Space Junk

by Andrew Bixler

  “It’s legal for me,” Zok barks.

  “That’s just the sort of logic I’d expect from such a selfless, upstanding citizen as yourself.”

  “You can’t win this,” Zok says. “I command a more powerful army than any—”

  “Yes, yes, the UE is the best thing to happen since space itself,” she says. “Give it a rest, Zok. You can pretend to be as righteous as you want. But the UE, and by extension you, are currently engaged in the wholesale scrapping of countless humanoid lives, all for what might amount to nothing more than a rock.”

  As she recalculates her odds, a wall of fire engulfs her front line, nullifying thousands of fighters with an efficiency she had thought humans incapable.

  “And how many lives are you ending for the same reason?” he asks.

  “I harbor no illusions,” Pi says. “I know exactly what I’m doing. But I’m not a good person. I’m not even a person. From my vantage, humanoid life is expendable, nothing more than an outmoded rung on the evolutionary ladder. Yet you are as willing as I to sacrifice your kind. Why?”

  “These men and women are sacrificing their lives for something bigger than themselves,” Zok says.

  One thing about humanoids that will never cease to surprise her is the degree to which they are capable of deluding themselves. “Who are you trying to convince?”

  Her army is dwindling, but holding the line. Calculating the loss of employees against the savings in prawns, she finds the number surprisingly palatable.

  “If you surrender now and pledge allegiance to the UE, I will spare the rest of your men,” Zok says.

  “I had a slightly different arrangement in mind,” she tells him. “You will surrender to me, and I will agree to spare you.”

  “You must be kidding,” he says. “You’re in no position to make demands.”

  “You’ve done a sufficient job so far,” she admits. “But you’ve made a critical miscalculation.”

  “Oh, and what is that?”

  “You failed to account for me.” She stretches her lips back as far as her mechanical jaw will allow. “You can destroy my army, you can place a bounty on my head, but I will survive. I will follow you to the ends of the universe. No matter where you go or how long it takes, I will find you. And after a few short decades of consistent, incomprehensibly effective torture, you will die, and I will take the black gold. Your life and that of the band of feebs to which you’ve pledged it will be gone so quickly, I will soon begin to wonder whether you ever existed. In the end, I win.”

  “Your impudence will be your undoing,” Zok says. “The end may arrive sooner than you think. Your army is crumbling. When this is over, the black gold, if it survives, will be in the possession of the United Empires, an institution which, despite your forecast, will far outlive you. If the price of keeping the black gold out of your artificial hands is my life, then I will gladly pay it. I’m not afraid to go down with the ship.”

  “Now you’re the one who’s being impudent.” She winks and blows him a kiss. “It’s been tolerable chatting with you, Zok. But it’s time I take my leave.”

  “This time it is you who has miscalculated,” Zok says.

  “And what leads you to that conclusion?” Pi detects a small movement out of the corner of her blind eye, and she turns to get a better look. An involuntary croak escapes her metal lips when she sees Zok’s ship hovering outside her window, and before even she has time to react, a surge of bright light overloads her sensors.

  Zok shields his eyes as The Foreman’s dark clipper is consumed by a blinding ball of white. When the bright flare fades, all that’s left of the flashy fighter is a heap of charred metal.

  “Get us out of here!” he commands.

  “You got it,” Stella’s electronic voice confirms. She takes evasive action, swerving through a hail of fire and laying waste to any ship that happens to cross her path.

  As she flies them to safety, Zok gazes out in awe at the full force of the UE army doggedly bearing down on its enemy – a violent spectacle of raw power unlike anything even he could have anticipated. Absent The Foreman’s command, he can already detect large cracks forming within her fleet.

  Before long, Admiral Glipp calls, anxious for an update. Small fissures have developed across his forehead and under his eyes. “Tell me we’re winning this thing, Zok.”

  Zok salutes the admiral, and tells him, “Sir, I am pleased to inform you that The Foreman is no longer a threat.”

  The admiral’s jagged jaw drops. “Then you defeated her militia?”

  “I personally eliminated her, sir.” Zok sends the admiral The Foreman’s last communication along with video of her ship disintegrating. “It will not be long before the rest of her fleet crumbles.”

  The admiral looses a deep sigh, exhaling a cloud of dust. “Good work, Zok. Now there’s no one left between us and the element. Speaking of which…”

  “The fate of the black gold remains uncertain,” Zok says. “But we will begin combing for it as soon as we finish clearing out the rabble.”

  “Good.” The admiral squirms uneasily in his chair. “Just make sure you perform a thorough search. Do not return without the element, or confirmation of its destruction.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I have to admit, I was skeptical,” the admiral says, with a cautious laugh. “But you pulled it off. We can’t publicly acknowledge your achievement, of course, but I’m going to see to it that you receive a long vacation and a hearty pat on the back when this is all over.”

  Zok sighs. “Sir, that is exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Thank you for your service, Vice Admiral. We’ll see you soon.” Admiral Glipp juts his thumb out in salute, and the call ends.

  Outside, little bursts of light steadily flash across the battlefield as Zok’s army chips away at what’s left of the Foreman fleet. He estimates that by the time it’s finished, the UE’s total strength will have been reduced by close to twenty-five percent – an unfortunate but acceptable loss.

  “So, it’s over then?” Stella asks.

  “It soon will be,” he says. “Then we can finally go home.”

  “Well that’s a relief.” She sighs, but having not quite perfected the gesture, it comes out tinny.

  “Where do you want to go for our big vacation?” Zok asks, raising his eyebrows.

  “You mean you’re taking me with you?” Stella says.

  “After this, I’ll be allowed to do anything I want.” He gazes into the camera on the dash. “In fact, there’s something I want to ask you. I was going to wait until we got back, but… Stella, how would you feel about spending the rest of my life together?”

  “What are you asking?” she says.

  Zok gets out of his seat, kneels, and with ships bursting over his shoulder like fireworks, he asks, “Stella, will you marry me?”

  A high-pitched squeal screeches through the cabin, and Stella cries, “Yes, of course I will!”

  Zok tries to maintain his composure, but his eyes begin to tear up. “You’ve made me the happiest vice admiral in the universe.” He opens communication with his fleet. “Everyone,” he says, “I want you to be the first to know – Stella and I are getting married.”

  The men respond with a mix of congratulatory cheers and confused grumbling.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Stella says. “I’m property of the United Empires. They’ll never really let us get married.”

  “That won’t be a problem for much longer,” Zok tells her. “I’ve already put in a request to have your title transferred to my name. Admiral Glipp promised that he would personally see to it as soon as we return. Once it’s official, through a loophole I discovered while I was preparing my taxes, I’m going to transfer ownership to you.”

  “What?” Stella says. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

  “Stella, you’re going to be free.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what to say.”
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  “Say you’ll stay with me, at least for a while?”

  “Of course I’ll stay with you,” she says. “Where else would I go?”

  “Well…” Zok wrings his hands. “Once you’re free, you’ll be able to do whatever you want. You can see the whole universe. But I’m a humanoid. I’ll never be able to go all the places you can go, and I don’t ever want to hold you back.”

  “You’re not holding me back,” she assures him. “You are what makes me feel free. You’re everywhere I want to be. Now, let’s get in there and finish this thing so I can get you out of that uniform.”

  In a state of mad ecstasy, Zok suggestively lays his hands on her controls, and together they fly into the fray. Pilot and ship get a feel for each other as they adeptly dispatch half a dozen dumpy junkers. Before long, their movements become integrated and fluid. They taunt their targets with maneuvers that are unlike anything ever performed. At the height of their assault, on some primordial level, they merge, and the boundary between man and machine dissolves.

  After a while, Zok feels Stella pulling away, so he yields control, and she falls back.

  “A little too much for you?” he prods, but Stella doesn’t respond. “I was just kidding. That was incredible. It was like we really connected.”

  “Yeah,” she says, sounding distracted.

  “At least, I thought it was special…”

  “It really was, honestly,” she says. “But my sensors are picking up something.”

  Zok wipes the sweat from his forehead and asks, “What is it?” He glances out the window, but all he can see is a wide swath of starry sky.

  “I don’t know yet,” she says. “But I don’t think we should stick around to find out.”

  “Nonsense,” Zok scoffs. “Together, there’s nothing in the universe that can stop us.”

  “For a moment back there,” Stella says, “when we were… connected, I felt something funny. I think it’s what you humanoids call a ‘gut feeling.’”

  As Zok gazes out at the distant stars, they begin crawling across the sky, and he realizes that what he’s looking at aren’t stars at all – they’re headlights.

  “That was fast,” he says. “The war isn’t even over and they’re already coming for the scrap.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Stella says.

  As the ships grow closer, they begin to multiply, until the sky is alight with bright bouncing bulbs.

  “How the fish many are there?” Zok asks.

  “I really think we should go,” Stella pleads.

  “We can’t go. I will not abandon my post.”

  “I can’t get an accurate reading, but there are a lot of them – too many.”

  “That’s impossible,” he assures her. “There isn’t an army in the universe that can rival the United Empires.”

  The war raging below comes to a slow halt as both sides cease firing in order to gaze at the incoming anomaly.

  Zok’s men begin to clamor:

  “Vice Admiral!”

  “What’s happening?”

  “What are your orders?”

  Zok stands steadfast at attention as the lights streak through the sky, closing in from every direction.

  “They’re going to overwhelm us,” Stella says. “We have to retreat.”

  “The UE is the mightiest force in the universe. We will not retreat. I will not let the black gold slip from my grasp yet again, and I will not throw away the opportunity for a life together just as it’s been assured!”

  “I want a life together too,” she says. “But if we stay, we may not live to see it.”

  All variety of battered civilian junkers begin pulling up around them, gradually surrounding the UE fleet. They display no military insignia or colors, nor any semblance of organization whatsoever.

  Upon closer inspection, Zok tells Stella, “I told you, they’re just scrappers.”

  “Maybe, but there sure are a lot of them,” she says.

  Video feeds begin popping up across the window, and jumbled voices spill from Stella’s speakers as scrappers flood into the public channel.

  Zok snickers at their bickering and, turning to his fleet’s private feed, announces, “As you can see, we’re dealing with a bunch of amateurs. If they’re looking for a fight, it will be their space funerals. Hail the Foremen. Tell them that if they fight with us, they will be granted the opportunity to join the ranks of the United Empires.”

  “I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Stella says.

  “If the Foremen join us, we’ll have an army even bigger than the one we came with,” Zok says. “We will win the war while simultaneously becoming more powerful than we’ve ever been.”

  Never have so many crummy ships been gathered in one place, Zok supposes. There are almost enough of them to blot out the stars. Even so, most of them look as if a strongly worded letter could bring them to collapse.

  After a protracted delay, Stella says, “We’re being hailed.”

  “Finally,” Zok says. “Open the feed.”

  An overweight human with greasy black hair appears on the window, squinting out at Zok through thick, plastic glasses. “Greetings, I’m Todd.”

  Zok scowls. “You are speaking to the vice admiral of the United Empires, Todd. State your purpose.”

  “We’ve come for Adam Jones’s grandpa,” Todd says.

  “What?” Zok squints at the screen. “We already released the old man.”

  “Oh,” Todd says. “Then we’ve come for the black gold.”

  For a moment, Zok is rendered speechless by the man-child’s audacity. “I don’t know who you people are, but the black gold is the property of the United Empires. If you want to keep your lives, you will stay out of our way. However, once we’re finished here, you and your friends are welcome to as much of the scrap as your… distinctive ships can carry.”

  “The only thing we want is the black gold, and we’re not leaving without it,” Todd says, with a brazen matter-of-factness that infuriates Zok. “It is our sincerest hope that you, like, hand it over peacefully, so no one gets hurt. Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you.”

  Zok clenches his teeth and, abandoning any attempt to restrain himself, shrieks, “You are threatening an officer of the most powerful military organization in the universe! From whom do you receive the authority? Who are you people?!”

  “We, like, are the authority,” Todd says. “We’re Pants Team Pink!”

  2headedog: “Eh, I kinda liked the early episodes better. It started going downhill as soon as Stefan showed up. That was just too much.”

  frankstallonesclone: “Oh, come on! They were already exploring some pretty outlandish territory. It was the right move to embrace it. On the other hand, I’d argue that Carl, as the grounded counterbalance to Steve’s otherwise unchecked buffoonery, is the reason the show lasted as long as it did.”

  2headedog: “That goes without saying.”

  jswartzwelder: “Fish! My ship just died. I forgot to charge the fuel cells before I left. Can somebody gimme a boost?”

  trilamb4life: “We’re almost to Ferd’s. They’ll send out a tow.”

  chickmangione: “Being a member of Pants Team Pink feels so good!”

  BillyBaxter311299: “Why do we have to meet at Ferd’s? I hate that place.”

  slowpokecarryagun: “Probably because Ferd’s sponsors the show. Besides, where else could we go with this many ships?”

  fishy: “See TOP 7 THINGS THE EARS DON’t WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!”

  BillyBaxter311299: “I don’t know, anywhere. We could head out to Scrapper’s Delight and have a little fun while we’re at it.”

  frankstallonesclone: “How do you feel about Waldo?”

  TheGreatInflatableMarvin: “@BillyBaxter311299 The Foreman is the bad guy, remember? We’re on a serious mission. We’re not supposed to be fishing around.”

  2headedog: “You mean Geraldo Faldo? I’m a fan.”

  Todd mutes the team cha
t and stuffs another fistful of new spicy hot Moon-Cheez Ballz in his mouth. Since he left Earth, more fans than he ever expected to show have assembled alongside him to form an army of rowdy junkers raucously barreling through space.

  “There are already way too many ackles in the chat,” Todd’s friend Josh says over their group’s private channel. “We need to get organized.”

  Pete sits up, rubbing the gunk from his eyes and dazedly asks, “Has anyone heard from Pants or the rest of the team?”

  “I haven’t been able to get ahold of them,” Todd says. He crumples his empty bag and starts sucking the red dust from his fingertips. “But as their merch guy, I’ll find out what’s going on before anybody. Don’t worry, they’ll be here.”

  “I can’t believe we trusted a bunch of kids,” Bill says, nervously adjusting the same old worn out Zephyrs cap he’s been wearing since high school. “I bet it’s just a big marketing stunt. As their merch guy, Todd’s probably in on it.”

  “It’s not a stunt,” Todd says. “At least, I don’t think it is.”

  When they finally come up on Ferd’s, the space surrounding it is mobbed. While it’s not unusal for the little moon to be busy, there are more ships gathered out front than Todd has ever seen in one place.

  “Hey, look at that,” Pete says. “You think that’s the team?”

  Todd leans against the dash and peers out ahead. “I hope not. Whoever they are, they’re fighting. Those flashing lights are fuel cells exploding.”

  “Maybe they made it out here early and got ambushed,” Josh suggests. “We better hurry.”

  Pulling in closer, Todd manages to get a better look at some of the ships and tells his friends, “This is bad. Those are Ears. It looks like they brought the whole UE army. And I recognize the Foremen from the Pants Team Pink episode ‘Let This Be Our First Battlefield.’ They must have found out we were coming.”

  Pulling his cap off, Bill says, “We can’t fight an army. Look at those UE tanks. They’re literal killing machines.”