by Adam Moon
Collector Ship
Adam Moon
Collector Ship copyright © Adam Moon 2015
All rights reserved
Table of contents:
Chapter 1: David Cole
Chapter 2: Spaceship
Chapter 3: Fight
Chapter 4: Fetch the dog
Chapter 5: Diner from Hell
Chapter 6: The Team
Chapter 7: The Mission
Chapter 8: Kill Some Aliens
Chapter 9: Pit Stop
Chapter 10: Memories
Chapter 11: South
Chapter 12: Stupid Mistake
Chapter 13: Charleston
Chapter 14: Surprise Attack
Chapter 15: Join Number One
Chapter 16: Battle Planet
Chapter 17: Home
Chapter 18: Orbit
Chapter 19: New Teammate
Chapter 20: Ambassador Cole
David Cole
David Cole was a survivalist in every sense. If he was older he’d be called a lunatic but the fact that he was in his mid twenties made even less sense; young men shouldn’t be alone in the wilderness when the world has so much to offer.
David had a secret and because he wanted to stay anonymous he was forced to live off-grid. He’d moved into a cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin six months ago out of necessity. There were no cameras or pesky neighbors in his neck of the woods. There was no internet access or telephone lines, and the closest cell phone tower was miles away. It was the only way he could live if he wanted to survive.
He wanted to appear like a redneck bumpkin because he was anything but that. He was the product of a classified government program designed to mold elite super soldiers. He knew little about it beyond that. He didn’t know if it was the brainchild of some highly regarded senator or if it was funded by repurposed moneys. All he knew was that he was tortured beyond belief and his memory was periodically wiped with a chemical cocktail. Luckily he’d managed to escape before the program had run its course. And that was why he was living in the woods, eking out a meager survival.
On the plus side of things, with his memories wiped he barely knew what he was missing out in the world. He couldn’t miss a father he didn’t know or a mom whose face he couldn’t remember. He was a young man so maybe he even had children out there, waiting for him to come back home. He could only long for vague notions of family because all of the specifics had been removed from his mind by those bastards back at the program.
He’d cleared a few trees around his property for firewood last week and he was sitting on the biggest stump reading an old book he’d found in the cabin when he first moved in. The cabin had been abandoned, and for good reason; it was dilapidated, with the woods attempting to reclaim it. Most of its walls were held up by clinging vines that covered the entire thing. The windows were more spider web than glass. He worked on trying to make it more livable on a daily basis but it was an uphill struggle.
It wasn’t much of a home but it was the only home he’d ever known. He was just thankful he’d managed to find it in the first place or he'd be living out of a dumpster, or worse, recaptured by the program.
He had his rifle slung over his shoulder in case of bear attacks and a navy issue handgun just for the hell of it. His coffee had gone cold but that didn’t stop him from sipping from it every time he looked up from the book to scan his surroundings. He’d been living on a mixture of coffee, of which the cabin had been stocked with plenty, nuts and berries he foraged from the woods, and his own attempts at cooking which generally didn’t end well. He didn’t have a scale but he knew he’d lost at least fifteen pounds in the six months he’d been there.
He wondered how long he could keep living like this. He didn’t worry about survival; he worried about the tedium of the lifestyle. He should be out in the world forging a career and meeting his future wife. He yearned for such things but the program had stripped him of a real future. The program tried to turn him into a monster, but it wasn’t prepared when that same monster turned its teeth and claws against its creators and escaped. Three men and a woman were injured as he made his escape from the program’s military compound, and for what? To afford David Cole his pitiful existence, and now that he was living it, he knew it wasn’t a price worth paying.
He should have waited to escape until the time was right. He should have holstered his training and found a peaceful way to get out. But that was wishful thinking. Deep down he knew he'd taken the only opportunity that would ever present itself to him. Knowing that didn't make it any easier to sleep at night, though.
All he had to his name was the cabin, a truck he’d stolen in Milwaukee, and the German Sheppard dog that had been fast asleep in the back of the truck when he stole it. He considered bringing the dog back to its owner but he couldn’t risk the added exposure. It was a stupid mistake but one he was glad he’d made since that dog was a Godsend. Its tag had the name Benton inscribed, but David had taken to calling him Buddy. He was about two or three years old and as smart as a dog gets. He was a good companion for a loner stuck in the woods and as a bonus, he was an eager hunter.
Buddy ran from around the back of the cabin, looked past David and started to growl at the woods. He barked and then whimpered before scampering inside the house. David was still getting to know the dog, but he knew enough to be concerned by the odd behavior.
He heard a crash deep in the woods to the east. It was too loud to be a bear or deer. If it was the crack of a distant rifle he’d have to hunker down and hope the hunters didn’t stumble upon his cabin. But it didn’t sound like a shot. It sounded like a thunderclap.
He put his book down and stood up. He sniffed the air but nothing smelled out of place. He had a pair of state of the art binoculars but the trees were so thick they’d do him no good. He looked at the cabin, imagined the boredom that awaited him within, and decided to investigate the sound in the woods. He fetched his handheld taser – one of the few things he’d purchased with the little money he had - just so he didn’t have to rely on the deadly force of his handgun, and then he trekked off in search of the root of the commotion.
The fact that Buddy was so scared that he’d hidden somewhere in the cabin should have tipped him off that whatever made the sound was not worth investigating.
He didn’t get far when he realized he was woefully unprepared.
Spaceship
He saw silver through the trees first but the color was unlike anything he’d seen before. It shimmered like an oil slick and heat radiated from it so much so that he felt it on his face from a distance. He shielded his eyes and moved in for a closer look. Once he was able to take the entire object in, it made even less sense. It looked like a small building on it's side but it obviously wasn’t manmade because it hovered above the ground by several feet and made a sort of low but audible vibration. It sounded like it was humming. The structure was about two stories tall and three times as wide. He knew in that moment that he was staring at something extraterrestrial.
The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He knew he should run as fast and as far as he could but something intangible drew him nearer, like a moth to a flame.
Perhaps it was the doorway that appeared like a wraith that drew him close, or the fact that he had always dreamt of first contact with an alien race and his mind was racing with all of the possibilities. He knew to expect the unexpected and yet he was caught off guard anyway.
A swarm of gnats surrounded him. He tried to brush them away from his field of view but when his hand hit them he knew they couldn’t be gnats. They were hard and unyielding, like little floating BB’s. He tried to back away from them because they obscured his view of the mesmerizing ship but they followed him. And then they mov
ed in. The swarm grew thick like a cocoon. He tried to swat at the swarm but when he did it was like his hand was hitting needles. He grabbed a handful of the weird bugs and tried to squeeze them to death but they would not yield. One hovered close enough to his eye that he got a good look at it. It was metallic. It was not a bug, but a tiny robot; a nanobot that must've come from the ship.
He panicked, realizing he was out of his element despite his training. He struggled against the swarm but it had him completely under control. He felt himself rise into the air and then move forward across the ground towards the open door of the spaceship.
He screamed out but the cocoon was now solid enough that his voice was trapped inside with him. And then, as if by magic, the little metallic gnat-sized things left him. He gently fell to his feet as the swarm dispersed. But he wasn’t out of trouble yet, especially since he was inside the ship and the doorway behind him had already sealed shut.
Lights blinked on so bright that he was nearly blinded. He looked to his feet until they could adjust to the glare. Several lights strafed his body and he felt a breeze blow past his legs. Soon the breeze increased to a gale force, whipping his clothes and hair around. None of it made sense, even in the context of a first contact scenario. In fact, if it was first contact, where were all of the damn aliens?
He yelled over the wind, “Where are you?” but there was no response. “I am not a threat,” he lied. “Show yourself.”
The wind died down and a contraption was lowered from the high ceiling of the ship by the same swarm that had abducted him. It looked like a steel coffin. Then he looked all around and noticed the walls lined with similar coffin-like objects but of varying sizes. And they were all filled. The floating metal coffin came to rest ten feet in front of him, standing on end and a door opened revealing the inside. He expected to see an alien present itself but the coffin was empty. That scared him even more than the prospect of coming face to face with an extraterrestrial. He knew the coffin was to be his.
A tangle of thick cables and tubes erupted from within the coffin, propelled by those miniscule flying creatures. Before he could dodge them, one attached to the top of his head, making a suction sound as it fought for purchase. He pulled at it but his hand was slowly and deliberately moved aside by the swarm. A tube shot towards his face. His mouth was pried open and the tube slid three feet down his throat. Surprisingly he didn’t gag on it.
Two identical cables inserted themselves into his veins. One went into his carotid and the other ripped through his shoe and inserted between his toes.
And then he felt himself being lifted by the nanobots. He moved towards the open coffin just as a rush of information flooded his brain. He slammed his eyes shut and tried to scream but he couldn’t with the tube in the way. The thing attached to his head was relaying bizarre and alien info directly into his confused mind. He saw aliens of all shapes and sizes, and he suddenly knew tidbits of info about each one. He knew their weaknesses and strengths. He knew how they moved and what motivated them. At the same time, he felt a tickle deep in his brain like something was wriggling around in there trying to glean info from him about how he moved and his strengths and weaknesses. It felt strange but somehow exhilarating at the same time, like this was the beginning of something special. He was turned around by the swarm and backed into the coffin. He knew in that moment that the coffin was some sort of stasis pod. The door started to close when he realized he was being abducted, and forever. This was to be his last minute on planet Earth. But what did the aliens want, and who were they anyway? They couldn’t be those little nanobots, could they? No, those things seemed more like functional drones. Whoever was controlling them wasn’t showing his or her face.
Fight
Just as he was being placed in the coffin, he remembered he was still armed. The nanobots hadn’t disarmed him and they’d pay for that. He didn’t stand a chance of shooting them, but he still had his taser and if they behaved like human-made machines, he should be able to overload their circuits.
He struggled against them until he had his taser in hand. As soon as he switched it on, he knew it would work because they started to fly around erratically, releasing him from his bonds, dropping him to his feet.
But the ship wasn’t the right battleground for him. He didn’t have his bearings yet so he thrashed about wildly with the taser, swiping it through the thickest of the swarm. He ran deeper into the ship to put some distance from the quickly coalescing swarm when it solidified and attacked him.
He backed into a control panel of some kind and stabbed the air, hoping that the taser battery didn’t give out on him when he needed it the most. He flinched to his left as the swarm enveloped him and he accidentally made contact between the taser and the console, sending sparks flying and a tingle down his leg. He swooned but kept his feet, moving the taser out in an arc, swatting at the swarm like he was in a sword fight.
Suddenly the swarm fell at his feet like a cloud of heavy dust. Something had deactivated them and he knew it wasn’t his swordsmanship. Then he heard tiny clicks throughout the ship, one after the other. The entire ship, which had been hovering a few feet above the ground, dropped and landed with a dull thud.
Finally he realized what he’d inadvertently done; he’d overloaded the console and everything it controlled, which apparently included the little swarm of nanobots. He was thankful for that, but the click sounds sent a chill through his body. The console was responsible for more than the nanobots. Whatever else it controlled was now disabled too.
He stomped through the pile of robotic dust to investigate. As he approached the main chamber where the coffin-like pod was housed, he knew what had been making the click sounds. All of the other pods were now open. He’d accidentally released the locking mechanisms. He knew instinctively what that meant; pure chaos was free on Earth.
The front door of the ship was open to the world now. His memories, input by the cables from the ship, were still a little hazy but he knew enough to be very afraid. He knew that all of the pods had aggressive aliens locked within them.
The ship had supplied him with enough implanted memories that he was able to forge a decision. If he stayed in the ship any longer out of curiosity, he’d die horribly. He had to get away from the ship as soon as possible and buy enough time to come up with a plan of attack, because one thing was certain, these aliens weren’t the friendly type.
He was the only man on Earth who knew these creatures; he had to make sure he found a way to pass his newly acquired knowledge along before the alien’s exterminated mankind.
Several more pods clicked and opened up as he ran through the doorway. He pulled his handgun as he ran just in case he had to defend himself.
He knew that some of the creatures being released were fast enough to catch him if they wanted to so he didn’t waste any time.
It was odd that he had memories that weren’t his own. He had experience with the opposite, though. He knew what it was like to have his memories wiped from his mind. The intensive training he’d been involved in was brutal, made even more severe by the fact that his mind was wiped clean periodically. His short term memories from that time were all gone, save for a few that had managed to slip past the chemical cocktail they injected into him to strip him of everything but pure muscle-memory. He was trained to react reflexively, with no fear of failure. But that wouldn’t be possible if he was left with all of the memories of his failures as he learned to perfect each new technique they taught him. With those memories, he might hesitate. Without them, he had no idea he might fail, which meant his success rate rose.
His only memory of the program was of leaving it, with a few hazy faces that he couldn’t quite put a name to. When he escaped, he took the memories of his last week of training with him because they hadn’t yet wiped them. If he had a weakness, it was that he remembered too much from that last week. He remembered his fears and his failings. He remembered leaving all of the other recruits behind when he ran off li
ke a coward.
He was running again, but it was hardly a cowardly move this time. This time, it was his only option.
He felt his newly acquired memories of the aliens start to slip; perhaps another side effect of the memory wipes he’d endured was that these newly implanted memories wouldn’t have a chance to solidify. He concentrated and was able to resurrect a few but they were rapidly sliding away from him. That was not good. He was losing his advantage.
He heard the flapping of gigantic wings overhead so he ducked beneath the tree canopy and held his breath. He instantly knew that the creature overhead was one of the escaped aliens. And then a single memory came flashing back to him concerning the overhead alien. He knew its weakness was its hunger. It could barely go for more than a few minutes without eating. He knew he should follow it and wait for it to land to take it out, but he didn’t want to be its first Earthly meal so he waited until he could no longer hear the beat of its leathery bat-like wings. He noted the direction it flew and made sure to avoid taking the same land route.
A tremor shook the ground, traveling up his legs, setting his hair on end. He could only assume it was the reverberation of an explosion or the result of the battle that was surely raging around the ship. He knew that most of the alien warriors would zero in on his cabin as the only structure within miles. Maybe they’d go there searching for food, or burst in looking for a fight. And when they got there they'd find Buddy.
Fetch the Dog
He couldn’t imagine leaving his dog behind, despite the fact that they hadn’t been together for very long. His decision was aided by the fact that Buddy was his only personal connection. He had no family that he knew of, or any friends to speak of. Buddy was his pal and didn’t deserve to die at the hands of some vicious alien bastard.
He made a beeline for his cabin. He heard a crash far behind him, but whatever was causing the commotion was heading in another direction. He felt a vibration in the ground, assumed it was caused by the epic battle probably taking place around the ship, and ran even faster with the knowledge that time was against him.