by Orion, W. J.
“If we wait for unity, we’ll all be dead,” the people of the trees said.
The Irib’dirari floated back over the sand, away from the space it had previously been occupying above the water. As it drifted between the Umbral and the three Perenalls, it spun in a gentle circle.
“The Galon would jump at the opportunity to spill crab blood, even though they are a Triumvirate race. I’ll send a discreet messenger to your arboretum with contact information. I make no promises, but there’s always a chance they’ll help somehow. Off the record, of course.”
“We would be in your debt,” the Perenall said.
“Debts create trails I have no interest in traveling. I cannot alter the function of the wormholes. Do not ask for such. If the crab cruiser departs, it will do so as would any other vessel.” Benno turned his amorphous, spherical form in circles once more, somehow using the movement to indicate that it was aiming its direct attention at those gathered near it. “One hundred seven intelligent species rely on this station for trade and peace. Before I dissipate into the winds of my home world, it is likely one hundred fifty shall. I hesitate to help in this moment, not because I am cowardly but because I serve those races and I must protect them and this station to the best of my ability. Now, when we assemble unity amongst enough of those one hundred seven races to properly fight the crabs… then I can give you my station’s full support, and I will rally my people and the people of the Triumvirate to do the same.”
“Give us the Beru’dawn,” the Umbral said. “And this will be over in scant months.”
“The Beru’dawn are in retreat, as they agreed to in the Accordance. Should they return, they might not be the weapon you think they would be. The crabs have taken steps to mitigate the psychic damage they can do.”
“I do not fear what the crabs have done to protect themselves from the Beru’dawn,” the Umbral said. “I am instead rather curious about what the Beru’dawn have done with their time in exile to ensure that all that protection the crabs came up with is useless.”
Benno stifled his amusement at that idea.
Chapter Nineteen
Diplomacy, Version 2.0
The sun set, the cold came, and Yasmine remained in the forest of dead and dry pine trees, several hundred yards from where she’d encountered the rifleman and his two quiet cohorts. She chewed on old jerky obtained at the Tower and sipped water to wash it down. All the while, she kept her eyes fixed on the fence and its defenders, and her mind wrapped around the problem of the lady who sat high up on the turbine-covered hill.
Underneath the tattered and worn Red Sox baseball hat that she wore, sweat formed. Yasmine sat still and her breathing was calm; physical exertion didn’t cause her perspiration, mental stress did.
In her ear (in her mind, actually) she was pinged repeatedly by Trader Joe, reaching out for status updates on her plans–or her safety. She ignored many of his prompts, only checking in with brief mental replies telling him she was working on it and that she was safe. Yaz sensed the frustration he experienced grow and grow over the hours, well into the night. His emotions crept into her psyche like the aroma of burning plastic on the wind.
“Crab bodies,” Yasmine whispered for the hundredth time. “I’m not killing these rebel crabs for her. No way. What else can I give this woman?” She refused to think her thoughts with anything approaching intent. It’d be far too easy for her to slip up and send her thoughts as a message to Trader Joe, and her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask for help yet.
Yet.
“I can do this. I can do this. What motivates her? Vengeance, duh. She wants crabs dead, and everything she does either protects her people from crabs or is an attempt to blow crabs up. So, she wants dead crabs.”
Yasmine exhaled hard and watched the mist of her breath against the light of the moon in the cold night air.
“I want clouds,” she whispered to the moon. “I should take a picture of this.”
Yasmine reached into her pocket and pulled out her mom’s phone. She unlocked it and went to activate the phone app but missed the icon with her finger, instead opening her gallery of recent photos. Near the bottom of the page she saw the video she had taken the night the crabs attacked Shant.
“You want dead crabs? I’ll give you dead crabs.”
Yasmine got up to her feet and started walking straight at the gate and the man with the rifle still guarding it.
Trader Joe?
Yes, Yasmine?
I’m about to make my second pitch. Wish me luck.
At this hour of the night? You’re batty if you think this is a good idea. I’m headed your way. I’ll be there in ten minutes.
Stay away for now. Let me do this.
Your uncle is going to try and kill me.
Yeah, well, that might’ve been the case anyway. He’s a smidge aggressive.
You could be described as the same.
I’m not aggressive.
You needn’t be physical about aggression to be called aggressive, Yasmine. Be wise.
Yasmine had guided her way in the bright moonlight through the forest and reached her safe distance from the dark gate. Standing in the middle of the dirt road, she hollered out to the trio of people sitting and standing near the chained fence.
“Hey! Get the Teacher. I have her crab corpses and I want my damned ship.”
The rifleman tried to get his weapon off his shoulder to aim at her in the darkness, but he fumbled it and dropped it into the dirt. After a few frantic seconds searching in the dark, he scooped it up and got it pointed in her general direction.
“Who goes there?”
“Seriously? Same woman who came earlier. This time I have what your leader wants. Tell her I have her dead crabs, and she can come look at them. The sooner the better.”
“She’s going to stab you in the neck with a rusty fork,” the guard yelled back at her. “Wasting her time like this.”
“Let her try. Have her come down.”
The guard laughed and dispatched one of his lackeys to run up the hill with Yasmine’s message.
No retinue came with her this time–just a pissed off middle-aged woman wearing a duster, green and red scarf, and dirty fedora stormed down the hill with the guard from the gate in her wake. She came to the fence, stepped through the gap in the middle without slowing a bit, and walked halfway to Yasmine on the dirt road before stopping and putting her hands on her hips.
“You got guts coming back the same day, and in the middle of the night.”
“I have a story I’m going to tell you, and I brought something to show you.”
“Okay,” the Teacher said. “Last chance, kid. You sure you got your pitch ready?”
Yasmine walked up the woman and pulled out her mother’s phone. She turned it on, and the light of the screen flashing awake illuminated the Teacher’s bright blue eyes. They flickered like gorgeous (but now worthless) gemstones in the sunlight.
“Whoa,” the Teacher said. “A cell phone. Neat, but it ain’t gonna win any wars against the crabs.”
“I disagree. Look at this picture,” Yasmine said, and held the phone up to the Teacher. She’d opened up the picture she’d taken of the dead crab at the bottom of the school.
The teacher looked at the picture for ten solid seconds. “Who killed this thing?”
“I did. Dropped that big ass stairwell on it. Didn’t really kill it, though. You see, you can’t really kill most crabs.”
“Say again? I’ve watched more than a few go down with these eyes. Ka-boom.”
“What we see on the outside the crabs call a ‘chassis’. Three sizes. Shrimps, crabs, and crab tanks. They’re all just vehicles, not armor. Real crabs are actually tiny squids the size of a mouse. They shock things like old school electric eels. Thousands of these little squids form colonies and the colonies create personalities. One crab personality might be a hundred squids, or ten thousand squids, acting as one. Colony size dictates what chassis they can power and operate
.”
“I’m gonna go back to bed,” she said, starting to turn.
“You’re gonna stay right here,” Yasmine grunted with gritted teeth. “Because I am telling you the messed up truth, and it’s why we’re going to win this war and get our water back.”
The Teacher woman paused to listen.
“The squids don’t load their chassis with all their bodies. They leave some in orbit, and if the portion they send down dies, the rest live on and restart the colony. They upload all the data the chassis recorded, and they learn from their deaths. This guy in the picture, with the black and red armor, who I smooshed… he came back after me and made a helluva mess.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmhm. He blew up the top of Monolith tower, then attacked the settlement I called home trying to kill me. Shantytown. He killed some friends of mine and destroyed a mess of stuff in the process. Wasn’t pretty. But you know what?”
“What?”
Yasmine queued up the video she took of the very end of the battle and handed the phone to the Teacher. They stood in the cold of the night for the duration of the video, silent save for the sound she’d recorded in the battle. Yasmine didn’t feel any anxiety as the video played. She could access the joy so many others had shown when watching it. When the video finished, the Teacher watched it again.
“I have so many questions,” she whispered, then handed the phone back to Yasmine.
“Yes, I was rescuing a crab in that video. Yes, that crab fought on our side against those black and red crabs. Yes, there are good crabs. Yes, most are bad, but many are good, and some of them are helping us, just like the ones in Sturgeon Bay. More importantly, they want to stop their own kind from doing this bullshit to any other worlds like ours.”
“I’m not sure what to say,” The Teacher said. “It’s a pipe dream.”
“Take a hit from tha bong, yo.”
“Is that an ancient Cypress Hill lyric quote?”
“I have a lot of my mother’s music on this phone still,” Yaz held it up, as if the woman might’ve forgotten about the phone’s presence. “She had some of their songs. So yeah, that’s what that was.”
“You’re starting to win me over.”
“I have that effect on people. I’m not sure why, but whatever. Look, let’s do this trade before the crab ships get any further from Earth.”
“You’re a tenacious one,” the Teacher said. “Alright, walk me through this: let’s say I give you the ship. What’s your plan? Your real plan, not this middle school science project nonsense.”
“We have another friend who is helping. Not a human, not a crab. Something else. He and the white crab—Trey is his name, by the way—are working together with the Monoliths to get this ship and get it into space. Once we’re in orbit we can connect up with the crab resistance, form a plan to hit the ships that have our water, and try and get that water back so our world won’t crumble into dust, taking all of who’s left with it.”
“So you’re making it up as you go?”
“Worked great so far.”
“I wish you were lying to me,” the Teacher said, “but I can see you’re probably not.”
“I am begging you for this ship. It’s the thing we need to keep this damn… pipe dream mission going. We can’t give up now. I won’t give up now, and I won’t accept that we have to fight you for it. I have to do everything I can to save as many lives as possible, because there are just too frigging few of us left.”
“Bare minimum we need a safe place to live. This hilltop has given us shelter and electricity, and a little water too. We can’t just walk away.”
“Take our vehicles. Drive south to the city and go to the Monolith’s tower. There’s food, water, shelter, and everything you’d ever need. You don’t need to join in, but with a letter from the Baron or me, you’ll get preferential treatment and can make a safe decision about your future. If you don’t like it there, head west to Shantytown. Tell Brent and Kim I sent you, and your whole crew will have a home if you’re willing to pee in jugs. Please. Do this. I can’t say you’re gonna save lives giving us this ship, but I know we’re going to do something really special.”
“The ship’s all messed up.”
“Trey can fix it. The other crabs can fly it.”
“You are really going to try and get the water back?”
“I’m not gonna try and get the water back. I’m am going to get our water back.”
“Lord help me, I believe you. I have eighteen people here. You said four vehicles?”
“They’ll fit. Might be tight, but you’ll make it work.”
“I’ll need a few hours to convince my people. How long will it take you to get us the vehicles? Let us inspect them? Then we’ll leave the following morning?”
“I can have the cars here in an hour,” she said.
“How about tomorrow at midday?”
“It’ll happen. Tell me why they call you the Teacher,” Yasmine asked. Well that was an impulsive moment.
What was? Trader Joe inquired.
Shush.
“I taught high school before the invasion. No matter how hard I try to hide it, everyone figures out that I was a teacher. I guess it’s in my bones,” the woman said, then snickered. “Not the worst name I’ve been called.”
“I guessed as much. We need more teachers. There are so many books just sitting in the sand. I’ll have the trucks here by dusk. We’re going to take care of you,” Yaz said. “I know trust is an expensive thing to give away nowadays, but you can trust us. We’re the good guys.”
“Sounds like something a bad guy would say.”
“No argument.”
“I want to meet your Baron. How quickly can we make that happen?”
“I can have him here in an hour. Less if I tell him I’m in danger, but I wouldn’t lie to him.”
“He’s in Sturgeon Bay, isn’t he? With those damned crabs?”
“Only because he has to be. You and he have a lot in common. He hates crabs, but he sees the big picture. Maybe a talk with him will help? When do you want him here?”
“Right now.”
Yasmine went silent and reached out with her thoughts to her alien friend.
Trader Joe?
Yes, Yasmine?
Tell my uncle I need him here for a meeting with the leader of this group. As fast as he can get here safely.
Is everything alright?
We’re doing great, but this woman wants to meet him.
I’ll inform him immediately and give him directions to where you are.
Thank you, she said to him. “He’ll be on his way shortly.”
“Don’t you like… need to go get him? Or at least call him on your fancy phone?” the Teacher asked.
Yaz looked at her phone in her hand. Damn. Let that cat out of the bag. “I’m already in contact with the rest of the Monoliths. It’s a long story, but a good one.”
You have a cat with you? Trader Joe asked.
“Tell it to me before this Baron gets here.”
Chapter Twenty
Star-Crossed Lovers
The Baron drove his big red pickup truck out into in the dark of night, into the desert of a peninsula that stuck out into a dry lake. He followed Trader Joe’s exact instructions, navigating in the footsteps of his brave niece.
He pulled onto the dirt road heading to the hill where the turbines and the crashed spaceship were, and within a few minutes he saw Yasmine standing in the middle of the road, talking to a bad Doctor Who cosplayer. He laughed, turned the headlights down to the running setting, and stopped the truck.
Caleb dropped down out of it and fished his Halligan bar out from under the seat. He left his SAW machine gun in the truck. Too flashy. Despite the man with the rifle at the chain link fence, and the two dweebs beside that moron with the weird spears, this was a diplomatic mission. He walked with the same swagger towards his niece that he always walked with, and kept his gaze pointed at the woman as he arri
ved beside Yaz.
Here we go, he thought.
“Do all Monoliths carry those weird spiked weapons?” the woman asked him. “You make those yourselves?”
“This?” he asked her, holding up the Halligan tool a bit. “Naw. This is a fireman’s tool. I worked in the department before the crabs came. So did her daddy.” He thumbed at Yasmine.
“Baron, may I introduce you to The Teacher. Is it ‘the Teacher’? Or just ‘Teacher’? I didn’t ask first,” Yaz said.
“Teacher, Teach, T, whatever works,” she said. The whole time she kept her crystal-blue eyes on Caleb.
Damn. Fierce. Reminds me of Yaz. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Teacher.” He stuck his hand out and she shook it. Firm but polite.
“And you as well, Baron. Yasmine, would you excuse us? I’d like to interrogate this man without you being able to coach him.”
“For real?”
“I mean no offense,” the Teacher said to her, finally taking her eyes off Caleb to look at the teenager. “I need to be sure about this. Many lives are resting on this.”
“It’s cool, Yaz. Go sit in the truck. The heater’s on, and you can point my machine gun at the dude with the rifle back there in case he gets uppity,” Caleb said with a grin.
Yaz let a slow exhale out, and Caleb watched her make tiny fists. She gritted her teeth, nodded at the Teacher, and went back to his truck. Caleb remained quiet until he heard her shut the door.
“You’re thinking about trading us for the ship?”
“I am,” she replied. “But I am deathly afraid for my people. We have kids.”
“No kidding? Pun not intended.” That’s a crap Dad joke.
“Three. Triplets three months ago, right after we took the ship off the crabs,” she explained. “Mom almost didn’t make it. Our entire group works day and night to sustain these kids and their mom. Fresh water, food, anything so she can breast feed.”
“Boys? Girls? Identical?”
“Two boys and a girl.”