Warwick: Episode 3: Galactic Vangeance

by Mike Ploof

  Before I could object, she handed me her arm, kissed me on the cheek, and leaped off the roof.

  TW, can you hear me? she asked in my head. I glanced at Ella and Val, and realized they had heard her too.

  “We can hear you,” I said out loud.

  TW, you can speak in your head, like we could with Jules, said Purshia. She showed me a few things on that last flight, and I think I’ve got it figured out. But you’ve got to address the person or people you’re talking to in order to open the link, that way we aren’t hearing each other think. I said TW first, which means Team Warwick and opens a channel for all of us. Make sense?

  TW, said Ella. Makes sense.

  “It does?” I said aloud. TW, I mean, it does?

  There, you’ve got it, said Purshia, but once the connection is made, you don’t have to keep saying it. When you’re finished, say over and out.

  Did you just make that up? I asked, winking at Ella.

  No, silly. I saw it on one of your movies, said Purshia. Ok, I’m on the tarmac. I’m going in. Wish me luck.

  Good luck, said Val.

  Don’t do anything crazy, I said.

  May the force be with you, said Ella, who was the biggest Star Wars fan of the bunch.

  Thanks. Over and out.

  I tried to enhance my vision to see Purshia slinking around the open-aired hangar, but I couldn’t detect her at all. Giving up the universal nanoarm was a testament to her bravery, and my respect for her had grown exponentially when she handed it to me.

  We waited patiently for word from her, but she was suspiciously silent for more than five minutes.

  TW, I said, Where you, Purshia?

  Waiting for the drones to make their rounds. Okay, here I go.

  The ramp to our spaceship opened ever so slightly, then it closed just as fast.

  I’m in. Stay where you are, and I’ll beam you up. Once I take off, I don’t want to risk landing somewhere.

  Okay, Purshia, I said.

  I waited with mounting anxiety as the ship’s lights came on, and some of the technicians walking around took notice. But Purshia wasn’t messing around. The ship quickly lifted off, floated straight up, and turned to face us.

  An alarm went off in the hangar. The ship moved over us at about ten miles an hour. As pilots rushed to their ships, my body disintegrated. In the blink of an eye, I was back onboard, and I raced down the hall from the beaming room to the bridge and took my seat.

  “Here you go, babe,” I said and tossed a very naked Purshia her arm.

  She caught it and twisted it on. “Thanks, honey buns.”

  “Attention, you have stolen a vessel from the HIJ,” a male said gruffly over our PA. “You will not—I repeat—you will not make it off this planet. Land now or suffer the consequences.”

  “Commander Rhuck? Is that you?” I asked.

  “Harry? I advise you to land now.”

  “No can do, compadre. Your boy Zex ordered the Phaerkons to deploy a weather bomb on my planet. I have to stop it before millions of people die. Do me a solid, and call off the wolves.”

  “There are six ships in pursuit, and they’re charging weapons!” said Purshia.

  “Commander!”

  “Why would Zex do such a thing?” he asked.

  “Long story short, he sent us to steal Targar’s memory chip under the ruse that he was trying to take down the galactic slave trade. In reality, Zex was a huge part of it, and he wanted Targar killed and the memory chip given to him so he could destroy it and any proof he was a part of it.”

  “Where is Zex?”

  “I put a hole in his head earlier,” I said. “He’s probably still in his apartment.”

  “Harry, these are serious accusations, and you are wanted on Xteriac 3.”

  “Either you believe me or you don’t, Rhuck, but think about this: why the hell else would I kill Zex?”

  “They’re locking weapons on us,” said Purshia, steering for the clouds. On the main screen, the fighters’ guns began to glow.

  “Commander, I can prove all this,” I said. “But first I’ve got to stop the hurricane.”

  I waited for five tense seconds, then Purshia turned to me and smiled. “The fighter ships are turning back.”

  “Thanks, Rhuck.” I said with relief.

  “I think I know what kind of man you are, Harry, so I’ll vouch for you this time. But I’m going to need that proof.”

  “As soon as I stop the hurricane and save Florida, it’s yours.”

  “I will speak with the council. If what you say is true, and Zex really did this, he and the Phaerkons have committed a serious crime against your world.”

  “Tell me about it. Can the council stop it?” I asked.

  “I know of nothing that can stop a hurricane,” he said quietly.

  “Well, you never know. Talk to you later, Rhuck, and thanks again. Warwick out.”

  Purshia cut the feed, and we shot through the clouds.

  “I’ve located the top scientist on Phaerkon,” said Val.

  “Great, let’s see him.”

  She swiped it onto the holoscreen at my station, and I read his bio.

  “F’yr’edyr? What kind of name is that?”

  “Phaerkonian,” said Ella matter-of-factly.

  Purshia set a course for the planet. When we entered hyperspace, the stars and planets streaked by like visuals from an acid trip.

  The flight to the Phaerkon home world was two days, and even if we discovered a way to stop the hurricane, it was going to be another three days back to Earth.

  Needless to say, I was biting my nails that first day of travel.

  Purshia brought up one of the Earth weather channels, and my heart dropped when I saw them reporting on an extremely strong storm starting to take shape far off the east coast of Florida.

  “Shit, this is going to be a bad one.”

  “You okay?” Ella asked from the station beside me.

  “I’m fine,” I said in a near whisper. Seeing the massive storm brewing, I was second-guessing my hair-trigger decision to put a bullet in Zex’s head.

  I got up and went to the galley. The food replicator was on a counter in the brightly lit kitchen, and I punched in a Vodskey, straight up. Five seconds later the machine dinged, and I opened the glass door and took my drink out. I tossed it back and punched in another, then another.

  “Harry?” Val said stiffly, and I turned to regard her as I finished my third drink in as many minutes.

  “I am not okay,” I admitted gravely.

  She walked over, took my drink, put it down on the counter, and gave me a big hug.

  I melted against her soft bosom, and she stroked my hair.

  Ella walked in and joined us in the hug, followed by Purshia. The women led me to the shower and undressed me, then lathered me in soap and rubbed their naked bodies against me as the warm water spilled over me.

  After drying me off, they led me to the bedroom.

  I didn’t say a word and enjoyed every minute of it.

  Val was the first to straddle me, and she did so with a passion I hadn’t thus far experienced. As attractive as my perceived manliness was to her, my apparent weakness was an even bigger turn-on. She held me tight and gyrated on my cock, moaning with feminine need and kissing my face and neck. I clung to her muscular ass, sucked on her long nipples, and moaned with her.

  Ella and Purshia lay next to us, caressing and kissing us as we made love.

  I closed my eyes, and only my awareness of their individual bodies told me which woman was riding me. I fell into a world of bliss, filled with soft caresses, soft skin in my strong hands, and the closeness we all felt for each other.

  When I finally let go, it was Ella who rode me to climax.

  We collapsed, and the girls snuggled up to me.

  As I lay there, staring at the stars streaking by and listening to the women’s soft, sleeping breaths, I couldn’t help but fear for my fellow humans. Had I done the right thi
ng killing Zex? Had I doomed millions with my angry stubbornness?

  I’d taken a look at the memory chip, and there sure was some damning evidence—not only against Zex but hundreds of politicians and businessmen throughout the galaxy.

  Had I opened a pandora’s box that would haunt me forever? Had I put Earth in the crosshairs of other, more powerful beings?

  I was just a humble sheriff from Earth. I never asked to be abducted and tossed into an alien arena, but I’d be damned if I stood by and watched other species sell each other as slaves. It wasn’t cool in early America, and it wasn’t cool for the modern galaxy.

  I decided there and then that I would bring down every last son of a bitch on the list, and if they tried to fuck with Earth, well, they would have to go through me, Sheriff Harry fucking Warwick.

  It was amazing what the love of a woman could do for your resolve, especially when multiplied by three.

  I awoke the next morning ready to conquer the world, and the girls were happy to see it. We spent half an hour testing my morning wood’s constitution, and when I rose from bed, I left all three of them with a contented smile on their faces.

  I spent the day studying the Phaerkonian planet, their weapons and culture—everything. They had some pretty insane weather weapons, which were banned by the Galactic Council, but they didn’t seem to care. Even when the GC laid stiff sanctions on them, they kept on selling the weapons on the black market. They didn’t care who the buyer was, as long as they could pay.

  F’yr’edyr, the scientist we were on our way to speak with, had been part of the team that had created the first hurricane bomb. He had abruptly quit working for the government. When I tried to find out why, all I found where rumors that he’d objected to the weather bomb and wished he’d never taken part in the experiment. That was good news for me and gave me hope an anti-hurricane bomb or some other device existed.

  The day dragged on, and that night I could hardly sleep. I kept tuning in to the weather channel, compulsively tracking the storm’s progress. It turned into a full blown hurricane late that night, and it was named Olga, which made it sound pretty damned deadly.

  I awoke the next morning after only three hours of sleep, and I commanded my nanobots to increase focus by 50 percent. It was like an espresso shot of coffee right up the ass when it kicked in.

  “Morning, Harry,” said Purshia when I walked onto the bridge.

  “Morning.”

  “We should be arriving in less than one hour.”

  “Great. What’s the plan?”

  Ella was at the station beside Purshia, and she gestured me over and pointed at her screen. “F’yr’edyr lives alone, and this article I found on the cosmic screamer said he rarely leaves his house. It’s located in a remote area, so we shouldn’t have to worry about anyone bothering us.”

  “What about the Phaerkonian military? I don’t imagine they let just anyone enter their atmosphere.”

  “That’s true,” said Ella. “But we already took care of that.”

  “Really? How?” I asked Purshia.

  “I hacked an old security code that was assigned to a Dahrbick research ship about this size.”

  “Clever girls. What would I do without you?” I sat at my station and checked the Earth weather channel. Hurricane Olga had become a category three storm, and was twenty-four hours away from the Virgin Islands.

  This crazy scheme had to work or else I had doomed untold thousands by killing Zex.

  We arrived a few hours later, and a planet very much like Earth loomed before us when we came out of hyperdrive. Purshia used the old code as we approached, and after a few tense minutes, we were given the okay to proceed. F’yr’edyr lived on the smallest of the three continents, which was located in the northern hemisphere. Snow covered this part of the world, and our sensors told us that it was twenty-nine degrees.

  As we approached, Purshia zoomed in on the only lights for miles. “That’s F’yr’edyr’s place.”

  “Looks like a big ski lodge,” I noted. It was two stories high, with glowing windows, a metallic roof, and three smoking chimneys.

  “I’m only reading one Phaerkonian lifeform” said Val from her station. “There are others, but they are his pet fergs.”

  I’d read up on fergs, which were the Phaerkonian equivalent of dogs. They looked a lot like canines, except they had no tails, and they had a colorful plume of long feathers around their necks that relaxed against their body when they were calm or flared like a lizard’s neck when they were excited or on alert. They had short coats of fur, usually red, brown, white, or black, and the females were slightly smaller than the males.

  They also had teeth like a dog, which made me a little concerned. F’yr’edyr had ten fergs as pets, and I didn’t want to hurt them. Mind-controlling them all would be a pain in the ass, even for all four of us, so we decided I would deal with F’yr’edyr, while the girls used their telekinetic nano setting to subdue them with a team effort.

  Purshia killed the lights as we emerged from the clouds. I scoped out the area around the cottage on my holoscreen. The house was in a clearing surrounded by trees that looked similar to pines. Their boughs were weighed down by snow, but they were tall and strong. A second, smaller clearing was about two miles away to the south, and Purshia stealthily brought us down there, landing smoothly on the packed snow.

  Much to our surprise, F’yr’edyr was waiting for us.

  He stood tall, with his hands casually clasped behind his back. He wore no clothes, and his thick fur barely moved in the blustery wind that sent snow wisps dancing like ghosts across the ground. The Phaerkonians were like the abominable snowmen—mostly white, about seven feet tall, and as wide as a horse. I’d read that F’yr’edyr was a pacifist, but I knew he could still rip my head off if he wanted to. He looked intimidating as hell, standing there with his icy blue eyes fixated on the ship, and the hair beneath his nose and mouth frozen into long crystals.

  “Are you going gawk all night?” he asked in a voice that was unexpectedly noble and jovial at the same time. “Or are you going to get out of your ship and ask me your questions?”

  “Lower the ramp,” I told Purshia. I unbuckled and left the ship.

  I enabled my nanosuit to fend off the cold, but I left the helmet open. The biting wind was a shock to breathe in, but I was raised in northern New York about half an hour from Canada, and I’m no stranger to freezing temperatures.

  “You are the Earthling, Sheriff Warwick, am I correct?” he asked as I approached.

  “Yes, and you are the renowned scientist, F’yr’edyr?”

  “I am.”

  He glanced over my shoulder, and his blue eyes softened. “These must be your lovely wives, Purshia, Ella, and Val.”

  The girls had joined me. “How do you know our nicknames?” Ella asked, noting something I’d missed.

  “I have done my homework,” he said, looking unsettled. “I follow things. I know what my people have released upon your world.”

  “Then you can help us stop it,” I said, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt.

  “I can,” he said with a nod. “And I intend to. But I can make no promises.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Follow me.” A door suddenly appeared out of thin air and opened for us. On the other side of the threshold was a fireplace made of stone and a room made of wood.

  He walked through the door first, and the girls and I followed. Stepping through the opening was no different than passing through a normal door. But the lodge was two miles away, and the magic of the doorway made me feel a little giddy inside.

  After we’d gone through, F’yr’edyr closed the door, which was in the middle of the room, held in place by braces attached to the floor.

  “That’s one of the most amazing things I’ve seen since I left Earth,” I said, astonished.

  “Thank you. I designed it myself. Come sit by the fire. I have a drink I think you will enjoy. It is similar to the Vodskey y
ou like so much.”

  He whistled, and I heard what sounded like a small stampede moments before ten dog-sized furballs with pluming feathers skidded around the corner. Half of them wiped out, but they regained their feet quickly and scampered over to us, tailless butts wiggling happily.

  He smiled at us. “Do not be alarmed. They will not hurt you.”

  “Who’s a pretty ferg,” crooned Purshia, laughing and petting two of them as they fought for her attention.

  I petted the one staring at me and asked him, “How do you know so much about us?”

  “I knew you would be coming, so I have been studying you.”

  “Did you see us fight in the arena?” Purshia lounged on one of the long couches by the fire and curled her tail around the headrest, making herself right at home. Three of the fergs jumped up next to her.

  Ella and I sat on the opposite couch, with the rest of the fergs staring at us, and Val stood behind us like a sentinel.

  “Who didn’t see you fight in the arena?” he said, laughing. “You four have given the galaxy hope. You’re legends on most planets.”

  “And wanted criminals on the rest,” I joked.

  He poured drinks. “That is true, my friend, but he who has no enemies has done nothing notable.”

  “Is that a Phaerkonian proverb?” I asked.

  “No.” He nodded in Val’s direction. “I believe it is a Nozama proverb.”

  I glanced at her, and she nodded.

  F’yr’edyr brought five short and stout copper cups over to us on a smooth wooden tray that could have gone for three hundred bucks in one of those fancy woodworking shops. He set it down on the long wooden coffee table, which would have gone for about two grand, then settled into a big chair with his drink, groaning like an old man. I couldn’t tell his age because of the fur on his face, but his eyes looked tired, despite their beauty.

  He raised his glass, and I remembered the story of the grays influencing the species in the galaxy toward sinful things. Apparently, we had all learned a lot of the same customs. Either that, or he had studied human traditions.