explain to me Sarge’s memory problems?” I asked.

  “A dreadnought class destroyer has memory banks as large as this entire ship. Sarge’s system controls and personality are hardcoded. Depending upon how much data he’s processing, his short-term memory can last for a dozen or so minutes, to a little over an hour. Solondrex has grafted into his system an identity file for each of us, so he doesn’t try to attack us every time we board. Other than that, he can’t remember much of anything.”

  Jekto grunted. “This is getting boring. The solution is simple. We intercept the engineer’s ship coming to fix their waste system, and we take their ship and their places. That gets us on the base without being shot down. Once inside, we bash skulls together, take the prize, and leave the system. It’ll be fun.”

  “Let’s try it with a little more finesse, but the general plan is solid,” Fayye said.

  “How do we intercept the other ship?” I asked.

  Ginn spoke like she was trying to convince herself. “If Sarge still has the clearance you said he does, we can have him summon them to us with military override authority. We’ll work through the details, but this is the best plan we’ve got. There’s a good chance some of us might survive it.”

  Something moved behind me. Slowhand peeked into the room, his fur flattened on one side like he had bed-head all across his body. “What did I miss?”

  “Just this.” I raised a single finger in his direction.

  Chapter Nine

  Engineering Duty

  Ginn grabbed my arm, holding it under so
me cylindrical device that looked torturous as if it might crush the bone if tightened too much. “Hold still. This will sting just a little.”

  “What is it going to do?”

  “It’s a smart ink printer. You haven’t been imprinted before, so if you’re going to be part of the team, you need this and a few other additions.”

  “Additions?”

  “Relax. Now turn your wrist up.”

  The device clamped down on my arm so hard, I couldn’t have moved it if I’d wanted to. I felt a strange burning sensation as if thousands of tiny needles were puncturing my skin. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold back any sign of pain or fear. The pain finally stopped, the clamps released, and my arm had a small black band tattooed on it. “What the hell? Why did you have to brand me?”

  “You aren’t branded. Just watch.” The black disappeared from my sight.

  “Neat trick. Is there a reason for it?”

  “Just wait. Now hold still while I inject you a couple of times. First, let me see your ear.” She pulled a tubular device from a toolkit and touched a few buttons on it. A light came on the device. She inserted it into my ear, and I felt a sharp pinch. She replaced the tip, and repeated the procedure, but this time in my cheek.

  “What’s with the doctor’s exam?”

  “I’ve implanted two transceivers in you. Let’s test them.” She touched my arm where the black band had been, and words appeared in multiple colors on my arm. Ginn touched the word “Comms,” and a list of names appeared. When she saw her own, she pressed it and the words turned a bright green color. “Wait until I leave, then talk.” She walked out of the room.

  “What should I talk about? How I don’t enjoy being poked and prodded?”

  “You’re coming in clear,” Ginn’s voice sounded as if she were right beside me. I turned to see if she’d snuck up on me, but she was nowhere to be found. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the cockpit. Solondrex has a message for you. Oh, I can’t translate that into words.”