by C. F. Harris
I sighed. "Your friends have probably already been spirited away to the Imperium ship, wherever the hell it's hiding. You're not going to save them by staying here and burning to death or getting disintegrated, got it?"
She bit her lip and looked towards the back door, though it was wreathed in flames now. I'm not sure how she expected to go back there and rescue her friends when she couldn't even get through that door without being burned to a crisp. I could admire her spirit, though.
"Fine," she said. "Let's get the hell out of here."
I stood and fired several shots towards the stage, though the Imperium agents were turning and leaving at this point. Apparently the fire was making it too hot for their pleasure as well. A couple of them turned and fired off shots in my direction, it seemed they finally realized there was someone else in the room firing at them, but they weren't really aiming for me so much as they were providing themselves a bit of covering fire. Which was just fine by me. I was doing the same damn thing.
We reached a back wall and I raised my weapon. Fired several times and the wall cracked and then blasted out words. I faced into an alley. It was dark and damp, though that was going to change very quickly. The hole I’d just opened allowed more air to flow in which was only going to fuel that fire.
People were still screaming behind us, but there were fewer and fewer screams with each passing moment. I hoped that meant everybody who was going to get out had already got out, but there was no time to stop and look. I grimaced. This had all gone to shit entirely too fast.
I stopped and looked around the alley. We were near the entrance, and I heard a strange wailing off in the distance. Curious, I stepped out in time to see some of the curious wheeled land vehicles they used on this planet pulling up with flashing lights and wailing sirens that sounded like some sort of strange otherworldly beast.
There was one large yellowish vehicle, a small boxed one that was colored orange and white, and then a bunch of smaller vehicles that were black and white in color with red and blue lights flashing on top.
Curious. Very curious.
Uniformed men stepped out and I realized of course. It was the local authorities, come to deal with the fire.
Now there was a group I didn't want to tangle with. Better to stay in this nice quiet alley where I wouldn't be seen.
"Hey! Over here! Help me!"
I winced at every word. I turned and stared, open eyed and slack-jawed, at Melissa. She'd been the one screaming. What the hell was she doing?
"Are you crazy?" I asked.
It was too late, though. No sooner had she shouted than a couple of the authority types wearing dark clothing with shiny insignias on their chests broke away. They pulled something from their sides. Something that looked very similar to my own weapon. Not good. Not good at all.
"Come on," I said, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back in the alley. That got the attention of the authority types.
"Let the girl go!" One of them shouted.
I heard a series of cracks. Dirt kicked up around me. Then the other one was shouting.
"What the hell are you doing? You might hit the girl!"
I was going to have to take care of this the old-fashioned way. I reached down and flipped my weapon to stun. One of the nice things about dealing with a galaxy that had been settled by an ancient human civilization tens of thousands of years ago was humans were everywhere. That meant stun settings worked pretty well to disrupt the electronic processes in someone's body on pretty much every world we traveled to.
I couldn't imagine what it would be like trying to use these weapons on aliens that had a completely different physiology. How convenient that our ancient ancestors had conquered the galaxy before they’d been conquered themselves by some mysterious threat that we still hadn’t quite identified.
I turned my weapon to bear on the authority types.
"He's got a gun!"
More cracks, but luckily I was at the end of a dark alley and neither one of them seemed to be a particularly good shot. I squeezed off two shots of my own that slammed into them, sending them flying out of the alley. They stayed still. No time to go and check if they were okay, if the stun setting worked as well on this world as it did on every other world.
"And I thought it was bad getting spears thrown at me," I muttered.
"What did you do to them?" Melissa asked.
"They’re just stunned. They'll be fine, no thanks to you screaming and pulling their attention in the first place! What were you thinking?" I asked.
"How do I know you're not one of them?" she asked.
I sighed. Stared down at her. A level stare that had her looking at down, hopefully in embarrassment.
"Really? I'm out here and risking my life to rescue you from those guys and you're still wondering if I'm one of them? Hell, I killed a couple of them back in that fire so I could get you out! What's it going to take to convince you I'm one of the good guys?"
"I'm sorry," she said in a quiet voice.
I wanted to stay angry at her, but it was so damn hard. She was so beautiful. How did I stay angry at a face that looked like it was on the verge of tears? And even standing there on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by everything that had happened to her, she looked so gorgeous.
I moved a hand up to her cheek. And to my surprise and delight she actually leaned into that gesture. She took in a deep breath and sighed.
I cocked an eyebrow. Maybe there was more to what was going on between me and this girl than I thought. More than me trying to get her away from the Imperium and her resisting me every step of the way. That was a nice thought.
"Look, a lot has happened to you," I said. "I get it. You just found out that space travelers are real."
She looked up and smiled. "Yeah, you're my first space alien."
I chuckled and moved to pull her down to the end of the alley where it branched, presumably going between buildings. This was probably some sort of access area for deliveries or something, but it would do quite nicely for an escape as well. Behind me I heard the roar of the fire in that club combined with the crack of weapons and the familiar sizzle of energy weapons. Perhaps not all of the Imperium agents had gotten out of there after all.
It was a damn shame. The local authorities would have no chance against their weapons, but I suppose they did have strength in numbers. It would probably balance out in the end. Besides, that was probably just a screening force left behind to make sure I wasn't sticking around to cause more trouble.
"Actually I'm not an alien in the strictest sense," I said.
"What are you talking about? You're a captain on some sort of starship, right?"
"Well yeah," I said. "But technically we’re all descended from the same ancient fallen human civilization. Different worlds, same species."
"How does that work? Is it like the Romans or something?"
"I don't know who the Romans are, but if they’re an old civilization that fell on this world then yeah, it's probably sort of like that."
"This is all like something out of a bad science fiction movie," she said.
"You have science-fiction on this planet?" I asked.
"Well of course we do," she said. "Hasn't really been my thing since I got out of middle school and realized that I wanted to have a life, but I used to like it a lot. Dashing captains running through space and saving the girl. I could get behind that."
I grinned. "Well I'm glad I was able to help you live the fantasy."
"Yeah, some fantasy. So what are we going to do about saving my friends?"
"That's easy. I'll just call my ship and let them know we were discovered. With the resources from the ship we should be able to track them down again, assuming they haven’t left the planet."
“What happens if they’ve left the planet?”
“Then we have to blow their ship out of the sky before they go into fold space and hope your friends survive the attack,” I said, noting the look of horror dawning on her fa
ce. "I just hope they were been able to affect repairs on the ship, otherwise we won’t be able to do even that."
"Repairs?"
"You're not exactly seeing me at my best here," I said. "I managed to get one of my crewmembers killed and one of them captured back in that club, and my ship is damaged while I have no idea how damaged the other guys ship is."
"Damn it. And here I was hoping the cavalry was going to come to save our butts," she said.
"At the very least I can I get us to someplace a hell of a lot safer than this place. There are band bound to be Imperium soldiers staying behind to try and track me down. Hell, Rethvar seems to have a personal grudge against me for some rason. I wouldn't put it past him to stay on-world to personally track me down and kill me."
"Great. I'm in the middle of a fight between space aliens holding a grudge," she said.
I gave her a flat stare.
"Okay, so humans from another world with a grudge. Not exactly space aliens, but it's close enough for me," she said.
I reached down to grab at my communicator and a look of dawning horror wound its way across my face. I thought back to the fight. To energy weapons blasting around the room. To the scanner and my communicator being disintegrated in a blast. I'd completely forgotten about it in my rush to get the hell out of here. I'd been acting and not thinking.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"My communicator. It was destroyed in that fight."
"Damn."
"Yeah. Now we're going to have to try and find something on this primitive planet that will allow me to get in touch with my ship. Great."
"And those guys are going to be chasing us the whole time?"
I looked down and smiled at her. "You can be sure of that. So are you enjoying your space alien adventure so far?"
"Oh yeah, this is just great. Now come on. I think I know place where we might be able to find something to help you out."
10
Melissa
Why was I even going along with this? I should've run for the cops when I had the chance. Even if this guy did claim to be a good guy, he was obviously one of them in some way. He was from out of this world. He had a weapon just like the people who were attacking. He wasn't the kind of guy I should've been getting mixed up with, damn it.
And yet here I was. Because he was the only lifeline I had to my friends. All I could do was hope and pray that they didn't get disintegrated by one of those weapons or caught in the fire. I had no way of knowing where they were.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" he asked.
"Are you sure you can't just use my cell phone to call your ship?" I asked.
"I'm positive," he said. "I thought I'd already explained this?"
"Yeah, you explained it just fine. The transmitter isn’t nearly powerful enough to reach your ship wherever the hell it is."
"I believe it's called the Lagrange point," he said.
I stopped. Turned to peer at him with an eyebrow raised. "That sounds suspiciously like something that's named after a person from this world. How the hell would you know that word?" Are you speaking English at all, for that matter?"
Flin shrugged and blushed. "I have a translator in my ear that takes everything you say and automatically converts it to my native language. It also does the reverse for anything I say."
I peered closer at him as he spoke. And as I did I realized that there was something just a tad off about the way he talked. Like watching an old foreign movie that had been dubbed, only a giant radioactive lizard wasn't coming from over the hill to destroy the city.
At least I hoped it wasn’t. I’d already run into a spaceman, after all. After that a giant radioactive lizard suddenly didn’t seem quite as impossible as it had when I woke up this morning.
Now that I knew what to look for, though, it was pretty obvious. His lips were moving but his voice made different sounds. Weird, now that I knew to look for it.
"Everything about this night is so fucked up," I said.
I took his arm and pulled him along again. "Come on. Let's go find you some electronics so you could put together a communicator and ET can phone home."
"What are you talking about? ET?"
I rolled my eyes and growled in frustration. "Talking to you is going to be really difficult if you don't know any of the great pop-culture stuff from the last couple of decades."
"Why would I know any of that? I told you, I'm not from your world."
"Yeah yeah," I said. "Now here we are. I hope you can find what you're looking for."
I looked up and hoped this would be good enough. There was a sign over the door that said pawnshop in neon light. Though the “pawn” part of the neon sign was flickering in and out.
I remembered going to a couple of these with my dad when I was younger. He always liked hunting for old video games and stuff like that, but I also clearly recalled amateur radio equipment being a part of the setup. I could only hope that the same rang true for a pawnshop in the middle of the city.
Otherwise we were in a hell of a lot of trouble. As I opened the door I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was following us, though that was a ridiculous notion. I had no way of knowing whether or not someone was following me anyway. It's not like I had secret agent training or anything like that.
"What are you looking for?" Flin asked.
"I'm just checking our six to make sure nobody's on our tail."
God. I was such an idiot. I blushed. I was talking like someone out of a bad movie. Then again, I felt like I was in the middle of a bad movie. Just a bad sci-fi movie and not a bad spy movie. And as I looked at him I blushed again. Trying to impress the dashing space captain was a big part of why I was acting so ridiculous in the first place.
"Your six? Is this more local stuff?"
"Just get in there. I wanted to make sure no one was following us."
"Oh. Why didn't you just say that?"
"I did," I said.
"Anyways. If they did decide to come after us, they would probably just teleport in right on top of us. We wouldn't have time to react."
"Now there's a comforting thought."
Only Flin wasn't listening to me. No, he walked up and down the aisles looking at all the various bits of electronic equipment on offer. And to my relief he went straight for a row that looked like it was old radio equipment of one sort or another. A bunch of CBs that had ceased to be useful to anyone but truckers since cell phones became a thing, and there was a hell of a lot of it.
I stopped and looked at one ancient bit of a radio equipment. Ran a finger over it. Dust kicked up and I sneezed.
"So what do you think? Will you be able to use any of this?"
Flin shook his head as he looked at it all. "I don't know. I just don't know. There's a hell of a good chance that none of this is going to be strong enough to actually do what I need.”
"Well you should at least try," I said. "I could do with a rescue from the skies."
"You know it's entirely possible that even if I do manage to get ahold of them the rescue won't be immediate."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Imperium ship is still out there somewhere. Waiting for me to make a mistake. If they’re at full strength while my ship is still fixing things and they decided to delay my ship then it could be awhile before they’re able to pull off a rescue from the skies, as you put it. We could be on our own for quite some time down here."
"Well that's just fucking great," I said.
"All the more reason for you to help me figure out a way to get in touch with my ship so we can see how quickly a rescue will take. Motivation for both of us," he said.
"Just hanging around you is all the motivation I need," I muttered.
He looked at me and grinned. A wolfish grin that told me he'd heard exactly what I'd just said. I blushed and couldn't believe I'd actually just said that. Was I really giving up how I felt to this guy that easily?
"Why Melissa," he said.
"I know we just met, but that sounds strangely like you've grown rather fond of me in our short time together."
"Would you please just shut up and look at this equipment? Tell me if you can use any of it?"
He turned back to the radio equipment, but that grin didn't leave his face. No, I’d just given him a bit of satisfaction letting him know that I was so interested in being around him. Though I don't know why I should be mad at admitting that. It was true, after all.
Plus I wanted to save my friends. I told myself that's what this was really about. I was worried about them. Wanted to make sure they were okay.
Even if I knew that was a lie.
Flin glanced over the equipment. He held a couple of pieces up. He even turned one on and I was surprised to see it power up. I figured the pawnshop wouldn’t keep anything connected to a power strip, but looking behind it sure enough there was a row of plugs. I suppose they wanted to make sure people could check out the merchandise.
Flin picked up a device I didn’t recognize and started tapping something out. A speaker flared to life next to us hissing with static. He waited and listened for a moment. Static kept right on hissing on the speakers, but there was no other response. Flin didn’t look happy. Whatever he was listening for, it was obvious he wasn't hearing it.
"Damn it," he said. "This is just what I was afraid of. None of this stuff is powerful enough for my purposes."
I growled in frustration. "Are you fucking serious?"
"I'm very serious," he said. "Though I don't see what that has to do with mating?"
I blushed as I realized the wrong conclusion he’d just jumped to. Talking with this guy could be a real pain in the ass sometimes. I had to remember that even though he was talking, sometimes the words didn't mean the same thing between the two of us.
"Never mind," I said. "It's a local curse word."
"Huh," he said. "We use something very similar on our world, though it relates to the mating ritual of one of our…"
I held a hand to stop whatever he was about to say.
"I really don't care," I said. "What I do care about is figuring out a way to get ahold of your ship. What's wrong with this stuff?"