The Life, Death and Life of Amelia Hollow

by Edward James Bowman

  ***

  Passing right by the main structures of Tamarax Station made my stomach feel uneasy. Not just because it was the station of the USM’s most wanted woman, but also because it vaguely resembled the crappy home planet of the Psychlos from Battlefield Earth. Dear God, why did my father ever make me watch that film? That was probably the one benefit if Tamarax recreated the universe in her own vision; that film never would have been made.

  “Their defence system has not locked onto us.” Chorst stated.

  “Let’s just stick to your plan.” I whispered while gazing at the monitor.

  “It is possible they are going to take us captive like the other cadets.”

  “Very possible.” I lied. I knew why Tamarax wanted me to come here. The biatch wanted moi to die by her own hand. – It was an ego thing.

  The dub spaceship shuttered as Chorst landed it onto the rocky terrain. The trinard was best at landing spaceships out of the four dub captains, yet even he found it difficult to land delicately on the surface of the rough body. He was right about this area being where new weapons were tested. The surface of the asteroid was charred with many manmade craters from where bombs had been dropped.

  “Computer, give me mobile control of the Mar.” The Frenchy commanded of his wrist computer.

  Computer is not a very original name is it? Oh well, unless you are a nerd you would never understand why I named my wrist computer Data.

  The wrist computer must have complied because all the panels and control suddenly switched off. After a second they came back on, but their blue lights suggested they were hibernating.

  “Tamarax has created artificial gravity.” Chorst noted as we stepped off the dub spaceship.

  We both floated upwards slightly when we walked. The Mar remained firmly attached to the terrain. Its claw-like feet hooked into the ground making sure it went nowhere.

  I followed the trinard’s lead and switched on my boots. We flew close the ground like stingrays above the seabed. It was good I was not part of Gall anymore because that white uniform would have made moi very noticeable. Our black Mar uniforms made us shadows. Of course, technology was so advanced these days that any camera or scanner would have picked-up on us. Tamarax was probably watching me from a window right now. Chorst must have known that; his hand kept brushing across his stun gun holster as we flew.

  “Where do ya think the cadets are being held?” I asked him via earpiece. We were flying too far apart to speak directly. I then realized I had asked Chorst where he thought they were and quickly changed my question: “Where are the cadets?”

  “Probably in Tamarax’s cellblock.” He replied swiftly as if he had not heard my first question.

  “Tamarax has a cellblock?”

  “It would make sense for her to have one. She is a terrorist to the USM.”

  “Right.”

  I swallowed when we flew underneath one of the hangars. Most people would not know this was a hangar. It really just looked like a large metal growth coming off the station. Only I knew it was a hangar due to the small electro field on the bottom. The hangar was made for a very special ship… A ship disguised as a comet that I would soon be chasing. I did not tell Chorst this. He didn’t need to know about that part of my mission.

  It would be hard to keep my mission from him when I needed the Bennu Bomb back. Not because I would possibly have to tell him the truth, but because I honestly could not explain what I needed to do. Trying to say my plan aloud was impossible. It was as if I was thinking in an alien language that my mouth could not cope with.

  “There.” Chorst pointed to a little hangar on the back of one of the large structures. According writing above it, it was ‘hangar one’: Tamarax’s personal hangar for her own ships. Yeah, we’d be really inconspicuous going through there. I doubt Tam has any security cameras in her own hangar.

  “You’re the boss.” I muttered.

  The electro field tickled my skin as crept into the hangar. A single henchman stood at the entrance guarding the little hangar. He raised his heavy gun to fire but Chorst and I were too quick. Tamarax’s henchman had stronger bodies than most so it took more than one shot form the stun gun to take them down. I noted this because Chorst and I would not want to find ourselves up against an army with only stun guns.

  I admired the witch-like woman’s ships as we strode through the hangar. There was something very gothic about them. The spaceship we passed had a black paintjob while its interior was black and red. I suppose they suited Tamarax’s mind-set. Not just because of the colouring, but also because of the scratch marks near the door. I pictured Tamarax in my head looking like a crow. – I was not far-off from her actual appearance.

  “I don’t like this.” I said as we stepped over the immobilized guard. “Tamarax would not leave her personal hangar to be guarded by one soldier.”

  Chorst did not reply. He just opened the door and walked through. I followed behind him slowly. The dark corridors created a labyrinth I could see myself easily getting lost in. What was intriguing about them was the strange equation that had been painted on all the walls. The scratch marks alongside the alien equation suggested it was Tamarax’s doing. – She was more insane than I thought.

  My head throbbed when I had a flashback to the dark room from my dream with the white curtains. After a few moments my mind returned to normal when Chorst grabbed my wrist firmly and dragged moi along like a parent taking a child away from their favourite ride at a theme park.

  “I’m okay, cap.” I told him.

  He remained silent as he dragged me to the light-up map. “There is only one major cellblock.” He said while pointing to the map. “We will check there for the cadets and if they are not there we will go to one of the smaller ones. There is a possibility that they are already de–”

  “They’re not dead.” I said sharply. “Tamarax wants us to see them die.”

  “This would have been easier if the Tit had aided us.”

  I nodded in agreement. “If only we could contact the USM from here to tell them that we were right.”

  Actually, the USM would be able to aid us if they really wanted to. The Mar was constantly sending of a GPS transmission so they knew where we were. Maybe the Titonic would come, and maybe they would bring an armada. Unlikely; we had not moved up the pyramid of social hierarchy in the past hour so we were still worthless to them.

  I waved my hand in front of Chorst’s helm when he continued to stare at the ceiling. We did not have time for the Frenchy to stare at nothing. Only I was allowed to stare at nothing!

  “The air vents.” He said, pointing up at the grate on the ceiling. “Tamarax may be watching us, but it is unlikely she has security cameras in the vents.”

  “Will the vents take us all the way to the cellblock?” I asked while looking at the map.

  “Yes.” He said before taking a photo of the map with his wrist computer for future reference. He sent the image to my wrist computer as well even though it was unlikely I would need it if he was leading.

  I followed Chorst into the air vent. The light from our wrists computers guided us. We had to move quickly in case any of Tamarax’s henchmen came our way. Luckily it was not a tight squeeze for either of us. I had not been worried about Chorst fitting because although he was very tall, he was also incredibly thin. On Earth people would think he was a sickly anorexic with his lanky limbs, narrow shoulders and unhealthy pale skin. I knew better. His muscles were far denser than humans which meant he was incredibly strong for a lanky-looking fellow. Despite me knowledge of this, it was my human nature that wanted him to eat more.

  “All good?” I asked him when we turned and started down a smaller vent.

  He did not answer which meant he was fine and had nothing to comment on. I wish he had mentioned the corpse of an alien pest rotting in the small vent. It was difficult to shift my body to avoid it.

  “How long till we reach the cellblock?” I whispered due to the fact there were h
enchman below us. We had been crawling for what felt like twenty minutes. We had even gone up on a slope a few minutes ago.

  “We are going to have a slight delay.” He replied impassively.

  I looked past him to see what the problem was. The vent in front of us was a dead-end. Looking down through the grate I was above, I watched henchmen walk back and forth down the bleak corridor. There was no chance of jumping down and taking on all the beastly guards with just our stun guns.

  “Should we go back and find another way?”

  “That would accomplish nothing.” He said while looking at the picture of the map on his wrist computer.

  He tapped the dead-end vent. No surprise the little metal slate was hollow.

  “What is on the other side?” I asked so quietly that my earpiece had to send my message to Chorst like we were on walkie-talkies.

  I shuddered when Chorst drew his fist back and punched right through the air vent. The metal made a wrenching noise as his fist went right through it. He did not stop there. The trinard used his superhuman strength to widen the hole he had made. The metal’s moaning echoed though the vent. The rhino-like guards were certainly intrigued by the noise. Due to the echoing, they could not pinpoint where the sound was coming from.

  “Hurry up, Chorst.” I muttered. Of course, when I looked back up he was already climbing through the hole he had made.

  I scratched my helm on a dented piece of metal as I followed him. We made it through just in time. A giant pushed up the grate I had just been resting on. He swished his hand around and then retreated it when he found nothing.

  “This isn’t an air vent.” I stated dumbly when I noticed my new surroundings. The light from our wrist computers had little effect on the impenetrable blackness. We seemed to have a heck of a lot more space horizontally, but vertically was much tighter so we could only lie down.

  “We are in-between the first and second floor.” He explained. “Be careful around the wires.”

  “Dang.” I laughed quietly. “I was thinking about chewing on them and getting an electric shock.”

  “That would be irrational.”

  “I was joking.”

  A very long awkward silence followed.

  There were far more rat-like pests in the new space. I presume that was because it was warmer here than it was in the air vent. These creatures were not cowardly like most Earthling rats, they were like racoons. They enjoyed being pests. Chorst was ruthless. He stunned all of them with his gun before they even looked up from chewing the wires.

  “They are diseased.” He said. “I would euthanize them if I had a proper gun.”

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “They’re on our side if they kill Tamarax’s henchmen.”

  In a shocking turn of events, Chorst did not give me a reply.

  We got more space vertically when the ceiling to the first floor ceiling slanted downwards while the second floor flooring sloped upwards. My heart sunk when we were cut off by another dead-end. The floor and the ceiling had come together abruptly in front of us and created a wall.

  I had been crawling alongside Chorst until this point. While he stopped dead in his tracks I continued right up to the wall just to look for some sort of hole to crawl through. When I looked back Chorst’s head was on the floor as he listened. Without a word he crawled towards the nearest light fixture –which he told me not to do– and started to lift it up. I was blinded by the artificial lighting when the trinard accidently faced the light in my direction. He pulled out one of its wires to quickly switch it off. He certainly did not want to attract anymore pests to the area with the light.

  “We getting down here?” I asked as he cleared the hole where the light had been.

  “We are directly one floor above the primary cellblock.” He declared. “The cellblock is the basement of this building.”

  “And if the cadets aren’t in this one?”

  “Then we will have to find a quick way to the next cellblock. The quickest way to the next one is by conveyer belt which is too public. Otherwise it takes approximately an hour to get there.”

  “Then let’s hope they’re in this one.”

  Chorst slid through the narrow hole like he was made of soap. He looked far more elegant at it than I did. I felt a little chubby when my butt got stuck and I had to really had to push myself through while Chorst pulled moi down. Thank God my blush was hidden by my helm.

  No surprise a bewildered guard turned the corner to see us. Before we could shoot him he turned around and ran for the alarm. My pale friend did not let him get far. He sprinted after him like lighting and got him four times in the back. The rhino conveniently fell just beyond the elevator and stairwell. For obvious reasons we chose not to take the elevator. You had to have an ID card to use it. The only issue was that the door to the stairwell could only be opened from the other side. The trinard fixed that by hacking into the control panel. The door made a clicking noise which suggested he had gotten it unlocked.

  “I can see how you are able to hack the USM computers and stuff,” I said cheerfully, “but how do you hack the electronic things here?”

  “Trinords have programmed these mainframes.” He said bluntly.

  Oh. I thought simply. I was beginning to understand more about the trinord/trinard relationship. The trinards had been submissive slaves for so long, yet when the USM got involved and the civil war for freedom began, they had started rebelling and hacking their father race’s computers.