by Jim Melanson
While being led to the closest dissolving tank, the Drone did something unthinkable in drone hives or Eridani society. The Drone made a decision that went against the Master’s Order of Action to be dissolved. The Drone broke away from the Drone Wrangler (the Wranglers are always from the Trigla cast), and ran for the hangar bay. The Drone Wrangler, stunned and confused, took a few seconds to process what was happening. By then the Drone was too far ahead of the Wrangler for the Wrangler to stop the Drone.
The Drone had considered how disappointed the Master was with the Drone, and so the Drone decided that if being dissolved was the future, the Drone was at least going to redeem the Master’s view of the Drone before that happened. The Drone wanted the Master to truly know how much the Drone cherished the Master. The Drone was going to “do something” about the human, because the Drone did not believe the Master really wanted the human to be alive. The Drone considered that the Master was being manipulated by those other jealous Masters of the household. That was, obviously, the only explanation for the Master’s order that the human not be killed.
The human the Drone had been assigned to observe wasn’t like one of the abundant research subjects on the humans’ homeworld. This human was an aberration, the human was a threat, and the human was something that needed to be destroyed so that the Master would not have to worry about the human. The Drone did not understand that the human presence on Mars was something the Eridani were concerned about because of the human expansion beyond Earth, after they had specifically warned the humans about such actions. Because of the long-reaching implications of the human presence, the Eridani Masters wanted the human and its technology studied as a threat assessment. It was vital to their position and posture in this region of the Orion Arm, that they know if this was a single incident or if these human creatures were beginning an expansion phase. If they were, that would have to be dealt with, somehow.
The Drone jumped into the vessel it had so recently vacated, passed through the hangar bays magnetic curtain, and swooped up from the valley floor. The Drone headed north and easttowards Chasma Boreale.
Achael HofPin
Achael, Hlef, two of their pod brothers (one human dominant, one Eben dominant), two True-Blood Eben, a few of the human staff, and some of the hybrid residents were all sitting in the large conference room. They all wanted to watch the PDV landing on the big screen. They had gotten notice of it months before. While the Lander explosion had been shocking (and entertaining for some), the PDV landing was taking 5 to 1 odds for a successful landing, 3 to 1 odds for an environmentally induced or mechanical malfunction, and 2 to 1 odds on Eridani interference. This was, after all, the heaviest object that ever landed on Mars by the unsuspecting humans. Weighing in at close to 12 metric tonnes, the Payload Delivery Vehicle was setting a new benchmark, hence the interest at the hybrid base.
Achael had put down a hundred dollars on a successful landing. Her sister, Hlef, had put down a thousand dollars on Eridani interference. Oddly enough, they would both win and the bookmaker would give up bookmaking because of how much he lost to them and the others. The only people that lost on this event were the ones who bet on environmental or mechanical failure.
Achael sipped on the straw in her can of Grape Crush while reaching her hand into Hlef’s bowl of buttered popcorn. Barry McMillan, a recently arrived forty-two year old human technician, was telling a joke about a minister, a priest, and a rabbi. Only the humans laughed. Eben culture has a very strong and devout faith in their Supreme Being. The Eben hybrids, as do the True-Blood Eben, consider this Being to be the same Supreme Being a lot of humans worship. Even the most liberal of Eben hybrids didn’t muck about when it came to spirituality and religion. It just wasn’t done. Barry knew that. Barry was a bit of an asshole.
They all turned their attention to the big screen as the image split into two views. One was from their own satellite in orbit, cloaked of course, that had a view of the Payload Delivery Vehicle. It was impressively large, and those in the room looked forward to seeing how advanced the human technology was in regards to the landing of the big container. The five massive staged RAD assemblies promised quite the fireworks show. While the Habitats that had landed had been a bit bigger in size, they only weighed in at seven metric tonnes each. Both Achael and Hlef had Masters Degrees from AFIT (Air Force Institute of Technology) in Aeronautic Engineering and Astronautic Engineering. That made this arrival of the PDV of special interest to both of them.
The humans on the Mars base were all single, with no families, parents or siblings. Human assignment on the base was until retirement, and those humans that did retire and return to Terra were given government housing for life, in a small, secure, and remote government community in Nevada. It was a nice community, nestled in the hills leading to Mt. Gant, above Walker Lake. A small number of the long serving humans simply opted to stay and live out their life on the Mars base. This was accommodated without much comment by those back on Terra. Having worked at the Hybrid base left a taint on a person for some small minded xenophobes in important positions.
The second view was a pickup (pirating if you will) of the Mar-Sat signal. Most of the hybrid base staff members were not aware of the Jalopy-Sat. Its own counterdetection status was in itself a testament to human technological advancement. The Mar-Sat feed showed the lone human colonist walking towards the previously landed cargo containers. Achael, Hlef, their human dominant brother Khlam, and Eben dominant brother Ahshuun, made small talk with a couple of the humans at the table. They watched the lone colonist standing there by his rover and then hopping up to sit on it.
That was when Helf leaned forward squinting at the screen. “Hey …”, she paused, brushing her curly brown hair out of her eyes, and then slowly pointed at the screen, “Do you see what I see?” The room went dead silent as everyone leaned a bit closer to look at the large half-picture.
Achael saw the “shimmer” of air immediately. It was like she had been slapped. She had watched the encounter earlier that day and it pissed her off, she was afraid for that lone human. She liked the human, liked what he was doing, and liked his chutzpah for coming to Mars alone. She didn’t think he was an idiot like Hlef thought. Achael admired his bravery. She had thought for a long time that détente be-damned, the humans should tell the Eridani to kiss their ass and start going back to the Moon. She wanted the humans to become a spacefaring species. As many troubles as the humans had on their homeworld, they were basically good and compassionate people. They liked exploring, and they liked helping others. That desire to altruistically help others was a rarity in the three galaxies. Achael wished many of the other races would take a page from humanity’s book. Achael set down her can of pop and leaned forward more in her seat.
“Bastards.” Not one to use rough language, everyone looked at her then looked back at the screen. Achael rapidly drummed her fingers on the table as Hlef watched her.
“What are you thinking Sis?” was Hlef’s question.
Achael looked at her, “We have to do something. We can’t let it end this way.”
“What do you mean”, then added air quotes, “end this way?”
Looking at the shimmer on the screen and then turning her gaze towards Hlef, she said, “The only reason that Eridani thing is that close to the human is because it’s going to do something, something bad. It’s either going to kill him or destroy the ship that’s landing.”
Hlef simply replied, “Or both”.
Hlef had been starting to worry about Achael the last couple of days, ever since that idiot arrived and survived the explosion of his space ship. Achael had been incessant in talking about what he was doing, his motivations, what it meant for humanity, how they would proceed after this, blah, blah, blah. Achael was a good and compassionate woman. She was intelligent, discerning in most things, and strong willed with a very strong emotional stability. However, she had a fault. Hlef knew from their thirty-nine years together that Achael would get something in her min
d about someone, and then fail to see anything but that.
Hlef thought that Achael might be attracted to this human for some stupid reason, and it worried her. There had been that silly boy from town that had caught her fancy while attending AFIT. Their six years down-side, so many years ago, had been difficult enough without someone getting close enough to learn things he shouldn’t. Then, having learned her lesson about townies, there had been the Captain at AFIT in their last year. Hlef had initially thought he was an okay guy, but then realized he was a playa and simply couldn’t get Achael to see it. It took a massive heartbreak for Achael to wake up and since then, she had only allowed Hlef and their brothers Ahshuun, Khlam, and Pinpin (the other Eben dominant brother) to be close to her. Hlef thought Achael was headed for heartbreak again, and would do and say anything to stop it before it happened.
Hlefs reply “or both” had infuriated Achael. She was aware that she and Hlef did not see eye-to-eye on this human. In fact, most of the Eben hybrids thought the human was on a fool’s errand. The humans on the base didn’t say too much, but they were all secretly rooting for his success.
Achael’s inner eyelid slammed shut. The hybrids inner eyelid turned their entire oversized eyeballs into orbs of black onyx. It made them look very Eben, and reminded many of the Eridani as well, specifically the Vesna, but no one dared say that to the hybrids. It would practically be a death sentence to insult them that way. Okay, maybe not a death sentence, but it would definitely be the precursor to an imminent ass-kicking.
The inner eyelid was an Eben trait. Eben had them to help protect their eyes from the bright sun on their homeworld. However, these inner and totally black eye-lids also responded to anger and passion in the hybrids. Seeing a hybrid with the inner eyelid closed meant either they were in the thrall of passion, or someone was about to get hurt, and hurt bad.
Achael stood up rapidly, knocking her chair backwards, so did Hlef. Seeing Achael’s rage also piqued Hlef’s emotions and her inner eyelid slammed shut as well. Achael and Hlef loved each other; they were sisters after all. In Eben culture, being family was a bond with deepness and commitment that even the most committed of human families simply couldn’t comprehend. It’s known throughout this galaxy how strongly and deeply the Eben love their family members. It’s also well known that no siblings can fight like Eben siblings. Especially two Eben female siblings. It should tell you something that the deadliest and most feared of military units in the Eben world was an all-female military special services unit. Entire armies had been known to surrender simply for the reason that this unit, called the PinShaah, showed up on the battlefield.
When the rest of the room saw their eyes go jet black, the room quickly emptied, leaving the two women alone. Everyone that had left the room hovered in the hallway while the on-duty security team was called. Even the True-Blood Eben on the base stayed out of the room. When the security team learned what the problem was, they went back to the armoury for larger weapons than just their sidearm. An Eben, especially an Eben hybrid, in a state of rage, could be very unpredictable. That unpredictability was something the Eben scientists had not been able to program out of them. It was the only thing that kept the hybridization program isolated to this one small outpost, instead of it taking place on a larger scale.
“I’m going to stop this” Achael said in a quiet voice, referring to the Eridani presence at the human colony site.
“No, you are not. You are going to sit down and stop being syrupy over this human idiot” was Hlefs equally quiet response.
After a momentary pause, Achael warned her, “Get out of my way, Hlef. This is my decision. I’m not letting that drone kill that man. I’ve had enough of this. They blow up his space ship, they terrorize him, and now that thing is going to do something worse. I’m going to stop it.”
Hlef took half a step closer to her sister. They stared straight into each other’s solid black eyes. “Wake-up sis. You’ve got a bug up your ass about this human and I don’t know why. It’s just another one of your pathetic ‘save the animals’ causes like you had in Uni. That idiot colonist is not one of us, he’s not part of this base, and he’s not part of this mission. You have no responsibility for him. He was warned.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Achael punctuated each word like it was its own sentence. Pausing to see if her sister would relent, she continued in a low voice, “Get out of my way Hlef; get out of my way now.”
Ahshuun took this moment to gingerly walk back into the room. He held his long arms up with his palms facing forward. and a cheesy smile on his small mouth, “Girls, come on. Let’s all be friends before …”
Achael and Hlef turned to look at him at the same time. In unison, they said very quietly, “Get out.” His eyes went wider and his face fell in sudden realization at what a silly thing he had just done. That was all he needed, he turned so fast he tottered, and then hightailed it out of the room, shaking his head at the others in the hallway. The crowd of people pulled back even further from the two doors to the room.
Hlef turned back to look at her sister, reached out and took hold of her shoulders, “Achael, I love you. You are my sister and I will die for you, but I am not going to let you attack that drone and destroy the détente we’ve had with the Eridani for the last thirty years. Let go of this puppy dog obsession and grow up.”
In retrospect, that was what triggered Achael. That was exactly what did it. When Hlef told her sister to “grow up”, that was the trigger. The events of the next few minutes would be talked about in hushed whispers for years. The security camera recordings were immediately downloaded and locked away; and to this day, have never been viewed by anyone. The level of destruction that occurred in the next few minutes was stupefying, especially when you considered it came from two average sized women; alien hybrid women.
Now some of you may be familiar with the term “catfight”. To say this was merely a “catfight” would not be fair to either cats, nor to fighting in general. As I said before, no one can fight like siblings, especially Eben siblings. Compounding this was the fact that the two Eben siblings were women. It’s well known on many worlds that one does not interfere with an Eben catfight; even the most hardy of warriors will turn on their heels and walk away from that thought. It really is all that much worse when the two Eben women are human-dominant hybrids. They have the Eben mentality, the Eben fierceness, the genetically inherited warrior reflexes, and they have human bulk and size.
There is the screaming, as well.
When Eben are in battle, specifically in close-up combat, the Eben Battle Scream instills such terror that enemies will flee or surrender just to make it stop. Likened to 1,000 finger nails on chalkboard by the few humans that have heard it, the sound could actually make the ears bleed in some races, including humans, if they were close enough. If it was closer than 2 metres, it could rupture human eardrums. For the Eben, it doesn’t bother them; for the Hybrids, only slightly so. Many warriors of old who went up against the Eben always wore some alien version of ear plugs and would flatly refuse to go into battle without the ear plugs. The Eben battle scream is just as effective over radios as it is in person.
With the screaming that started as the two women launched at each other, there also came the crashing and smashing of objects. Any object at hand can become a deadly weapon for an Eben. A few minutes into this flat out two-person brawl, one of the security members decided enough was enough. The women had had their fun and it was time to stop. The almost 2 metre tall, two-hundred and forty pound body building Special Forces Army Sergeant Tucker, handed his large weapon to his partner, stuck his fingers in his ears, and then walked up and stood at the door. He yelled in the room, “Ladies! Enough!” The only thing the people in the hallway saw was the blur of two fists connecting with him squarely in the middle of this face, and then the Special Forces Army Sergeant tipping over backwards like a felled tree. It would take two full days in the medical unit before he could return to duty, bruised and still s
ore.
Shortly after the unconscious Special Forces Sergeant had been dragged out of the danger zone, the battle erupted into the hallway. Every person there turned with a look of fear on their face and ran around the corner at the end of the corridor, empting the hallway outside the conference room. I think the fact that the Base Commander and his 2IC (second in command) were in the crowd that was running away in fear, was the real reason why the surveillance videos were locked away.
Achael had a thick wooden leg from the conference table in her hand. Hlef had a cinder-block in her hand. The two women had black ichor streaming from cuts on their foreheads, faces, and arms. Eben blood is black and sticky, much thicker than human blood. They both stood panting and staring at each other for a moment, then dropped what they were holding, and went fisticuffs.
It was a blur of swinging arms and legs. Had anyone stuck around long enough to watch it, they would have found it reminiscent of the old Saturday morning cartoons. The ones where the Roadrunner has his way with Wyle E. Coyote, after Wyle E. Coyote’s latest Acme gadget fails to perform to spec. The Eben Battle Scream had, at this point, given away to simple screams of rage, laced with a few “you fraking bitch” thrown in as punctuation. Things seemed to be starting to slow down to those brave enough to peer around the corner from the end of the hall. Without any prelude or warning, the fight took another turn for the worse when Achael screamed at Hlef that she was a “drone fraker”. That was definitely worse than telling them they looked like the Eridani. It was just so, so much worse.
In the end, the battle lasted twelve full minutes. It cost one conference table, two large screen monitors, six chairs, two book cases, a microwave oven, a refrigerator, three light fixtures, several gaping holes in the cinderblock walls, and the services of one Special Forces Army Sergeant (but just for a few days). The fight created two new doorways in the cinderblock walls of the conference room as well as destroying one solid wood door. That was all before they moved out into the hallway. It was after the smashing of two benches, a desk, and the catering office window in the hallway that the human dominant hybrid Base Commander finally had enough. He stepped around the corner, cleared his throat and at the top of his voice shouted, “ACHAEL! HLEF! STOP THIS! RIGHT NOW!”