by Orion, W. J.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter One: The Others
Chapter Two: Two Aliens, Two Guys, and a Girl Walk into a Gymnasium
Chapter Three: A Little Nosh, a Little News
Chapter Four: Lock and Load (Only with Ear Protection)
Chapter Five: See You Soon
Chapter Six: Knights of the Conference Room Table
Chapter Seven: People Willing to Pick Up a Wrench
Chapter Eight: Meanwhile, in the Depths of Space
Chapter Nine: Fifty Gallons for Free
Chapter Ten: I Don’t Exactly Fit In
Chapter Eleven: Baba Ganoush
Chapter Twelve: For Realsies
Chapter Thirteen: Five Versus Three
Chapter Fourteen: Yelling on the Bridge
Chapter Fifteen: Trade You a Red Pickup Truck for Your Spaceship
Chapter Sixteen: Criss-Cross Applesauce
Chapter Seventeen: Diplomacy, Version 1.0
Chapter Eighteen: Unity, or a Lack Thereof
Chapter Nineteen: Diplomacy, Version 2.0
Chapter Twenty: Star-Crossed Lovers
Chapter Twenty-One: The Handoff (Sans User’s Manual)
Chapter Twenty-Two: What Do You Get a Seventeen-Year-Old for Their Birthday?
Chapter Twenty-Three: Well, She Flew at Least Once, so We Have That
Chapter Twenty-Four: If You’re Gonna Forget Something, Make Sure It Isn’t the Toilet
Chapter Twenty-Five: Trader Joe Spills the Beans
Chapter Twenty-Six: One Last Rendezvous
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Nexus
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Hello, I’m Yasmine Whitten
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Make Your Case
Chapter Thirty: Interference, or a Lack Thereof
Chapter Thirty-One: The Enemy Gets a Vote, Too
Chapter Thirty-Two: Fish in a Barrel
Chapter Thirty-Three: Heroes and Villains
Chapter Thirty-Four: You Always Go Full Cyborg
Chapter Thirty-Five: Today’s Deal of the Day is Two-For-One Plasma Rain
Chapter Thirty-Six: Is it Mutiny If the Jerk Already Running the Ship Switches Sides?
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Twelve Doors Close
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Diplomat’s Ride
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Boogeyman and the Devil Walk into a Courtyard
Chapter Forty: Mentioned Earlier That the Enemy Gets a Vote, Right?
Chapter Forty-One: No
Chapter Forty-Two: She Is the Storm
About the Author
Dedication
Patreon Patrons
Chapter One
The Others
They came from above the sky.
They took the water.
Most of them left.
Those who remained meddled and murdered, though some were kind and helped.
There were others, too: beings from beyond the borders of Earth’s tiny solar system and they, too, had a stake in how the survivors of Earth fared.
For better and for worse.
Chapter Two
Two Aliens, Two Guys, and a Girl Walk into a Gymnasium
“How’s the leg?” Yasmine asked Knox.
Knox lifted the leg that had been severed by a crab plasma blast off the bed. The two women were in the room in Shant the council had given Knox to heal in. Knox wanted her own space separate from the house her fellow Monoliths had. Her room was one floor below Yasmine’s.
“It’s healing as well as I think it could,” the feisty woman said with a sigh. “That’s what I get for leaving my leg in front of a crab with a vendetta against you.” She rested the bandaged leg down with a wince.
“I’m very sorry,” Yasmine said. “I would’ve done it all different had I known so many people were going to get hurt. I would’ve run as far into the wastes as I could’ve and never looked back.
“Don’t give me that crap,” Knox said. “I don’t believe in fate, but everything that went down, happened for a damned good reason. If the loss of one of my hooves is the price I have to pay for humanity to get even a little bit even against the squids, then so be it. I’d give both legs if it meant we had a chance at getting some of our water back.”
“Trader Joe seems to think there’s a chance, so start selling your spare shoes. He’s obsessed with me. He, Trey, Brent, and my uncle have been off going over what to do next since last week.”
“All dudes? Do they not like women?”
“I… I think they all like women. I mean, Trey is like, a colony of squid creatures inside a robotic suit with no real gender, I don’t think; and I really can’t say what Trader Joe’s deal is but I think whatever he is, they all like girls,” Yasmine pondered. “Generally.”
“You need to be there, in that meeting.”
“Why? I’m content to help pick up the settlement. There’s so much damage after the attack and we lost guards, so I’m taking shifts at the gates to help out.”
“Nonsense. Non. Sense. The only reason any of this stuff happened is because of you. You’re like… you’re like a catalyst, Yaz. You’re smart, you’re a good planner, and people trust you. They follow you. You need to be a part of those meetings. If they say you don’t belong, you show them that pistol of yours and you tell them they can kiss you where the sun doesn’t shine. Generally.”
“You mean my butt. You want me to tell them they can kiss my butt.”
“Uh, yeah. That’s what that expression means, kid. Go, now. Leave me to heal. Bernie is stopping in later with some fresh greens from the Tower. I’m gonna eat a bowl of fresh spinach, and take the antibiotics Dr. Sonneborn gave me, maybe one of the painkillers too, and Bernie and I are going to play some cards.”
“Living the dream,” Yasmine said.
“Living,” Knox corrected. “I’m living. After everything we’ve been through, I’m overjoyed that I get cards with Bernie.”
Doesn’t sound that bad, when you think about the alternative.
The men’s club Yasmine realized she was being excluded from selected the old elementary school’s small gymnasium as their meeting place. Blown half open thirteen years ago by the alien squids in their crab-like war vehicles, the dusty, canvas-covered school now had no purpose in Shantytown. Yaz had heard Brent and Kim talking about one day repurposing the classrooms into apartments, but with the recent attack on the settlement it seemed unlikely that anyone would want to move to the town.
Yasmine entered the gymnasium via an opening in the outer wall, her boots stepping over the toppled, burnt bricks. Once under the shade of the canvas draped over the open roof, she felt immediate relief from the brutal sun. She pulled her old baseball cap off her head and tugged down the bandana she had covering her mouth and nose.
“Yasmine!” Brent called out to her with a smile. He stood at the middle of the court in a loose circle of strange characters, but did so with ease in the stance of his large, wide frame.
Brent was the tall, thick, black guy wearing khakis and a brown button-down shirt. Across his chest was a pump shotgun. The weapon hung from a strap and had done so since Yasmine’s arch-enemy squid brought hell down on Shant in its search for vengeance. At his side stood the long, lanky, entirely fabric-wrapped Trader Joe. Under his goggles and new (yet decrepit) fedora, Yasmine knew he wasn’t human. What he was, beyond being an alien telepath that terrified the squids in crab vehicles, she didn’t know.
The one crab that Brent no longer terrified ‘stood’ beside him. Trey (on account of the 333 colonial citizens in his… presence) rode inside his unique, experimental-science chassis. As large as a polar bear, as white as one (where the dirt had been rubbed away), and made out of some kind of synthetic
material that somehow managed to repair itself, given time and raw organic materials, the vehicle containing the tiny fish tank filled with telepathic, bioelectrogenic cephalopods was armed to the teeth (or in this case, a cluster of sensors, lasers, and plasma weapons mounted above a dense bunch of tentacles used to manipulate the world). It really did look like a strange crab, especially with all the holes and burn marks still repairing over time.
The last member of the circle was her sole surviving family member, Caleb Ring (also known as Baron Monolith). A giant leather-jacket-wearing ex-fireman with a shaved head and a massive machine gun hanging over his back, he smiled at Yasmine and she couldn’t help but smile back.
“Welcome to the fourth official meeting of the Old Rooster’s Club,” her uncle said. “Though if you’re gonna start coming we’re gonna need a different name.”
She crossed the faded lines on the basketball court until she reached the group at the center circle, ignoring her uncle. She waved at Trey, who waved back with a handful of his mechanical tendrils.
“Hey, Joe,” she said to the tall alien.
“Good day, Yasmine. It is good to see you.”
“Are you pissed at me?” her uncle asked. “You never fail to say hi to me.”
“Sort of?” she answered. “Can I be honest with you guys?” Between the verbal yesses and the nods, they all indicated that she should indeed be honest, so she continued. “I thought about this, and you’re all gathered here to figure out what to do next, right? And it’s all guys and, seeing as how I was a big part of all this happening, it seemed like I should be a part of this. Not to mention, Shant is a demarchy, right? So, like, there should be a council of people making whatever decisions you’re making here, not just a group of older, powerful men.”
“To play the Devil’s advocate, Yasmine, I am not a man, nor is Trey, and our mutual ages aren’t comparable to human maturity or lifespan. Your point, however, is made,” Trader Joe said.
“We, uh, yeah,” Caleb started. “You should be here, sure. I guess we all just fell into old habits after the big battle. You shouldn’t have been overlooked, and I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, we haven’t done much planning yet. Lots of trying to figure out how to get Trey an audible voice so we can talk to him easily.”
“Are you still using that scanning laser to write your speech?”
“Yeah,” Trey wrote on the floor with the flashing red laser. When she finished reading, the laser turned off, and the words disappeared.
“Does seem cumbersome,” Yasmine said.
“I can translate with my mind,” Trader Joe offered, “but it makes Trey uncomfortable to have me listen into his thoughts, and then we have the issue of needing to clarify for whom I am speaking at any given moment.”
“Are you ever going to tell us what you are?” Yaz asked him.
“Yes, it is certain to come up in good time. Your friend Trey already knows, of course, but I suspect what he has been told by his people is not the total truth about my people. But yes, I’ll tell the story of what I am to you all soon enough. Right now, that story isn’t crucial, and will only distract.”
“Ooooookay,” she said. “So what’s the plan now? I mean, what’s the plan to plan?”
They all laughed.
“We need to make a hard choice,” Brent said. “Right after the attack on Shant, Trey shared that he knew of a resistance cell with a ship that could take us to space. We could go after the water, try to bring some of it back. Worst case, take out a few of their ships, maybe–get some payback.”
“I remember. I was the one he told that to.”
“That’s an option. Other options include relocating Shant. Picking up and moving to where the crabs might not know where we are. We could all go the Baron’s tower as well. He said he can make room for us. All of us,” Brent added.
“Mighty generous of you,” she said to her uncle.
“Brent took care of my niece. Taking care of the village he lives in is a fair trade,” Caleb explained with a shrug.
“And we can do nothing. Stay here, and stay the course,” Brent finished.
“Why is choosing from those options a hard choice?” Yasmine asked. “Doing nothing isn’t a choice at all. Our world has no future unless we do something drastic to fix it. We have to get that water back, or there’s no point in doing anything else you listed off.”
The two men and the two aliens exchanged looks Yasmine couldn’t quite get the gist of.
“What?” she asked.
“I mean, you can’t get much more right than that,” Brent said. “We’d been sitting here, trying to weigh the pros and cons of those options, plus a few more, without looking at the big picture.”
“Different generation,” her uncle said. “Born into the wastes. We see it and think about how we can preserve what we still have or fix this to be the way it was. She looks at it and already sees there’s nothing left to preserve and no way to get back what she’s been told about her whole life, but never lived.”
“So if that’s the decision, then we’re heading north?” Brent said.
“I think you’re staying,” her uncle said. “You got a wife and kids to take care of. Shant needs people of your caliber as well.”
“My caliber?” Brent said with a laugh.
“High caliber people for high caliber problems,” Caleb said. “Trader Joe, what are you wanting: stay here or go north to find the ship with Trey and me?”
“And me,” Yasmine almost shouted. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“In that case,” said the goggle-clad alien with the fancy (yet decrepit) hat, “I will go wherever Yasmine goes. I have a feeling good things will happen if we can keep the gang together.”
“Speaking of gangs, I think we’re pretty clearly more ‘Bloods-ish,’ than ‘Crips-ish.’ I mean, stylistically at least. We definitely wear more red,” Brent posed.
“In actuality it’s more of an ‘Always Sunny,’ kind of gang,” Trader Joe clarified. “But let’s not split hairs.”
Her uncle nearly split his sides open laughing at Trader Joe’s statement.
Not sure what’s so funny about that… “So when do we leave?” Yasmine asked. “How far do we have to go?”
“Trey alluded to quite a journey north,” Trader Joe said. “A couple hundred miles. He said they were in a town on a former peninsula called Sturgeon Bay. On foot it would take five or six days under ideal conditions.”
“The Monoliths would give up a couple vehicles to make that trip go faster. You’d lose a day getting fuel from the Station back into the city, but it’d be worth it,” Yaz’s uncle said. “Not to mention safer, and you could bring more supplies. Two day’s driving if the roads are halfway decent.”
“And by supplies you mean guns?” Brent asked.
“Only kind of supply that will ensure you can get more supplies,” Caleb joked. “But yeah, food and water, too.”
“Then it is decided,” Trader Joe announced. “Trey, Yasmine, the good Baron and I will head north to make contact with a resistance cell and leave Earth to rescue the stolen water.”
“I’d describe that as a ‘broad strokes,’ statement,” her uncle said. “We’ll need a few more bodies to make it happen, but I know some people that can be volun-told. Let’s get to this crab rebellion cell and go where no man has gone before.”
“And let’s get our water back,” Yasmine said, her tone made of steel. “Look, we fought as best we could with what we had during the invasion, and we lost. Now we’ve got new friends, new hope, better weapons, and the crabs have no idea we’re coming.”
“More specifically, my furious, inspiring friend,” Trader Joe said, “they have no idea that you are coming.”
Chapter Three
A Little Nosh, a Little News
Yasmine rolled around on the floor of Brent and Kim’s hot apartment in Shant, laughing like her uncle had at the “Always Sunny,” comment. The root cause of her laughter wa
s the tickling onslaught from Owen and Liam, the married couple’s two young boys.
“Alright,” Knox said from the couch, “knock it off, she can hardly breathe.”
“We have her now!” Liam said, pouncing on Yaz’s feet for another attempt at tickling her. “The crab-killer of Shant shall be brought to justice! Tickle-torture!”
“Nooo!” Yasmine yelled. “Not the feeeeet!” she said, acting as if Liam and Owen’s assault was a terrifying and awful experience.
“Boys,” Kim said from the nearby kitchen. Her single word was enough to freeze Owen and Liam’s bodies, and Yasmine used that opening to slither up onto the couch to sit beside Knox. “That’s enough torture. Come into the kitchen and set the plates on the table please. And put away your Star Wars toys.”
“Okay,” Owen said.
“Yes, Mom,” Liam replied.
The boys galloped into the dining room to do their mother’s bidding. Kim smiled at her two dinner guests as the boys departed.
“Smells good, Kim,” Yasmine said as she fought to catch her breath. “What is it?”
“Brent got a handful of those lizards from that guy in the marketplace. I picked the meat off of them and made what will pass for a casserole out of them. Should taste good. Doesn’t look very appetizing though.”
“I’ve eaten some ugly food,” Knox said. “The way this smells it could be crap on my boot and I’d eat it. Smells amazing Kim, no joke.”
“Thank you, Knox. Come join us at the table.”
Yasmine helped the crutch-using Knox get to the table and both sat down as Owen and Liam finished putting out the mismatched silverware. How does Kim keep her silverware so clean? And this apartment too? It’s always spotless in here. She’s a sorceress.
Kim went to the window of the apartment where she and Brent had built a wood-fired oven for cooking. The brick and steel contraption sat on the fire escape just outside to vent the smoke and heat. She returned with a glass baking dish filled with a bubbling pasta and lizard meat concoction.
“That smell is insane,” Yasmine said. “I’m so excited to eat.”