Warwick: Episode 3: Galactic Vangeance

by Mike Ploof

  “Listen, Xertwat, or whatever the hell your name is, if you continue to approach Earth, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” he said with a sneer.

  “I guess you’ll find out,” I said evenly. “End communication.” His ugly puss vanished.

  “What do you intend to do?” Purshia asked.

  “I’m going to be a nice galactic neighbor and give them back their hurricane.”

  We approached the warship half an hour later and ten thousand miles from Jupiter, which loomed on the main screen, bright and beautiful and terrifying to behold. I told Purshia to stay out of range; if we flew too close, it would be a turkey shoot. They hadn’t yet scrambled their fighters, which I took as a sign of cockiness on the part of the Phaerkonian captain. He wouldn’t engage us unless we got in range, and I didn’t think we could get them to chase us.

  Purshia had checked for an anti-phasing shield around the warship, which they had, but it only extended a thousand feet out from the ship. I intended to use that to my advantage.

  “We’re going with you this time,” said Ella, and behind her, Val nodded agreement.

  “This only requires one of us,” I told them.

  “Then let me do it,” said Val. “We don’t keep you around so you can hog all the fun missions.”

  “Keep me around?” I said and cocked a brow.

  Val nodded, as serious as an overzealous conspiracy theorist at a party.

  “I don’t hog all the fun missions,” I said defensively.

  “We’re going,” Purshia reiterated.

  “All three of you? Who’s going to fly the ship?”

  “I can control the ship through my interface,” said Purshia.

  I could tell when I was out-voted. “Fine with me. The more the merrier.”

  Purshia punched in the coordinates, and we stepped onto the phasing platform and waited for the machine to do its thing. I commanded my nanobots to increase focus, reflexes, stamina, healing… hell, I increased everything that would help by 100 percent. It would be hard on my body, but the effect should be short-lived.

  “See you on the other side,” I said as I felt the tingling sensation.

  “Let’s kick names and take ass!” said Purshia.

  I laughed, and when I opened my eyes again, I was floating in space.

  Purshia had gotten us as close to their anti-phasing shield as she could. All we had to do was fly to the ship without being taken out by their defense turrets.

  We blasted toward the ship, our jetpacks pushed to the max. We hadn’t gotten two hundred feet before the turrets began spewing long lines of laser rounds, which came at us like sideways rain.

  “Shields!” I said, and brought up a nanoshield on the back of each hand. They flared to sparkling blue life, and I held them in front of me in a V-shape as I sped like Superman toward the terrible glowing red rain of death.

  We hadn’t yet found anything our shields couldn’t absorb or deflect. Purshia said it had something to do with the nanobots reverse-engineering things in an instant upon initial impact, and then simply changing the shield in ways that made them impenetrable. I didn’t understand it, but we were talking about advanced technology from creatures in another dimension, so I didn’t feel too bad about my ignorance. They worked, and that was good enough for me.

  We made it through the onslaught unharmed and landed on one side of the ship. Val grinned at me as she clung to the hull like Spiderman. “Mind if I do the honors?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She switched out one of her shields for a laser sword and stabbed it into the hull. The metal bubbled and fizzed while she cut a large circle in the metal like it was salami. The circular chunk shot out into space, along with three Phaerkonians and a shitload of crates, tools, and other junk. We waited for the room beyond to pressurize, then flew inside into a storage room about a thousand feet square.

  There was an alarm going off, and I grinned. “Didn’t see that coming, did you Captain Fuckstick?”

  I’d attached the storm-eater cylinder to my back. I retrieved it and marched to the door.

  “Ladies,” I said and sketched a shallow bow, complete with arm sweep.

  Ella stepped forward and cut through the door and then Val kicked the piece into the hall. Purshia went through first, a shield enabled on one arm and a laser gun on the other. Bullets hit her shield, and she ducked behind it and moved aside. Val, Ella, and I had already mounted our guns, and we unloaded them into the hallway.

  When the bullets stopped flying, six big white Phaerkonians lay dead at the other end. We strode down the hall like we owned the place, Val watching our rear, and Ella and Purshia on either side of me, guns and shields ready.

  More guards ran down the hall, and I hit one of them with a mind control dart, then we killed the rest.

  “Where’s the bridge?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you the way,” he said nervously. He tapped on a small tablet and handed it to me. On it was a layout of the entire ship.

  “Thanks, bro.” I decided not to kill him and told him to go to sleep.

  We followed the map to an elevator, but it was disabled.

  “A broken elevator is still a functional tunnel,” said Val.

  She switched out her gun to a nanobomb launcher, and we all stepped back. She fired two bombs into the elevator, completely destroying the cab and sending it hurtling in smoldering chunks to the levels below.

  Guards turned the corner behind us, but Ella and Purshia put them down quickly. I moved to the smoking shaft and looked in both directions. The map told me the bridge was five levels up, so I enabled my jetpack and got inside. The girls followed me, and we cautiously flew up five floors. When we got to the door at bridge level, I used my laser sword to cut a hole in it, but we were immediately attacked.

  I warned the girls and dropped out of range, then fired off a nanobomb. When the explosion passed, we hurried through the hole in the door and scanned the room; no one was left alive.

  According to the map, the bridge was down the hall, five rooms away from this one. I started for the door, but it opened before I got to it.

  We braced ourselves for an attack, but none came. I looked straight down the hall to the large double doors that were open to the bridge. A figure moved into the large space, nearly taking up the entire doorway.

  “Warwick,” said a gravelly voice.

  “Sorry, I forgot your name,” I said.

  He produced a large sword and an even bigger gun and stalked down the hall.

  “You want to fight? But I brought you a present.” I twisted the canister and rolled it down the hall.

  It began to glow and vibrate at the captain’s feet, and I smiled and flipped him double birds.

  It was time to bail.

  “Let’s go, ladies!” I yelled and enabled my jetpack.

  I flew back down the hall and through the next room, and behind me I heard the captain’s curses and desperate pleas to his crewmen to disable the device. But it was too late for them. I’d released the fury of a hurricane inside their ship—they were screwed.

  We went down the elevator shaft as fast as we could, then shot down the hall, through the room by which we’d entered their ship, and zipped back through the hole we’d made and into open space.

  I glanced back as we sped away from the warship, and I could have sworn I saw angry clouds churning behind all the windows. A moment later the ship exploded, and I high-fived the girls as we returned to our ship.

  I sat in the diner at a table for four, with Ella, Purshia, and Val, barely able to contain my excitement.

  With the help of the nanobots and some magazines, the girls had changed their appearance to look human, and I gotta admit, they were pretty freaking hot. They kept their faces and bodies, only changing skin and hair color to fit in better.

  Ella had traded her blue skin for bronze, but she kept her black hair. Val looked more human then either of them, and she needed only a subtle change to her ski
n tone. Purshia’s change was the most dramatic. Gone was the fur, hidden was the tail, changed were her perky ears, and her skin was a freckled pink that made her look distinctly Irish.

  “You girls are going to loooove cheeseburgers,” I said, my leg bouncing in anticipation.

  “I’ve never seen you so excited,” said Purshia.

  “Don’t you remember the time in the pool at the gambling house?” Val asked.

  “Oh yeah!” Purshia giggled.

  “I can’t wait to try one,” said Ella.

  The waitress came with four orders of American cheeseburgers and fries, and I almost shit myself with enthusiasm.

  We’d been on Earth for about six hours, but I’d held off until dinner time to bring the girls here. Getting them clothes had been the biggest holdup. They didn’t have anything even closely resembling human clothing, not the latest styles anyway, and I didn’t want them sticking out any more than they already would, being drop-dead gorgeous and all.

  The first thing I did when I emerged from the clearing where we landed was call an Uber. The driver, a woman in a big ford F-150, took me to my house, and I told her I’d be back with the cash. I broke into my house, grabbed my hidden stash, and overtipped her. I went back inside, and the reality of where I was set in. I stood in the kitchen, wondering if the arena, the girls, and our many adventures had just been some gnarly dream. I clenched my right fist and mounted my laser sword to remind me what was real.

  A laugh escaped me as I dismissed the weapon.

  “Harry?”

  I spun around. My mother stood in the living room.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said and crossed the room, arms wide.

  She stopped me and felt my shoulder as if making sure I was real, then looked into my eyes. A tear spilled down her cheek.

  “It’s me, it’s Harry.”

  She hugged me fiercely.

  “Sorry if I gave you a scare,” I said when she held me at arm’s length to look me over.

  “A scare? Where have you been?”

  I let out a long sigh. “In space.”

  She glanced at my arm. “That laser you held. How did you do that?”

  “It’s a long story, but before we get into that, I’d really love some freaking coffee.”

  She put on a pot, and I told her everything that had happened since I was abducted by the greys. The story made her anxious, because she paced the kitchen through most of it and smoked five cigarettes in about an hour.

  I recalled my adventures with glee as I drank coffee and went through her fridge and pantry with a ravenous appetite. I’d been without Earth food for a month, and while the replicator provided a balanced diet, and the girls had introduced me to new things I liked, there was nothing like good old American junk food after weeks in space.

  When I got to the part of the tale about the Phaerkonians dropping a weather bomb in the Atlantic, she blanched but then perked up.

  “The hurricane that miraculously disappeared. That… that was you?”

  “That was me and the girls, yup. The funny part is that it was the result of answering a distress call I’d wanted to ignore.”

  “Harry,” she said, slapping my arm. “I didn’t raise you to ignore distress calls, whether from Earth or space.”

  “I know,” I said. “Being your righteous son is a curse.”

  She waved me off. “Show me your nanoshield again!”

  I gave her a ride home in her car—she’d been going to my house every night in case I showed up—and then I borrowed it, telling her that I’d bring it back soon.

  “I don’t care about the car,” she said, half in and half out the door as we sat in the driveway. “Just promise me you’ll keep in touch. What are you going to do, anyway? Were you serious about going to the UN about all this?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll visit when I can. We have a lot to figure out.”

  “Oh, maybe you can become a galactic sheriff,” she said excitedly.

  I chuckled. “Sounds like a lot of paperwork.”

  She laughed and kissed me on the cheek, and I watched her until she was safely in her house and the lights were on.

  The next stop I made was to the station. It was noon by then, and Marge and Jake were at their desks. He was working on paperwork, and Marge was snapping her gum and filing her nails. There were four deputies at their stations, and one booking a drunk man.

  When I cleared my throat, they all looked up and stared.

  “Harry?” Marge droned mid-gum chomp.

  “Holy fucking shit!” said Jake. “Harry?”

  The deputies l surrounded me like I was a returning hero, and I had to raise my arms and speak over them to get them to settle down.

  “Listen, listen! I know I have a lot of explaining to do, and I’ve probably cost you all a shit ton of paperwork and worry, and for that I’m sorry. But I’m alive. I came here to tell you that. Also,” I said when they started asking questions, “I wanted to explain myself.”

  They went quiet.

  “I’ve been in Bali.”

  They were shocked.

  “And I’m resigning.”

  “Resigning, boss?” said Marge.

  “Yup, turning in the old star. I’m done. It’s time for a new generation to protect this county.”

  “Dude, you’re only twenty-seven,” said Jake. “And what do you mean, you’re quitting?”

  A half hour later I finally got loose from the station, and I wondered if I should have even opened that can of worms. Sooner or later someone was going to catch wind of my sudden reappearance, and if that shit went viral, my mother would never get any rest.

  From the station I drove to the grocery store. I had twelve thousand dollars in my kitty at home, and I wasn’t going to leave Earth without some damn good food. Purshia had told me the food replicator only needed a sample to be able to recreate a larger portion, so I grabbed two grocery carts and filled them with one each of just about everything. I grabbed every vegetable, a steak, hamburger, pork chops, hot dogs, chicken, ham, sliced deli meat of every variety, cheese, cream cheese, cheese curds, butter—thank god for butter—bacon, frozen pizza, pickles, chips, cookies, beer….

  By the time I finished, three employees struggled to push four other carts besides my own back to my mother’s car.

  Somehow we managed to stuff everything inside, and I drove to the clearing where we had landed. It took me and the girls more than four hours to log everything into the food replicator, but I was so excited afterward, I could have jumped out of my own flesh.

  I could finally eat Earth food regularly, and better yet, I could introduce it to the universe. Hell, maybe I’d start a galactic food truck.

  Back at the restaurant, the waitress put our plates on the table and asked if we needed anything else.

  “No thank you,” I said, then I grinned at the girls. “Are you ready?”

  They nodded.

  “Pick it up like this.” I grabbed the burger using the ultimate technique that minimized pickle slideage.

  They did the same.

  “Now take a big big bite. Really get in there.”

  I watched them bite into their cheeseburgers and chew. Their eyes went wide and they had a bad case of the smiles.

  “Good?” I asked.

  Their mouths were too full to answer, but they nodded and laughed.

  I chomped off at least a quarter of the thing. The soft bun, the moist beef, the tang of the cheddar, the salty, fatty, crunch of bacon… I savored it and smiled at my wives, thinking I was the luckiest man in the entire damned galaxy.

  Want More?

  Did you enjoy Warwick: Episode 3? Would you like to see where the gang ends up next? I know I would! Leave a review on Amazon and let me know you want episode 4! Amazon really likes reviews, and yours will help Warwick reach more readers. If you’ve read book 1, but haven’t left a review, please take the time to do so. If not for me, do it for Harry and the gang!

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  Thanks for reading!

  Mike