Eclipsing Vengeance

by Jeremy Michelson

  Buck turned to leave the little room and its horrible window into outer space. I sucked a breath of the rancid seaweed stinking air in the alien spaceship we was in. I put my hand on Buck’s shoulder. He jerked around, coming within a fraction of an inch of pointing that sawed off shotgun of his at my belly. His eyes blazed.

  I knew better than to touch him, but sometimes I had to get his attention. Buck didn’t like nobody to touch him. It’s been like that ever since he came back from them blue aliens.

  “What.” he said. It was more of a growl than a word.

  “Why’re aliens stealing oil trains, Buck?” I asked, “How about you tell me a bit more ‘bout what’s going on here?”

  “Pretty plain, don’t ya think?” Buck said, “You’re the one with the fancy college learning degree. Figure it out.”

  He was still kinda glaring at me, but at least the shotgun wasn’t getting closer to my gut. The fact that I went to college always kind of grated on Buck. The fact that it was community college and all I got was general business degree didn’t matter. I was still some fancy college boy. Even though most of the alumni at my institute of higher learning drove pickups to school and had to knock manure off their boots before they went to class.

  Sometimes I was surprised Buck could stand up straight with that gol durned giant chip on his shoulder.

  But I put my brain to the question I asked him. I heard someone say there weren’t no such thing as a stupid question, but then, that someone wasn’t Buck. His feeling on stupid questions was to glare at you until you got your brain off its lazy ass and thought it through yourself.

  “Oil’s valuable,” I said.

  He didn’t say nothing. Just kept glaring. Okay, yeah, that was stupid. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

  “Oil’s valuable to aliens,” I said.

  “Getting warmer, bro,” Buck said.

  I rubbed my face. The rancid seaweed smell of the place made it hard to think.

  “There’s something special about this oil,” I said, “Something special about the oil Corbin’s pulling out of that North Dakota shale.”

  “Bingo,” Buck said. He waved a hand in the general direction of the cargo hold. “That shit is like diamond studded gold wrapped in platinum to these a-holes.”

  “But why? What’s so special about it?”

  Buck gave a shrug. He turned his head to the open doorway. “Don’t know yet,” he said, “Maybe they use it to grease their undercarriages. Maybe they mix it with their booze. Who the hell knows.”

  “So what are we gonna do? Take over the ship and turn it around? Head back to Earth?” I asked.

  Buck snorted. “That won’t solve nothing.”

  He tensed and swung the shotgun up. A shadow appeared on hallway floor outside the door.

  “Get down,” Buck said.

  I flattened myself to the floor and covered my head with my hands. Experience has taught me not to linger or ask questions when Buck says those two words.

  Something sizzled over my head. Then Buck’s shotgun roared and something cried out in that crazy turkey gobble language. Through the ringing in my ears I felt heard something thud to the floor.

  Buck grabbed the back of my coat collar and yanked me up. I staggered to my feet. The room was thick with gun smoke. Which smelled a helluva lot better than that rotten ocean stench.

  In the door was the body of one of them Blinky aliens. Its three yellow eyes stared up at the ceiling. The front of its green coveralls was dotted with orange. Blood?

  “Holy crap, Buck, did you have to kill it?” I asked.

  Buck pushed me toward the door. “Ain’t dead,” he said, “My shells are loaded with alien tranq. He’ll wake up with an ass kicking headache in a couple hours.”

  “But–”

  I wanted to know where he got stuff to knock out aliens. But he was pushing me out the door. I stepped over the–hopefully not dead–alien body, out into the hallway. Buck jumped through the door, with his shotgun up.

  Just then a siren thing started whooping and yellow lights flashed from the ceiling. Buck gave them a sour look.

  “Crap, they know we’re here,” he said. He gave me a narrow eyed look. “You and your lollygagging. Come on.”

  He started off running down the hallway. Toward what, I had no idea. It took some cajones to try to take over a big ass alien spaceship with just two guys. Especially when one of them was near to useless in a fight like me.

  You keep Buck out of trouble, you hear me?

  Yeah, momma, I hear you.

  I ran after Buck, wondering how I was gonna keep him out of trouble this time.

  The hallway ended at set of double doors. Buck skidded to a halt. The doors slid open. A pair of Blinkys in red coveralls stood there. They had some type of gun thing in their oversized monkey paws. Buck rolled to the floor and gave them a blast from his shotgun. They flew back against into the room and hit the back wall.

  One of them got off a shot from his gun thing. White light sizzled past me and splashed off the wall. My balls tried to crawl up to my throat as I realized the blast thing had melted a chunk of the metal wall. Thing woulda torched me like chicken in a volcano if it had touched me.

  “Hurry up, we don’t got no time,” Buck said.

  He yanked the two shotgun blasted aliens out of the little room they was in. I bent down to pick up one of the blaster thingies.

  “No,” Buck said, “You don’t know how to use it.”

  I picked it up anyway. He didn’t get to tell me what to do all the time. He just rolled his eyes and shook his head. I stepped over the knocked out aliens and into the little room. It had curved metal walls.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  Buck pulled his stubby magic wand from his coat. “Elevator,” he said.

  That’s when I saw there was a panel by the open door with buttons. He bent to it with his little wand. I heard some turkey gobbling and looked up to see half a dozen gray aliens in red coveralls waddling our way. They was a ways down the hallway, but they all had them melty blaster thingies. Hard to say what their expressions were, but I was gonna guess it wasn’t happiness on their faces.

  “Uh, Buck, got company coming,” I said.

  He peeked around the edge of the door. “You’re the one with the plasma gun, slow ‘em down,” he said, “Just don’t kill any of them, hear?”

  Easy for him to say. I grew up in rural Montana. I knew my way around firearms. Pappy gave me my first twenty-two rifle when I was seven, and I could shoot the tail off a squirrel at fifty yards. I was expected to contribute a rabbit or a grouse to the family dinner pot every week. And I did.

  But a twenty-two was a lot different than an alien plasma whats-it that melted metal walls. I fumbled with the dang thing and told Buck to hurry up whatever he was doing.

  “This is the elevator to the bridge,” he said, “Security’s a bit better on this one. Just keep ‘em occupied.”

  The warbling turkey sounds was getting closer. I looked up from fumbling with the gun to see them only a few feet away. They moved faster than I thought them stubby legs would carry ‘em. I waved the blaster at them and yelled at them to stay back.

  They stopped and raised their own blasters and gobbled something back at me.

  It didn’t feel like we was having productive communications on either side.

  One of the red coveralled aliens broke away from the pack and pointed his blaster at me. He gobbled something. Probably something like put the gun down or I’ll blast your ass.

  Buck poked his head around the edge of the doorway and gobbled something back at the alien. I looked down at him like he’d grown a third eyeball on his head.

  “Did you just tell him something?” I said.

  “Get outa the door,” Buck said.

  I spun to the side, just as a bolt of white light sizzled past me. It melted a hole in the wall. I stared at the dripping metal, cooling down to red hot as it ran down to the floor.


  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I told him his mother was a whore who never saw his daddy’s face,” Buck said, “Got it.”

  The door slid shut. The angry gobbling sounds went blessedly silent.

  “How’d you know to say that?”

  Buck stood up, bushing off his coat. “Works in every language, pretty much,” he said.

  Which didn’t answer my question. I didn’t have no time to ask it again, cause the elevator lurched upward with a whine. Sparks flew out from the melted hole in the wall. The elevator stank like burned electrical wiring.

  The elevator went so fast it near squashed me to the floor. I stumbled and noticed Buck had himself braced in the corner.

  “These boys is used to high acceleration,” he said.

  Something he coulda told me before he pushed the go button. There was a whole lotta things he coulda told me before taking me on this fool trip. It was pretty obvious now that he knew just which aliens was stealing the oil. And maybe why, too. He had some sorta plan, but I was only get it in little pieces when certain things came up.

  I remember a ways back when I first started insisting on following Buck on these dang adventures of his. He gave me one of his patented narrow-eyed looks of distrust and disgust and asked me why.

  Because momma worries about you, and she told me to look after you, I said.

  At first he just gave a little snort like he was laughing at me. But then he saw I was serious. His look softened a bit. Momma should be more worried about you, little brother, he said.

  It gave me a little catch in my throat. Sure, I was the baby, but I was still expected to look after my big brother. Wasn’t it usually the other way around? I stared him down and told him he needed me, whether he knew it or not. Needed me to take care of the practical stuff, like making sure the electric bill got paid on his trailer and he had food in his fridge. Buck was so single minded focused on the aliens sometimes he plum forgot to eat.

  It was after one of Buck’s “secret” missions that momma took me aside and gave me a talking to that still had my ears ringing years later. He’d come back so thin we could see his bones like he was just a bit of skin laid over a skeleton. He wouldn’t tell what happened, but that was when momma made it clear that I had to go where he went.

  You make sure he eats a good meal at least once a day, you hear?

  Yeah, momma, I still hear.

  Even now, as we was rocketing up in some alien death elevator, I had some granola bars and beef jerky stashed in the pockets of my thick winter coat. At some point I’d peel one of the bars, stick it in Buck’s hand and tell him to eat.

  I’d done it before. And if I survived the day, I expected to do it again.

  The elevator screeched to a halt in a shower of sparks and a jerk that launched me toward the ceiling.

  I lost hold of the plasma gun in mid air. Buck grabbed it. He was in the air, too, but he was poised like a cat to land on his feet. I was poised to land on my face.

  By the time my face hit the floor, Buck was firing at the the double doors. Hot metal splashed an inch from my nose. I skittered back, a little girl scream ripping from my throat.

  Buck kicked the door and it flew outward. The honking siren and yellow flashing lights hit me. I got a glimpse of a bunch of Blinkys in blue coveralls standing in front of a bunch of TV screens.

  Buck dropped the plasma blaster, and whipped up his shot gun. Cranked out three quick blasts. Blinkys warbled and fell to the floor. A wave of rancid seaweed and gun smoke smell run over me.

  Before I could do more than whimper, Buck jumped through the door and let off a couple more shotgun blasts. I heard more bodies thud to the floor. Then things was quiet except for the blatting alarm.

  I got to my feet and maneuvered my way through the half melted door. The edges were still hot and I yelped as the back of my hand brushed a fiery spot. Buck gave me a look like I was an idiot, and pulled fresh shells from his zebra stripe duster. I sucked the back of my hand while he pushed the shells into his shotgun.

  I took a look around the bridge. It sure looked all space shippy, with computer screens showing spacey things and colored buttons on panels beneath the screens. There was a big screen at the front of the bridge that showed a grid and some curving lines in different colors. Buck saw me looking at it.

  “They was plotting out courses for their space jump,” he said, “I got ‘em before they could leave the solar system.”

  I looked down at the Blinkys spread out on the floor. They all had their purple tongues lolling out. I watched and saw a steady rise and fall from their chests. I was gonna assume that was breathing. Might been something else. For all I knew, they had their lungs in their asses.

  “Do they have some kinda warp drive, like Star Trek?” I asked.

  Buck shook his head. He nudged one of the Blinkys with his foot. This one was bigger than the other and had gold lines running down the sides of his coveralls. He also had a feathery purple crest running over the top of his head. Was this one the captain, maybe?

  “None of the aliens have a proper space drive,” Buck said, “They have some near light drives, but nothing faster. Takes these assholes forever to gets anywhere.”

  That didn’t make no sense to me. How could these aliens be coming and going from our planet if they didn’t have fancy space drives?

  Buck must have sensed my confusion because he sighed and explained it to me.

  “The aliens have way stations,” he said, “Bases they’ve set up at and between stars. Takes them months, sometimes years to get places. Sometimes they’ll put crews into deep sleep and send them off into the dark for really long missions.”

  I tried to wrap my head around it. It seemed too big, too unwieldy to work on such a scale.

  “Don’t they have a government?” I asked, “How’s it run with everything taking so long? Folks who’s in power would be long outa power by the time ships got places. Things would change. Hell, whole planets could get bombed out of existence and there’d still be battleships out hunting in a war that’s over. Like them Japanese soldiers on those islands didn’t know WWII was over.”

  Buck gave a nod. “Happens, yeah, but not as much as you might think,” he said, “You see, some alien figured out a long time ago how to send information faster than light. So their home worlds can communicate with them ships out on the frontier. Though if a ship captain decides to go rogue, weren’t much could be done about it.”

  It weren’t a happy thought. I pictured pirate space ships roaming the stars, taking what they wanted and–

  “Hey, that’s what these guys are, aren’t they?” I asked, “They’re pirates.”

  Buck went over to one of the button consoles. His fingers tapped out something and the screen changed into lines of symbols. Some kind of alien writing.

  “You could say that,” Buck said, “Their registry log is forged.”

  “Their what? And how do you know that?” I asked.

  I was getting a feeling in the pit of my stomach that there was more to Buck’s alien hunting than I knew. I watched him run his fingers over the alien keyboard like he’d been doing it all his life. And I didn’t think he even knew how to use a normal Earth keyboard, much less an alien one.

  “Buck,” I said, “What the hell is going on? I’m getting a feeling this ain’t just getting even for Corbin.”

  “It’s getting even for a lot of stuff,” Buck said, “Wrong is wrong, no matter what planet they’re from.”

  “Are you working for someone else other than Corbin?” I asked.

  Buck shot me a glance that told me all I needed.

  “You are, you son of a bitch,” I said, “Who the hell is it and how much are they paying you? They are paying you aren’t they? Jesus, are they at least putting it in a bank account for you?”

  Buck shook his head and tapped some buttons on the console. The blatting stopped. So did the flashing yellow lights. It was a relief.

  �
�Settle down, Roy,” Buck said, “You need to believe me when I say the less you know, the better.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and gave him my best impression of mama’s Look. He ignored it. He’d always been good at that.

  “Don’t you give me none of that, Buck,” I said, “I’m getting pretty tired you mushrooming me. So how about you stop keeping me in the dark and feeding me bullcrap?”

  Buck leaned down at the computer screen he was working at. His fingers flew over the keys, clackity clacking them. It was all I could do to keep from taking a swing at him. All these years I’d been doing stuff for him, looking things up on the internet when he need, booking airplanes and rental cars. And here he was running some alien spaceship computer like he’d been born to it.

  He stood up sudden like and whirled around on me. He gave me a quick up and down, then shook his head. That just made me madder. Sure, I wasn’t tall and skinny like him, but I wasn’t bad to look at. I didn’t have no trouble getting dates from gals. Not that I had much time for it these days.

  Buck took off his black cowboy hat and spun it my way. I caught it and gave him a what the hell look. Man never took off his hat. I swear he slept with it on. Then he did something that surprised me even more.

  He took off his zebra stripe duster and tossed it my way.

  It surprised me so much I almost let it drop to the metal floor.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “Sorry little brother,” Buck said, “Put ‘em on. I’ll explain later.”

  I stared down at the hat and coat. Would they even fit me? “Buck, what–”

  “Just do it!” he shouted.

  It was pappy’s old tone of command. The one that didn’t work so good on Buck, but did wonders on me. Lickity split I had the hat on my head and the duster round my shoulders, my arms slipping through the sleeves. The duster actually fit pretty good. It was heavy, though, with all them shells and weapons and whatever else Buck stashed in there. The bulk of it weighed on my shoulders. It felt strange…and somehow powerful.

  The hat was a little tight, but not bad. I pulled it low over my eyes. I wished I had a mirror. Did I look badass like Buck did? Maybe I could get him to take a picture with my phone.