by Mark Tufo
Four out of seventy five. His grief at the loss was intense. He’d had dozens of survival suits placed in the room along with battery operated heaters. He’d briefed the entire human crew on what to do should the Mistletoe order come down. They’d done some mock drills off-site. He could only figure that the ship had been nearly under Progerian rule when he’d executed the order. He’d sealed the fates of seventy-two men the moment he’d pressed that button, and quite possibly destroyed any chance of Earth’s survival.
It was hours later when the ship was finally at a comfortable life-sustaining condition. Paul had shuttles waiting back on Earth loaded with anyone and everyone who had knowledge of how the ship worked. He hadn’t wanted to bring them along until he’d received the okay that all of the Genos and Progs were dead and jettisoned into open air.
“Savages,” he said as the bodies floated by.
The blood stains of the humans tortured on the bridge were being mopped up just as Beth entered.
“What are you doing here?” Paul asked.
“Is not my place by your side during a time of crisis?”
“For fuck’s sake, Beth. This is a military crisis, not the mourning of the loss of a statesman or something.”
“Mike went after Tracy.”
Paul looked like he’d just swallowed something that didn’t necessarily agree with him. “How do you know?”
“That disgusting giant green friend of his.” It was lost on Paul that Beth had left to visit Mike. “Can you believe he’s letting that monster watch his son?”
“What? I’ll have Drababan arrested immediately.”
“On what charges?” Beth asked curiously.
“Does it matter? He’s a hostile alien and has no rights here.”
“Michael will not be happy.”
“Mike was dead the moment you convinced me to send Tracy in his stead. I don’t know why I listened. I thought that maybe you’d love me for it I guess. All I’ve done now is added him and his wife onto the list of those whose deaths I’m responsible for.”
Beth was silent, but inwardly she smiled. If she couldn’t have Mike then no one could. She knew inherently that something had been damaged within her during her trek across the country. She just couldn’t find it in herself to care. Her entire existence revolved around getting to Mike and the protection he afforded her. His spurning had snapped that which had frayed. Finding out about Tracy had only added salt to a weeping wound. She’d cared about Paul at one time in her life but that was long before the aliens had come. He was merely a tool to be wielded—she would forge a new reality, a reality she wanted, using him. When Mike had been injured, sending Tracy to command the doomed troops seemed a brilliant stroke.
She wanted to be the one to tell him the news about his fallen wife, then to comfort him at his lowest. She was convinced he would have been like putty in her hands. Oh Mike, we could have been so good together. You just had to go and do something so stupid. That alien medication will eventually kill you…and for what purpose? She knew he was as good as dead, just like his bitch of a wife.
“You’re a General and a leader. You will always be tasked with sending other people to their deaths and you will have to get used to it.”
“Including my best friend and his wife?”
Beth scoffed.
“We’re going to have to take his son in, raise him as our own.” Paul sighed.
“We’ll do no such thing—he is not our blood.”
“The blood of his parents is on my...our hands. It’s the right thing to do.”
Beth did not agree but felt it wise to keep this to herself. She would find a way out of this responsibility, but not while everything was so fresh in her husband’s mind.
“Someone call down to the base and have Drababan arrested. Any force necessary is authorized. He has Mike’s kid with him. However, if he resists and that baby is injured I will suspend the offending party by his balls with barbed wire.”
“And if it’s a woman?” Beth asked in jest.
“This funny for you?”
Beth smiled slightly and walked away. She would not be adverse to Drababan and the baby taking friendly fire.
Chapter Twenty-One - Drababan
Dee watched as Mike entered the shuttle, Travis fast asleep in his arms. He walked slowly back to his house, occasionally receiving an astonished stare as people noticed the package he was carrying. His home now seemed anything but—his friend and his friend’s mate were gone and the chances of either or both returning were infinitesimally small. A strange sensation he’d rarely felt, the humans called it guilt, coursed through him. No matter how he thought about his predicament he could not think of an outcome that would sooth his tortured mind. To stand with Michael, his friend meant going against his people and not even just that, it meant going against his species.
The alternative was to join his people and war against the humans who had helped to free them and now harbored them on their shores. To do so would show just how little he appreciated all that the humans had done for him. And he knew the fates would not be kind. A time would come no matter where he inserted himself into the war where he and Michael would have to square off to the death. He would kill the man if he had to, no matter the sadness it would inflict upon him. Now, though…now what? Michael had made him promise that he would keep his son safe. Dee loved the boy like no other, regardless of species.
Paul was not to be trusted, he knew that. Where could he go? Certainly not a Genogerian settlement, but here, when Mike wasn’t around as a buffer, he stuck out among the humans. He was debating what to do when his doorbell rang.
Beth stepped back as Dee opened the door.
“Is Michael here?” she asked, backing up even further.
Dee could smell the stink of fear on her and something else. He thought it was a sliver of guilt, just the smallest touch.
“Do you wish to come in and talk?” Dee no more wanted her inside than she herself wanted to go in, but it was a social custom he was adapting to.
“I just want to know if Michael is here. I went to the hospital and they said he left after trying to overdose on whatever your people created.”
He was going to tell her it was not the Genogerians who had created the medicine and it would be extremely difficult to overdose, but he wanted to talk to her as little as possible. For all her seemingly human beauty, she smelled wrong, as if something inside of her had rotted and was already spreading its fingers of decay throughout her. “Michael has left to join with his mate on the battlefield.”
“What? He’s not supposed to...I mean…he can’t do that! My husband never gave him the orders to go!”
“I do not believe the lack of a verbal command from your mate would have been sufficient to keep him back. Actually, I do not know of much that would have stopped him. Death perhaps, although he most likely would have found another realm to travel through to get there.” Dee was pondering that.
“What? What are you talking about?”
Travis took this inopportune time to cry out.
“Who is that? Is that his son?”
“Yes, that is Travis. I have been tasked with the responsibility to keep him safe until such time that Michael or his mate come back to claim him.”
“That cannot be! You are an alien—you can’t watch the child. What happens if you get hungry?”
“I can assure you that I AM watching the child and that I can. If I get hungry there are bigger meals,” he declared, taking a small step in her direction. He thought about licking his teeth, but he’d conveyed the message he had wanted to. Beth was halfway down the walkway.
She turned. “I’ll be speaking to my husband about this.”
“Michael does not love you.”
Beth paused, fury usurping fear in the matter of a heartbeat. “Maybe not…but he will.” And with that she left. Dee knew now without a doubt that at the very least his freedom was in question and more likely his life. He had promised Michael he
would keep Travis safe and he would. He had, however, not promised where he would do that. He could fly a shuttle but those could be tracked. There were a couple of Hummers retrofitted to accommodate the much larger Genogerians. The motor pool had two on base that he knew of. If he’d had the time he would much rather walk away but he felt that Beth was going to do something and soon. He’d driven before but it was not something he was accustomed to, nor did he enjoy it. Mike had brought him out a few times for lessons and generally had laughed the entire time, once stating that now Asian women were the second worst drivers on the planet. Dee did not know what that meant but he was certain it was a slight.
He looked in on Travis. Taking him to the motor pool with all the supplies he could carry would arouse suspicion. Travis was peering at Dee as he debated on what to do.
“It is nap time!” Dee said, trying to inflect as much mirth into his voice as he could.
“Trobbit!” Travis replied.
Dee knew this meant the boy wanted him to read a story first. The Hobbit was a story they both loved. It had happened quite by accident. Dee had been reading the tome on a night that Michael and Tracy had gone out. Travis had woken up, as cranky as he’d ever seen the boy. Dee had attempted to amuse him with toys and then some of his picture books. When that had not worked he sat him in his lap and rocked. That seemed to work somewhat, but it was when Dee picked up his copy of The Hobbit that Travis had stilled, as if the book itself had cast a spell on him.
This was not lost on Dee. He began to read aloud. Travis had sat still for a solid two hours, his eyes becoming wide as Dee told the tale. He’d finally succumbed to sleep when he could no longer keep his eyes open. From that point on, Dee read him the book before the boy fell asleep. He was on the third retelling. It had been his goal that next month he would try to move on to The Lord of the Rings, if Travis would allow it.
“Peep now?” Travis had asked in an unusually short amount of time.
“Yes, sleep now. Are you picking up on my feelings little one or do you somehow know the importance of leaving now? Either way marks you as your father’s son.
Travis let the giant place him in his crib where he dutifully laid down. As soon as Dee walked out of the room Travis stood and looked out his window.
Dee signed the vehicle out with not a hitch. Most wanted as little interaction with him as possible. Sometimes this affected him but right now, it was a blessing. He had been gone no longer than twenty minutes. He nearly ran from the vehicle to Travis’s room to see how the toddler was. Travis quickly ducked down and lay on his mattress as he watched Dee pull up and exit the vehicle that was much the same color as him.
Dee let out a heavy breath of relief as he checked on the boy. “I promise that will be the last time I leave you behind.” He grabbed all his food stores, Travis’s toys and then his books and stuffed them into the back of the Hummer. He debated on leaving a coded message for Michael to find in the unlikely event his friend did indeed come home. He could think of nothing that Paul would not be able to decipher as well. He wrote a quick note and deposited it on the table where it was sure to be found.
“I will miss this place.” He closed the door behind him.
“Trobbit?”
“Yes, it appears that we are also going on a quest.”
Chapter Twenty-Two - Paul
“Sir, the alien is gone.” Corporal Akers had the unenviable task of telling his General.
“Gone? Gone where?”
“He left a note, sir. Says he’ll be in touch.”
“Is the baby there?”
The Corporal asked the question over the radio. “No sir,” he relayed.
“I told you he was dangerous, now he’s gone and taken that poor baby!” Beth said with added drama for effect.
“Sir, it appears he has a Hummer.”
“Son of a bitch. How much of a head start does he have?”
“Motor pool says he checked the Hummer out at thirteen hundred yesterday.”
“He’s got close to thirty hours. He could just about be anywhere in the United States.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—he has to sleep,” Beth chided.
“No, Beth, he doesn’t. The only thing I can hope for is that he gets in a serious enough fender bender to disable the Hummer without harming Travis. Corporal, get an A.P.B. out to anyone who will listen. Shit.” Paul ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve really let you down this time, buddy,” he said softly. “With friends like me who needs enemies?”
Chapter Twenty-Three – Mike Journal Entry 10
“You alright?” BT was looking over at me.
I was staring up at the sky. I’d slept funny—kind of tough to get comfortable using construction debris as a bed. My healing rib itched like a bugger but was sore to the touch. So it was kind of like a horny woman wearing a chastity belt. You can look but can’t touch, no relief coming your way. “Just an injury I incurred while on a peace making trip to the Genos.”
“You visited them?”
“Yeah—right before they completely lost their minds.”
“I’ve been around you long enough that I think I should ask this question.”
I waited until the stitch in my side subsided before I sat up. Actually I stuck my hand out and BT pulled me into a sitting position. “What’s that?” I asked when I got into a reasonable facsimile of comfortable.
“Did you cause them to go all rogue?”
“Always a distinct possibility. Whenever I’m in a social setting a riot can be the inevitable outcome. This time, however, no. This stinks of the Progerians, through and through. They found a way to really shit all over everything. They have contacts in the Guardian. They’re softening us up for the next wave of attacks from above, although I don’t know why. We’re about as solid as Jell-O.”
I had my back to the front as we spoke. I heard oohs and aaahs and the occasional gasp. Looking around, I noticed men that had been playing cards or eating or just about anything else now had their attention completely pulled to the front.
“Shit,” I said. As I began to turn around I didn’t even need to know what I was going to see to know it was bad.
“Fuck me.” BT was now looking out. “Looks like they’re coming.”
“What? Did you think maybe they decided against it?”
“You’re an asshole. And what would be wrong if they had?”
“Absolutely nothing. I’m sort of attached to this life and it would be nice to hold onto it for a little while longer.”
“Whoever is behind them is firing again.”
I couldn’t tell if I was happy or not. Happy that the soldiers had survived the night, but now I wish they’d go on the sidelines and watch the rest of this play out, especially if Tracy was in the mix. No that’s a lie, ONLY because Tracy was in the mix. We were going to need their help that was for sure.
BT was standing up. “Get the rail guns up here!”
“Both?” someone shouted from below.
“One there and the other a hundred yards further down by the mercantile!”
“Rail gun?” I asked when he looked down at me. I noticed how uncomfortable he looked from the question, squirming was almost a better word. Why though?
“Yeah…umm, we found them in the rubble.”
“A rail gun? What is it?” All I could figure was it was big—so big they needed to lay a track down to move it. When the first one rounded the bend on the back of a pickup truck it certainly was big, but not that big. Four men each grabbed a handle and muscled it up the side of the hill. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Its name must have been derived from the fact that the barrel was shaped like a piece of train track. Instead of a round hole though, where the bullet would come out, there was what looked like an upside down ‘u’ or an ‘n’ without the little burr on top.
The front or business end rested on a heavy stock tripod and where the trigger and the shoulder stock should be was just a box. It had some lights and three clear tubes t
hat ran from it to about midway up the barrel. Where someone’s shoulder should go was an opening, the only one on the whole contraption, it had to be the ammunition port was all I could figure. Once the gun was in place the men raced back down and grabbed what looked like ten-foot sections of metal.
“What is that?”
“Aluminum,” BT explained.
The gun turned on as a man pushed a rod into the back of it. I could hear the heavy hum of it.
“What is that thing and how do you fire it?” I wanted to know.
“Show him,” BT told the gunner.
He opened a box and pulled out what looked like a small flat screen television with a joystick attached to it. He flipped a switch and the screen came on, revealing a dust-laden sky. He fiddled with the stick and the front of the weapon came down until he was about chest level with the Genos.
“That’s incredible. Where did you really get this?” I noticed the strained look the gunner gave BT. “This some top-secret military thing or something?”
“Or something,” BT said.
“What’s the range?” I honestly didn’t give a flying shit where they got the thing, if it could deliver even half as much as it looked like it could.
“A couple of miles.”
“That piece of aluminum flies for two miles?”
“Not the whole piece, not at once anyway,” the gunner said. “There’s a mechanism inside that cuts the rail before sending it out. You can adjust the thickness depending on the target. Don’t need much more than an eighth of an inch when you’re only dealing with flesh. An inch will go though most tanks. A couple of inches will go through a steel reinforced bunker.”
“What the hell would happen if you shot the whole rod? Is that even possible?”
“We’ve been warned not to do that.”
I was so enraptured with the gun it took me a moment to process his words. “Warned? Warned by who? Or is it whom?”
“It’s whom,” BT said, giving the gunner the stink eye. He pulled me away. “It’s time to get ready.”