The Life, Death and Life of Amelia Hollow

by Edward James Bowman

  ***

  “Gom,” Kel pointed to the masculine man, “you and I are to assault Mar as they are one crewmember short.” His finger ran to Henn. “You defend the heart from the balcony. Ams, you defend the heart from the inside in case Henn fails.”

  “And what about me?” Veck asked. She was leaning carelessly against the heart.

  Kel scowled, although it couldn’t be seen through his helm. “You do whatever you want.”

  “Sounds good.” The argon passé whispered calmly. Kel was suspicious, but decided not to give her any more attention and turned his back on her.

  “Now–” Frek clapped his hands together just as an electric bolt shocked his body.

  Before he even hit the floor another shock of electricity form a stun gun got him in the back. The algrin made a clattering sound as all his remaining dignity was lost within a less than five seconds. Kel had learned the most valuable lesson: never turn your back on Veck.

  “I suppose you could call this a mutiny.” The argon passé hissed as she looked down at his paralysed body. Veck would get in so much trouble after the exercise and she did not care.

  Gom raised his own gun. Veck could have shot him down before he even squeezed the trigger, but she wanted to appeal to his good side. If there was going to be a mutiny, it needed to be the four of them against Kel or it would not work.

  She put up her hand to try and ease him. “Shoot me, and we will be another crew member short.” When Gom didn’t lower his gun she tried a different technique. “I am second-in-command, shooting me would get rid of all authority and then who would lead?”

  “You just shot the captain.” He snarled. “Of course I should shoot you!”

  “Gom.” A meek voice said behind him.

  The green bulk was a little surprised to turn and see Ams pointing a silver gun at him. Her stern posture suggested she was serious. The yem had hated Kel since day one. Because she looked weak he presumed she was without any question. The fact that she was a girl had not helped. She was happy that Veck was taking control. The gothic woman had never doubted Ams’s strength since she joined their Dub crew.

  “Either help me win and prove this crew is competent without the algrin,” The argon passé, said slowly, “or we are going to have to stun you too.”

  He looked toward Henn for support. Although he could not see through his helm, he knew the lanky blue boy was averting his eyes. Henn had always been neutral in the war for power and that was not about to change. He would just follow whoever ranked highest no matter who they were.

  “Alright.” Gom nodded, he understood where Ams and Henn stood now. “Then you better have a good plan. If you commit mutiny and we lose this exercise then that will not look good on our record. You have to prove that he,” Gom pointed at the sad sack on the floor, “is not a competent captain.”

  Veck, a little surprised by Gom’s change in attitude, nodded in agreement.

  Kel wished he could speak because would be cursing them all to the high heavens. Even Gom had abandoned him. He had thought of the ogo mornamus as his only friend and someone he could rely on at Starside Academy. Now, he was talking about how they were going to prove Kel was an incompetent leader. The algrin’s stomach twisted. Could he really be that hated? Now he knew his only friend was his wife, Jaedorra, and he had abandoned her thousands of light-years away with his father.

  When the exercise started Ket was the first out. Yeek and Harm, led by Zand, flew towards my Dub crew’s base. Obviously they felt they would be any easy target as Mar was short one cadet. Chorst had already prepared for this and was at the door with Jee to greet them. Harm did a very impressive cartwheel (a very acrobatic boy) to get out of the way of their fire, but he was not prepared for the fire from above. Donn was out on the balcony with Marsh sniping the members of Ket down. Mar and San had an unspoken bond seeing as Donn and I were good friends. We could never directly help each other, but we could ‘conveniently’ ignore the other dub crew while aiming for Gall or Ket.

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I thought with a smile. I’m sure Zand was considering forming an alliance with Gall to win, but she knew Kel was too stubborn to be aligned with a woman.

  Donn went down after one of the Ket crewmembers shot him in the shoulder… He fell a long way. At this point, a fourth member of Zand’s crew, Va, came out of their base to replace the fallen Harm. The three decided to leave my Dub crew for the time being and take down their ‘weaker’ allies. Chorst and Jee fired upwards to stop them, but now they had a new problem.

  I was a little surprised to see shots from Gall seeing as they had not even left their base. Four of them were in the doorway. Two knelt down and two standing, all firing like crazy. I noted that Kel was not with them, and yet I did not consider why.

  “Shit.” I muttered when Jee went down. Chorst dove back into our base. Sadly, one shot got him in the thigh. Now it was just Nis and Nor on my side. – Not good.

  With this in mind, Veck and Henn flew over to shoot the heart of Mar. I bit my lip, wishing I could join the game. Alk gave me a harsh pat on the shoulder. She knew what I was thinking.

  “Mar has been eliminated.” Data informed me. After two more seconds he said: “San has been eliminated.”

  Zand must have shot the heart of San, because I knew some of their crewmembers were still standing up until this point. Now it was just Ket and Gall. Yeek had been shot down during the raid on San, so now only three members of Zand’s crew were left. I figured Gall had all five members because I had seen none of them get stunned. Alk’s yellow eyes trailed down to her tablet with intrigue, although she did not tell me why.

  Veck, completely bypassed Zand and Va and went straight for their base. Merr was waiting for them in the doorway with a tense body. He was a clever kitty, but not a very good hand-to-hand fighter. Zand and Va tried to go for his aid, however they were being fired on by Gom and Ams.

  “Ket has been eliminated.”

  The heart of Ket had gone untouched. Merr went down very quickly along with Va. Zand held it out like a valiant leader until Gom got her right in the chest.

  Alk and I exchanged a suspicious look, but neither of us said anything. Alk’s finger pressed down on the red button that switched on the loud speaker.

  “Excellent work. Gall is the winner of this exercise.” She announced. As soon as she took her finger off the button she looked at moi. “I think Veck has done something.”

  “Like what?” I asked, even though I had my own suspicions.

  “According to this,” Alk pointed at the tablet screen, “Kel has been down since before the official exercise started.”

  “Uh oh.” I said with a small smile. Good on Veck in my opinion.

  Sure enough, the robots carried the body of Kel from his own base. We both knew very well who shot him. Alk ran her hand through her braided hair and sighed. Despite her species lacking emotion, she felt sympathy for the algrin. Had he been kinder to others it may have not come to mutiny. Alk knew where Kel was coming from, though. If all the other cadets understood more about the algrins then they would had been nicer to him.

  Ams, Veck, Gom and Henn walked into the overview room with triumphant posture. I could not see their faces yet I knew they were smiling. Even Gom was happy that they had won.

  “Dub First Off Veck,” Alk began sternly, “what happened?”

  The other three suddenly became timid. Veck remained at her proper height and kept her focus on our combat teacher. In her opinion; she had not done anything wrong. When her species felt someone was incompetent at their job, they were simply fired without question. – They were a very harsh species.

  “We won, didn’t we?” She said with a shrug.

  “You stunned your own captain.” Alk said calmly. Behind her, I was giving Veck the ‘thumbs up’.

  “And we won.” The argon passé insisted.

  Alk raised her hands defensively. “Hey, this is between you and him. I just have to know; would you c
ommit mutiny and kill your captain in a real situation if you felt he was incompetent?”

  “Yes.” She said without thinking twice.

  “Tell Dub Cap Kel that.” Alk said coldly. “I think he has a right to know that.”

  “I will.” She replied haughtily.

  The atmosphere was incredibly tense when Kel entered the overview room after being reanimated. He strode right past his dub crew and sat at the end of the bench. Ams and Gom followed him with their eyes, but said nothing. I felt for the algrin, sitting all alone and resenting the universe. If only he wasn’t such a phallic, then I would sit with him.

  My bubble of thought popped when Donn came out of nowhere and smacked my shoulder.

  “Did you see that?” He asked, practically yelling.

  “It was brutal, my friend.” I laughed. “You had quite a fall.”

  “I broke both my wrists, three ribs and my left ankle.” He giggled. “You know what would happen if I broke that many bones on my home planet? I would have to be euthanized!”

  Wow, that seemed a little heavy for some broken bones. His species had worse healthcare than on Earth. Trust me, if you were poor and sick in the year 2808 AD then you were basically screwed. – You know very well which of the political parties you can thank for our crappy healthcare system.

  “We do not break bones on my planet.” Zand hissed as she strutted by. Of course she wouldn’t break any bones; she had no bones to break.

  Then I realized Zand had just made a joke. I had not thought her species to be the joking kind. However, it looked like the Jell-O girl had a funny bone. Ha ha, get it? I am just hilarious, aren’t I?

  Donn and I sat between our two dub crews on the benches. The ten of us had become a rather friendly gang. Veck would have sat with us as well, but right now she could not leave her dub crew in case they tried to snipe about her behind her back. They had won the exercise because of Veck. Now she needed to maintain her power.

  “Sorry I wasn’t there to help ya guys.” I said semi-solemnly. I was not too sad about the loss because it was good that Veck had won.

  “In your condition, it is unlikely that your presence would have changed the outcome of the exercise.” Chorst explained in his usual impassive tone.

  “Good to know.” I muttered.

  We all faced forward when Alk stood in front of us. She could sense the dark cloud of tension above all of us so she wanted to calm things down. We were supposed to have a few more domination exercises. However, Alk decided that would not be best due to the circumstances.

  “Well, let’s do whole-grade turret practise.” She said with a beguiling smile that helped ease the tension in the overview room. “If you don’t know what that is: I’m basically going to turn on all the turrets in the battle room and all of you must work together to deactivate them.”

  There was some excitement from the cadets, including moi. Alk was just as good of a teacher as Frek. Her understanding of all of the cadets was excellent. Even with Kel she was good despite the fact the algrin hated women.

  Most of the cadets skipped into back into the battle room. The thought of being fired at by various turrets was awesome. Oh, how I wished my limbs were functioning properly so I could join them in the chaotic exercise.

  Kel remained seated on the bench with his fingers intertwined and his head hanging low. I got the feeling it was my queue to leave.

  “I’m gonna go to the restroom.” I told Alk clearly so Kel would hear as well. “I’ll be back… sometime in the near future.”

  I considered just going to the other side of the door and listening into the upcoming conversation. I was not that awful of a person, though. I would just wander the corridors for a while and then come back to hear the end of their conversation.

  Alk watched the door slide shut after me before she looked to Kel. His face was hidden behind his helm, yet his trembling shoulders let her picture his face. She felt this boy needed a healthier ritual rather than building up anger inside and then breaking down when he couldn’t take anymore. Alk’s kind; the rerrev, were the masters of meditation. Tranquillity was easy to find for them… If only algrins could find inner peace.

  “Are you alright, Dub Cap Kel?”

  He did not answer at first. Alk took it his silence as sexist. If Frek was asking him a question, he would answer. She was not mad about it. She just wished he was more open to women who could actually help him in bad situations.

  The only noise came from the battle room where the cadets were getting hammered by the turrets. Although this exercise was supposedly for fun, Alk had set the turrets on ‘hard’. The only people who were taking the exercise seriously were Chorst (no shock there) and Jee. Even Zand was having fun just goofing around. She enjoyed taunting the turrets by putting her hand out from her hiding spot and snapping it back before any of them had time to shoot her.

  “I want to go home.” A solemn voice whispered.

  Alk looked back from the window. Kel had not changed position since she last looked. However, his trembling had subsided for the moment.

  “Pardon?” She asked in a soft voice.

  “I want to go home.” The algrin repeated.

  Donn dropped like an insect after he tried to fly around the battle room. Alk ignored this and instead went to sit by Kel. It was not custom for the rerrev people to place a hand on someone as comfort, and it was not custom for algrins either. The pair just sat there for a moment unmoving. There was nothing else Alk could do. The dub crew captains were supposed to be learning how to be independent and deal with their own issues. She could not push to help him if he did not want any.

  “What Veck did was inappropriate.” She said once the boy did not elaborate anymore on his statement. “The cultural differences in your species are large, but there are some similarities that you will discover once you and Veck put your differences aside. The argon passé are like the algrins before the genetic disorder occurred centuries ago. They are cultured, outgoing, a bit wild and most importantly… forgiving.”

  Kel doubted Veck was a forgiving person. She seemed like somebody who could hold a grudge. Then again, how would he know? They barely knew each other.

  “That’s not it.” He snivelled. “H-he has them hostage.”

  Alk raised her thin black eyebrows, intrigued. “Who?”

  “The lord of Veldaro”

  It took her a moment to realize who the boy was talking about: his father and all his wives and children. The algrin boy was so sickened by his father that he could not even use his name. Alk had never seen the maniacal man, but Frek had told her a cautionary tales about him. If anything; Kel had most likely never called the man ‘father’, rather ‘sir’ or ‘master’. Lord Kelmaero: a man that just proved why the algrins were not worthy of being first-class in the USM.

  “I h-have to go back before h-he… he…” His words were lost in his despair.

  “The USM is dealing with the situation.”

  “No you’re not!” He screamed. He was on his feet quickly. “You don’t care about them, or us, or anything. You’re all just waiting for them to die out so you don’t have to hear about them anymore!”

  Alk was taken back. Kel addressed her as if she was the whole of the USM. She had never considered herself to be fully aligned with the body of the United Systems of Mel. Her species had only been part of the first-class USM realm for just over a thousand years. The rerrevs still had some different beliefs that they stuck by that conflicted with the ones they had been introduced to. They were incredibly democratic so to have an algrin hold her on trial for the whole of the USM was not pleasant.

  What intrigued her just as much was Kel’s usage of the words ‘them and ‘us’. Was Kel referring to ‘us’ as him and the algrins and the ‘them’ as the other cadets, or was the ‘us’ him and the cadets and ‘them’ the algrins? It all depended on who Kel thought he was now. He had far exceeded any other algrin on his planet. He may have not considered himself an algrin anymore. In
that case, what was he? A cadet, that’s what he was. And that is exactly what Alk told him.

  “… and you’re right.” She continued. “The USM is not dealing with the situation with your wives. Mel herself has taken the matter on.”

  Although his face was no visible, the way the algrin suddenly froze suggested he was shocked. For good reason; Mel was known for ignoring things she did not care about, especially when it came to second-class matters. Like a god, she felt she could not intervene with the affairs of mortals or they would rely on her too much. Then again, she could still perform miracles.

  “Huh?” The boy grunted. He was feeling embarrassed about how much he had cried in the past few days. Frek and Alk together had only witnessed a couple of his meltdowns. What happened when he was alone was another story.

  “She called Lord Kelmaero herself and warned him that if the issues surrounding Jaedorra, your other wives and all your children were not resolved, then she would be paying him a visit.”

  “You’re lying.” He said with a twinge of surprise and hope in his tone.

  “Mel does not lie.” Alk replied. – That was a bald-faced lie.

  “W-why?” He asked after his moment of hope had passed and what remained was suspicion. There was no incentive for why Mel would help a second-class alien like himself.

  “None of us will ever fully understand the mind of Mel.” Alk sighed. “Just consider yourself lucky that the leader of the galaxy wants to help you in your domestic problem.”

  Kel was not sure how to answer that. He did not trust Mel. She had ignored his planet for so long. She had watched them collapse like the Roman Empire, mistreat women and men alike, and create a new god to pray to in desperation. The algrins had been rude to the USM when they offered help. Mel had no reason to aid one simple algrin like Kel.

  My original plan of eavesdropping on the final part of the conversation never worked out. I got restrained to the bathroom due to my spontaneous nosebleed. Were my brains coming out of my nostrils? No, don’t worry. My body was just feeling overworked despite the fact I had been regenerating for most of the day.

  The nosebleed would have most likely ended earlier if it was not for the toilet paper in the restroom. The damn paper was irritating my nose even more. I don’t know what species suggested that having sandpaper rolls in the lavatories would be a great idea. Seeing as this grade was of second-class cadets, Starside Academy had probably gone cheap. That is immediately what my old middle school did when it was announced that there would be some funding cuts to education. Decent toilet paper: always the first to go.

  When I finally returned, Kel had stopped sobbing and had joined the second round on the exercise. I did ‘subtly’ ask Alk what the conversation was about. “You seem fine now. Would you like to join the third exercise?” Alk asked to dodge my question.

  I looked down into the battle room. It was chaos, but a good kind of chaos. Most of the cadets were down and the ones that were still fighting were soon to be down. – I wanted to join them.

  “Sure.” I replied after watching Merr dash across the battle room. Well, I did not watch him, rather his body glove-covered tail swishing as he ran like hell. The shots from the turrets missed him by the skin of his teeth.

  I enjoyed the next few exercises where we all just goofed-off and tried to taunt the turrets. I was very depressed when it had to end… because something deep inside me knew it was the last time all of us would do an exercise together. – Damn my gut feelings! I should get help. Meh, too much effort.

  26: Déjà vu

  President Harry Darwin arrived back at the White House very late that night, and he was not alone. He and Dr. Shea Hernandez had decided to celebrate the comet-won’t-hit-Earth day by going for a night on the town. Was it inappropriate for the president of the United States to go into town at midnight? Yes, but Harry was a crap president who would do whatever the hell he wanted. Hell, he even brought a bag of alcohol from his private stash into town just to prove he was trash.

  Mr. Flandry had stayed up waiting for the president to return. He had repeatedly contacted his security officers for the night and noted when Harry had moved location with the ‘president tracker’ application on his phone. Harry was a very despised president. Everyone in the country would recognize the boyish face of their dictator. Sure, Harry had thrown on a hat and glasses, but that was not a good enough disguise. He really had to be more careful or Mr. Flandry had no doubt the boy would be murdered.

  Dominic tried to tell all the notifications he had missed since he had been out partying, yet the man-child was too tipsy to care and dismissed Mr. Flandry for the night. He was far more interested in Shea Hernandez.

  Mr. Flandry felt like screaming at the idiot. There were some issues revolving around Florida and its residents. They were quiet. No riots, protests, nothing. That was disturbingly suspicious for such an unhappy state. Dominic had sent an investigation squad over –without asking Harry’s permission– but they had not replied yet.

  Despite it not being the real White House and only a bad copy, Harry slept in the replica of the Lincoln Bedroom. Of course, he had made many changes to make the room more ‘homey’. Despite being ‘president’, Harry had never thought a woman would come into his room. He made Shea wait outside as he quickly cleaned his room. As soon as he let her in, he became suddenly embarrassed by his collection of chauvinist steampunk anime dolls. Shea did not notice them… or at least pretended not to notice them.

  He was forced down quickly onto the bed by Shea’s robotic hand. “You’re not a virgin, right?” She asked. Her words slurred together which was strange seeing as she had had far less to drink than him that night. – Not that Harry took notice.

  “No.” He giggled: A sign he was probably lying. – Shea could have figured that out from his bedroom which just screamed ‘virgin’.

  “But I’m guessing you’ve never had sex with a cyborg.”

  “Is it really that different?”

  Shea smiled. Harry would find out soon enough…