They were petrified!
I wish somebody had informed me that not many humans found me intimidating, let alone aliens. But I guess that’s what a sheltered captain’s life brings you. It fuzzes things up. Smears them. Coats them in a sense of self importance and arrogance. But in reality, your crew don’t actually physically fear you. They don’t find you intimidating, nor would they fear a confrontation with you. The simple fact is; they fear the badge. And the weight that comes with it. The time in the brig that results from disrespecting that badge. And for a few seconds that evening, in that dingy bar, in front of those vicious animals, I’d forgotten that my badge didn’t mean shit to them. And there was nothing that I could say or do to make them scared of me. But unfortunately, I was none the wiser.
“Just relax, human. We were having a fun time. Talking with your kind is something we don’t get to do often, so it is an education. An education that we will be able to take with us far beyond these stars. So please, be calm, have a beer and talk…friend.”
By then, I was far too drunk, angry and unaware to know who said that. But it didn’t stop me doing something that I knew would probably get me killed in the right circumstances. I stood there, raised my hands toward them, balled my fists up and spread my legs.
“Let’s not wait until Earth to see some fireworks. I’ve got two WMDs right here for you,” I snarled. Next thing I know, everything went black. Pitch black. No sound. No color. No nothing. Just blackness.
I was out cold.
Chapter Eighteen
“Wake up!” I heard somebody say. At first, I couldn’t open my eyes. The light in the room was too bright, and my head hurt like a mother---you know what.
“Come on, you lazy ass! You’re supposed to be flying this thing, remember?” the voice said, but my vision was blurred. I couldn’t see anything more than a silhouette. The shadowy figure was leaning over me, trying to shake me awake. I resisted, cursed and turned on my side.
“Leave me alone,” I moaned, like a child trying to pull a sickie off school. “I don’t feel well, besides, this thing can fly itself just fine. It has done so on many occasions. Many drunken occasions,” I hissed, putting the pillow over my head, trying to drown out the high pitched tone of whoever was trying to rouse me. It was a female’s voice, so I guess in a less foggy state it wouldn’t have been too difficult to identify the culprit.
“You call yourself a captain? Getting drunk with the enemy like that? I’m sure that’s not what the last hope for humanity would be doing if given a choice,” she said.
I threw the pillow off and sat up. The sudden movement made me feel ill. I was seconds away from vomiting, but luckily, the urge quickly dissipated.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I said, my eyes finally clearing of the mess that was fusing my eyelids together. I could now see and was able to identify the female in my quarters. It was Jess and she was suited and booted like it was any other day on board the ship. But even I knew that those days were long gone and the days that remained were probably going to be unlike anything we’d ever experienced before.
“Come on, get up. It’s nearly four in the afternoon,” she said.
I sniffed at the thought.
“When has time meant anything in space? Besides, we’re not orbiting any stars, planets, nor are we on Earth, so referring to what time it is back there won’t do us squat. And, may I add...,” I said, immediately realizing that Jess was regretting coming to wake me up, but I continued. “May I add, that it may be four o’clock somewhere on Earth, but it’s seven a.m. somewhere else. So leave me alone.”
Jess didn’t take no for an answer. She began to jump up and down on me bed. The springs made a horrendous grinding noise as her weight made them fluctuate and bend. I tried to refrain myself and keep calm, but I wasn’t too impressed with what she was doing. I hadn’t forgotten how angry I was at her, but she’d seemed to. And that pissed me off more than anything else.
“Look Jess, if I wanted to spend time with a murderer, I’d still be drinking with the aliens,” I said, lying back down, pulling the covers over me and trying to resume my sedated state. Sure enough, Jess stopped bouncing on the bed but she didn’t leave. She just sat there in silence. It was only when I took the covers away from my face that I saw her crying her eyes out. Her face was beet red and her cheeks were covered in moisture.
“You’re never going to forgive me, are you?” she cried, tears rolling down her face as she struggled to breathe, much like a child did when bawling their eyes out.
I sat up reluctantly, threw the covers off me and wrapped my arms around her. I held her tightly and didn’t let go. I felt ashamed of how I’d been treating her. She didn’t deserve it. If anything, I was to blame for Raj’s death, not her. I should have made a stand, and told the aliens to stick it. I should have fought back. But I hadn’t. I’d let the weight of the decision come down on one of my crewman instead. That wasn’t what captains did. And it certainly wasn’t what leaders did. They were supposed to absorb the blame for things going wrong, not use their own crewmembers as scapegoats. I felt more than ashamed of myself. Tears were also rolling down my face. But I tried to cover it up by burying my head into Jess’s shoulders. And with every tear that dropped down her face, her shoulders sank into me, as if the weight of her prior decisions were rolling off her back.
“I can still see his face, staring at me, his eyes looking up at me as I grabbed the sword and shoved it into his chest,” she said, trying to regain some sort of control over her emotions, but it was no use. She was embracing me tightly, as if she was afraid to let go of me. I held on to her, trying to let her speak. I figured I’d done enough talking on the matter, and from what I could see, all I’d managed to do is make things worse.
“The sick thing is, the thing that really gets me, that still effects me, is the acceptance in his eyes. The bravery of that man as I plunged a blade into his torso. The relief of knowing his death would be at the hands of somebody he knew. All of those things, coupled with the look on his face, made me realize something about myself,” she said, still crying, still holding onto me. I held onto her even tighter. She needed all the embracing I could muster. After the things I’d said, the things I’d felt, the least I could do was repair the feeling of pain and anguish that was coursing through our systems. Forgiveness was something that I wasn’t good at. But that day, on that bed, with Jess, baring her soul, forgiveness was the only thing that came to me as I held her.
“I know for a fact that if that was me, if I was Raj, and one of you were plunging a sword into me, killing me in front of all those aliens for their enjoyment, I wouldn’t have been as brave. Not even a little bit. And that makes me realize that I am half the human he was. The man was courageous. He was a hero. And I was responsible for ridding him off this world. I don’t know how I am going to live with myself Flynn. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to look at myself in the same way. I’m a murderer,” she said, more tears streaming down her face. I stopped hugging her, and leaned back so I could see her properly. Her hair was sticking to her face as she tried to wipe the many tears off her cheeks. She smudged the light makeup that she was wearing, but I still thought she looked beautiful. But with her beauty came her guilt. The guilt that she felt for what she had done. And I felt very much to blame for it. So I raised my hands up, and gently grabbed her face with my palms, her head resting in my embrace. I wiped the tears away with my thumbs and shushed her.
“Jess, I was wrong to be angry at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You did what none of us could do. You took control. You came to the realization that without one of us dying, we would all die. It was an honorable thing. Made more honorable by the sacrifices that you and Raj made. You aren’t a murderer. You are a hero. Just like Raj,” I said, still wiping the tears off her face.
She looked at me and blinked a few times. Her gaze was fixed on mine.
“I don’t feel like a hero,” she said.
I took
my hands away from her face and smiled.
“Heroes don’t always feel all that heroic. I should know. I’ve been hailed a hero a few times just for doing my job. But even then, people die, people that you’re supposed to be protecting, yet when you get the job done, they still call you a hero. That always bugged me. It bugged me until it morphed. It evolved. Into a rage. A deep seeded rage. A rage that blew up in my face. Maybe when you did what you did, a switch went off in my head. The same switch that made me hate you for killing Raj,” I said.
She looked at me and nodded.
“I understand. What I did was unforgivable, and if you can’t ever find it in your heart to forgive me, then I understand. I won’t hold it against you,” she said. Jess had stopped crying and the eerie silence that followed for a few seconds was both harsh and prolonged.
“I don’t hate you,” I said, moving my head closer to hers. She stared into my eyes, and I blinked gently. It felt like the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I was free again. Free from hate. Free from pain. I leaned in and gently kissed her. It was out of the blue. The feeling to kiss her that is. It was a feeling that surprised me. It jolted me, like a bolt of lightning hitting the core of my body. I ached all over. Ached for her. Ached for her lips. Her touch. Her smell. She didn’t pull away. Her lips touched mine. They were soft and inviting. We locked lips for a few seconds and she gently pulled back, her eyes wide.
“This goes against every rule on the ship,” she said, looking alarmed.
I couldn’t help but laugh. We both did. Instead of ripping her clothes off and burying the pain that dwelled deep in the both of us with casual, mindless sex, we laughed together. I don’t know how long we were in the quarters for, but it must have been a while. Nothing much else happened. We just enjoyed each others company. We talked about the ups and downs of being part of the Alpha Ship One. And then we kissed again. And again. And again.
But I held myself back. I wasn’t going to take advantage of a distraught woman. Especially when that distraught woman was my second-in-command. My newly reappointed second-in-command may I add.
***
After a few hours of what seemed like heaven, we both left my quarters and made our way down to the mess hall. I’d showered, shaved and gotten myself into a presentable state, while Jess had done the same. We’d opted on not showering together, seeing that the whole no sex again thing would probably go right out of the window if we did. I chose to respect her, and be a friend. A friend that on occasion, I’d share a kiss with. You know what I’m talking about. I’m sure loads of people have friends like that!
All joking aside, the others, Dale and the three Spanish crew, didn’t hide what they thought of us entering the mess hall together, showered and looking fresh. I know how it looked, and so did they. We probably looked like we’d spent the last few hours working up a sweat, only to have to overdo our appearance to not raise any eyebrows. It didn’t matter though, Jess and I knew what had happened. And truth be told, it was much more intimate than sex.
“Ah, they returneth from the sexeth!” I heard Dale say as we got within range of the four of them. A strange thing had happened since I’d last seen them. They weren’t sitting apart. Dale had joined the three new crewmembers, and they looked as if they’d been enjoying a good chinwag in our absence. Which I obviously found hard to believe seeing that they were supposed to be Spanish. But then again, I’d seen the old Spanish man speak English yesterday. And from what I could remember, he was pretty good at it.
“Knock it off, Captain on deck!” Jess bellowed at the top of her lungs. Dale’s face was a picture. He fumbled the knife and fork in his hand as he tried to get up to salute me. I started laughing.
“At ease, for Pete’s sake! She was joking,” I said, sitting down at the occupied table. They’d saved two seats for us, unsurprisingly as ribs go, they’d decided to sit us together, as some sort of joke. I didn’t bat an eyelid though. I sat on my seat, and she sat on hers. A robotic butler machine came to the table and placed two plates in front of each of us. A starter and main. On the Alpha Ship One, we all liked to pig out, so it was ship policy that the food be placed on the table all at once, bar from the desert. The waiter machines were nothing special. They were floating spheres that had two wired arms and rectangular shaped hands that bared the resemblance of kitchen utensils. They carried the food in their midsections, which looked like an oven, and would usually slot the food out in trays, whilst grabbing at them and placing them down with their weird robot arms. They didn’t communicate with us, seeing that they were not programmed to. But that never stopped any of us from shouting obscenities at the things. It had been like that ever since I could remember. I guess it was a way to blow off steam. That, or we were all a little desperate for some sort of scientific breakthrough where our unintelligent, unsophisticated robot butlers grew privy to our heckles and learned to dish it back. Much like a parrot in a cage back on Earth. We’d had one as a kid. It was called Buster and he’d always say the same thing.
“Motherfucker, eat my feather dick.”
I taught him that. As a ten-year-old child, obviously.
“Thanks robot dick!” Dale said, sort of mimicking my childish sense of humor with the parrot back home. Even though he wasn’t even being served the food, you could count on him having something nasty, degrading or uncalled for to say to the poor robotic butlers, who were programmed to say enjoy your meal every time they laid the plates down, which in turn would make Dale say something on the lines of enjoy this, while giving them the finger.
Space is a boring place. A really boring place. Nothing seems to ever happen. So on long journeys, it isn’t uncommon for people to over-rely on crude humor to get them through the trip.
“So, tapped that ass Captain?” Dale said as I dug into my meal, which was some sort of gloopy space MRE.
I didn’t bother giving him an answer. I just continued to eat and ignored him. He’d simmer down in due course. He always did. But then the joking stopped and the real business could commence.
“Any ideas how we’re going to stop this mission from succeeding,” I said, after a few minutes of silence. The mess hall was a large area of the ship and it felt strange that we were the only people occupying it. I had no idea where the Ursines were, but my guess was that they were in bed, sleeping off whatever hangover they had from the night before. It seemed as if they had been drinking a beer every few seconds. If a human did the exact same thing and replicated their drinking pace, then I’m pretty sure that human would be doing a hell of a lot more than sleeping it off the next day…he’d be sleeping it off forever. The human body could not tolerate that much alcohol. It just wasn’t possible. Too many underlying factors played a role in that fact. The first problem was that the human body was small. It didn’t hold a lot of mass. Not compered to those Ursines. They were large. Bulky. And wide. So it was natural to think that they could drink that much and not be at all that phased. But then again, they were nowhere to be seen. So maybe the damage was a lot worse than we’d thought.
The second problem with drinking like they did was that the human liver just couldn’t metabolize the alcohol fast enough. The liver can only really metabolize between one and five drinks an hour. So if you’re stacking drink after drink into your system in a short amount of time, there will surely be trouble ahead. Permanent trouble. Luckily for me, I wasn’t an imbecilic, but I wouldn’t put it past some people to feel like challenging these aliens at a drinking contest. They’d soon realize how futile that endeavor would be. A little like our so-called mission to stop these guys from blowing our planet up.
Let’s just say we weren’t any closer to making our move. Hell, we didn’t even know what our move was. I’d asked my crew what ideas they had, and they’d all looked at me blanked faced. Even Jess. Which I found surprising. I thought she’d have at least one or two ideas rolling around her cranium.
“Come on guys, someone must have one idea. That’s all we need to get this t
hing going. Think of it like this. A rusty chain moves slowly, doesn’t it, because of how rust-ridden it is? So what do you do? You get some oil; you grease the chain up. It starts to move a little better. And within a few minutes, its running smoothly. Good as new!” I said, slopping some more gloop into my mouth. The others still stared at me with dumbfounded looks on their faces. They were looking at me like I was crazy. Like I’d lost the plot. But I wasn’t interested in what they thought, regarding my mental faculties. The only thing I was interested in was getting those Ursines off our ship, figuring out a way of jettisoning the nuke off the Alpha Ship One and taking care of the escort that tailed us. Three very big challenges that not even a captain could deal with on his own.
“You can’t expect us to know what to do, Flynn. This is your expertise. You’ve gotten us out of some very sticky situations before. I’m sure you can do it again. I trust you with my life, Captain,” Jess said.
I shook my head, put my fork down, waiting for the clanging sound it made to die down and sighed.
“That’s the problem, Jess. You trust me with your life. As do I. But we don’t have a life. Our life is over. And I don’t think any of you are grasping the absolute shit storm of a situation we find ourselves in. If you were grasping it, any of you that is, then you’d be freaking out. You’d be tearing yourself to pieces trying to pinpoint some sort of hope in this situation. A ray of some sorts. A ray of light to guide us in these pretty damn dark times.”
The four of them looked at me and then burst out laughing, like I’d said something comical. I couldn’t believe it. These idiots were actually laughing at me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up rapidly, the force of the movement flung my tray onto its side, splattering food debris everywhere. I kicked the metal table and screamed at the top of my lungs. My face was red, my arms were taut and my chest was heavy. An anger flooded through me. It exploded off every tip of my finger, and slowly made my hands turn into fists.
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