by Mark Oliver
From what he could make out from recent news events, the Corporation's chief defensive concern were a band of terrorists calling themselves the Turen Resistance. This viscous, uneducated, dirty rabble sought to overthrow them. They wanted to return the turen race to the old days of nation states and war and chaos and crime. For this was how Seenthee was before the Corporation came to power over a century ago.
Despite their small size, the Turen Resistance were dangerous. They launched raids on the Corporation zones down on Seenthee, sabotaging their infrastructure and killing as many as they could before fleeing back to their secret rat holes in the city slums. Their victims were innocent Corporation staff, people had dedicated their lives to making Seenthee a better place for everyone, Corporation staff and civilians alike. But the Resistance butchered them without mercy.
It was the role of the anti-terror department to exterminate this scourge.
Going by the statistics the woman threw at her viewers, they were succeeding too. The number of resistance fighters killed in battle or executed so far this year numbered in the thousands. And the CEO was confident that this number would continue to rise, once they had successfully put into action their plan to stop the flow of support coming through the Wrake Pass from Poklawi.
Poklawi, Charlie inferred, was the home of a second alien race, the robundee. These red-skinned aliens supported the resistance and provided them with sanctuary. Up until now the Corporation had been unable to cross through the Wrake Pass to destroy them and seize their moon home. But those days, the CEO assured her viewers, would soon be coming to an end.
"The day," she said, her chin raised proudly, "when we shall cut off the traitor's umbilical cord will soon be upon us and with it the end of the resistance and these barbaric red savages." She paused and then with half closed eyes, and solemn voice, said, "Long live the Corporation."
The two soldiers raised their palms above their head and curtsied in an implausibly camp salute.
The face vanished and Charlie was left to ruminate over what he had learnt. What interested him most was her reference to the robundee. He sensed that despite her disdain towards this alien race, she feared them. He closed his eyes. There was no need to imagine what such a barbaric savage might look like. He had seen one. And his name was Brother Yojim.
Chapter 5
The cage stood eight feet tall and as long and wide as a five-a-side football pitch. Behind its sleek bars, men and women of varying size, colour and furriness stood brooding or sat with hunched shoulders on the benches crisscrossing the cage.
Two more lime coloured uniforms greeted Charlie and his escort. These two were male, and both as white as sheet of A4. Surprisingly, they had had their fringes shaved off. Charlie wondered if this were some form of punishment. They certainly looked pissed off. Their bare heads and malignant looks reminded Charlie of the football fans that descended on Swansea on a match day.
The taller of the two unattached a silver tube from his belt, and faced the prisoners. "Alright you miserable shits," he said, running the tube across the metal bars. "Back off, or you'll get a thousand volts up your arses."
A wave of agitation passed through the inmates.
The second guard, similarly armed, took a step towards the gate where an obese woman with skin the colour of Lucozade stood leaning against the bars. Whether too tired to move or standing defiant against her captures, Charlie could not tell. Either way, the guard flicked a switch and his tube sparked into life. A small storm cloud formed at the tip. Then with a smirk on his lips equal to the one in his eyes, he rammed the flashing tube into her fleshy backside.
The effect was immediate.
The woman's back cracked into a huge C. Her limbs shot out in obscene angles. Her legs scrambled beneath her as if they no longer belonged to her, the pair wanting to make a run for it but heading in opposite directions.
The guard kept the end pressed against her, watching the performance through narrow, smiling eyes. "Come on fatty, dance."
The smell of urine, shit and singed flesh filled the air. Charlie cupped his hand over his mouth and nose and turned away.
The second guard said, laughing, "Who'd have thought such a tubby wench could dance so damn sexy."
Finally, the guard grew bored of the show and switched off his tube. The woman crashed to the floor. Her body twitched for a few seconds and then shut down.
The inmates looked at the lifeless heap on the floor and then at the still smirking guard. Their eyes burned with hatred.
The demonstration had the desired effect. Nobody now stood within three metres of the cage door. Charlie's escort watched on, nodding at a job well done. They re-laid their orders to the two skinheads, took off Charlie's restraints, and then walked away.
The skinhead who had flashed the woman returned his tube to his belt and gripped the rifle hanging over his shoulder. He levelled the barrel at the prisoners, his finger twitching over the trigger guard while the other guard opened the cell door. From the look in his eye, Charlie could tell there was nothing this guy wanted more than to have to fire on this unarmed mob.
The door slid open and before Charlie could take a step forward, the guard pushed him in the back, sending him stumbling through the door. He immediately tripped over the unconscious women and collided with two thickset prisoners standing behind her. He bounced off them as if they had been holding concrete tackle pads. He slammed into the bars beside them, and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
The cage door slid shut with a heavy click.
Charlie shifted onto his backside, drew his knees up to his chest. He looked around the cell. A handful of prisoners stood staring down at him. But most had shuffled back to their corners or benches.
A large prisoner pushed through the onlookers and stopped a few metres short of Charlie. It was more beast than man. Grey, sooty fur covered most of it. It was as if someone had dipped the creature in tar and rolled it in the hair of a hundred mangy street dogs. Though they would have needed a swimming pool to dip it in. The beast stood at least seven feet tall and had muscles Arnold Schwarzenegger would have envied in his heyday.
Like a gorilla, its face, chest, hand and feet remained hairless. Its skin, thick, mottled, and inconsistent, looked as though it hand been painted on by a toddler. It smiled, and a thick, mollusc tongue slivered out between two rows of scimitar teeth. Charlie grimaced. In the Austrian oak's own words, this was one ugly motherfucker.
The beast took another step closer.
Charlie smiled weakly and raised his hand. "All right mate. I don't want any trouble."
From this distance, Charlie could make out the pungent smell of dirty socks. Each time the hairy inmate exhaled the odour poured forward. Charlie tried to keep the disgust out of his face.
The beast loomed above him for a long moment and then squatted onto its considerable haunches. To Charlie's dismay, the movement caused some long trapped air to escape from the alien's bottom in a momentous roar. Yet, the comic outpouring brought no amused chuckles from the prisoners behind. When this monster farted, you did not laugh.
Charlie, gagging on this new nasal onslaught, turned his head away. The bars lay a few inches away. How dearly he wished to be on the other side of them.
A sandpaper hand grabbed his chin. Charlie tried to move but the grip was machine firm. The alien aggressor moved Charlie's head from side to side as if inspecting it for defects. Its bestial eyes, deep set inside its head like buried pebbles, regarded Charlie with interest.
Charlie placed his hands against the beast's bare chest and shoved. But it was like pushing back a hurricane. The alien smiled its awful smile and with its free hand swatted Charlie's arm away.
"Please," Charlie said. "Don't hurt me."
The alien moved its hand downwards and wrapped its fingers around Charlie's throat, pinning him against the bars. It leaned in so close that Charlie could feel its breath against his skin. With a casual yawn, the beast opened its mouth wide. Its glistening t
ongue edged out from between the ivory blades, and came to a rest against Charlie's cheek.
It felt like a cat's tongue, wet and prickly. Charlie closed his eyes and prayed this beast was no cannibal.
The tongue sharpened to a tip. Charlie braced himself, his buttocks clenching underneath the wetsuit. But instead of taking an apple-sized bite out of his cheek, the alien flicked its tongue and then proceeded to run its pointed tip around Charlie's face. Eyebrows, forehead, hairline, nose, top lip, bottom lip; the beast's tongue missed nothing. All Charlie could do was sit and wait it out, hoping beyond hope the tongue would not descend southwards.
Just as the tip of the tongue was set to slime its way down over Charlie's chin and down his neck, a deep voice called out, "Bork," and the tongue stopped its descent. The beast backed away, its tongue leaving Charlie's face with a strong flick.
Charlie opened his eyes. Behind the beast, a blue-skinned man stood, his palms raised above him as in mock surrender. "I think we can both agree this kid's a bit too young for you, can't we?"
He was a tall, upright man, with the swarthy appearance of a 1950's Hollywood movie star. Yet his amber eyes contained enough ice to last a summer, and under his fine clothes, lay the formidable build of a wing-forward. Charlie could easily picture him tackling an eighteen-stone Tongan centre or fending off tacklers as he ploughed his way across a rugby field.
But the beast standing in front of him was no rugby player. He was a thirty stone nightmare with the kind of dental work any ocean predator would have been proud of.
The beast roared and strode towards the blue man.
The kick came out of nowhere, cutting through the air like a woodman's axe. It landed with a crack on the bridge of the beast's nose, sending the furry alien down onto one knee. Before it had time to react, the blue man came in with a series of rabbit punches, pummelling the beast across its massive chest. The beast screamed out in pain. The man continued to strike out with blue fists.
The guards shifted their gaze towards the source of the noise. But the only reaction the fight brought out of them were two wide smirks.
The blue man finished slamming the beast's chest and raised his hands above his head, linking them together. Then with all his strength, he brought the two handed club down in a diagonal slice that ended on the beast's right temple.
For a brief second the great beast's pebble eyes grew even darker and then it fell, ramrod straight like a giant hairy tree. It landed face first on the hard cell floor with a sick crunch.
Charlie looked at the mountain of fur laid out at his feet. He wondered whether the blue man had killed the beast. But then the distinctive stink of its nasal breathing seeped out from under it. The hairy alien was only unconscious.
Charlie clambered to his feet, anxious to get away from the beast. There was no telling when it would awaken and at whom it would vent its retaliation. Gingerly, he stepped over the sleeping giant.
"Thank you," Charlie said, holding out his hand.
"You're welcome," the blue man said, looking at Charlie's outstretched hand with a raised eyebrow. Instead of shaking it, he placed his own hand in front of him. He held it palm down with the thumb curved like a hook.
It was now Charlie's turn to look bemused.
The blue man frowned and retracted his hand. "You okay, kid?"
"I thought that . . . thing was going to rip my throat out."
The stranger laughed. "She wasn't going to kill you. That was just Bork's idea of mild flirting"
"That thing's a she?" Charlie said, incredulous.
"Yeah, she must have taken a liking to you," he said nodding towards the sleeping beast. "Bork's got a taste for hairless boys. Even ones with smashed faces."
Charlie lifted his fingers to his damaged nose. It had swollen so much it felt as if someone had replaced it with a couple of roast potatoes. As soon as he found a reflective surface, he decided, he would brave a glance.
The blue man smiled and, looking at Charlie's legs, said, "What's the deal with the trousers?"
Charlie looked down at the torn wetsuit. A jagged line ran across his waist where they had torn the top half away. "They took the rest of my suit."
The blue man raised an eyebrow and, gesturing for Charlie follow, turned on his heel. Charlie pulled his fingers from his Mister Potato nose and pursued his alien saviour across the cell.
In light of the blue man's arse-saving intervention, Charlie saw him as his best chance of making it off this ship in one, unmolested, piece. He needed protection in case Bork woke up or some other alien took a liking to him.
The blue man stopped beside one of the benches zigzagging the cell, one currently occupied by two stocky males. At least Charlie thought they were male. He was not so sure anymore. They wore kimonos, large muscles, a surplus of body hair and expressions that said, "Fuck off."
But at the sight of the blue-skinned alien, they quickly got up and sidled away like wary dogs, sensing a beat down by the pack alpha. He sat down and signalled for Charlie to do the same. Once again he held out his blue hand, palm down, and thumb hooked.
This time Charlie took a gamble, and placed his in the same position. It paid off. The alien slid his hand over Charlie's, locking the thumbs together.
The alien smiled. "The name's Bei Lowaiki," he said, gripping Charlie's hand firmly.
"My name's Charlie Scott."
"Ka-ree-su-ko-ta. That's a hell of a moniker, kid. Where you from?"
Charlie thought back to the dream, or memory, or whatever it was, and the beagle's warning. To survive he had to keep his alien origins secret, at whatever cost. "That's a good question," he said, hoping to deflect the question. "How about you?"
"Jajag city born and raised. You from Seenthee or one of the moons?"
He paused for a second, and then, hoping his voice came across sure and confident, said, "Jajag city. Same as you."
Bei Lowaiki eyed him warily. "Oh yeah? I don't recognise you. What prefect you from?"
Charlie swallowed. "Four."
"Four? Not three, or five?"
"No. Four."
Bei said, "Humph."
"Maybe, they changed its name. I heard they've been making changes.
Bei shook his head. "No wonder they went physical on you," he said, indicating Charlie's nose with an uplifted chin. "You're a terrible liar. There are no numbered prefects. It's strictly alphabetical."
Charlie winced at his error. The alien was right. Despite Amy's accusations to the contrary, Charlie lacked any flare for lying and bullshitting. Sad to say he was a straight shooting Englishman if ever there was one.
"Okay, Kid," the blue man said, a note of annoyance in his voice. "Have it your way. You don't owe me the truth. I mean I just saved your ass back there from an erotic encounter you'd have had difficulty forgetting. But I guess that isn't worth much these days."
"It's not that," Charlie said. "I'm grateful for what you did for me." He paused, unsure how much of his cover story he should tell the other prisoner.
"I guess we all have our secrets," Bei said. But he still looked annoyed at having his questions rebuffed. "So how did you find yourself on board the Corporation's flag ship destroyer? Were you making a run for Poklawi?"
"I don't remember."
"Well," Bei said, getting to his feet. "Thanks for the conversation."
"Wait," Charlie said. If the blue man walked away, so too would the protection he offered. "Look. After what you did, I think I can trust you. So here it is. I'm a resistance fighter but I've had my memories erased. Who I am? Where I'm from? Where I am right now and how I ended up here? All gone. I can't remember a damn thing."
Bei raised his eyebrow, and turned away. He had clearly had enough of this crap and had no intention of listening to any more of it.
"It's true," Charlie said, a plea in his voice. "The only thing I do know is that I'm a fighter in the resistance and that on arriving in Seenthee, I have to travel to Jajag city and meet a man called Brother Yojim."
Bei stiffened at the mention of the robundee. He looked around to see if anyone was listening, and then returned to the bench.
"Do you know him?" Charlie asked.
"I'd keep it down about the robundee, unless you want to find yourself back in the interrogation frame."
"So you do know him."
The blue man leaned close. "I've heard of him. He was the resistance's primo pathfinder back in the day. But he's been off the radar for the last two decades."
Charlie felt the pang of relief. The blue man knew this Brother Yojim. I'm not going crazy, Charlie thought. This guy really exists. And then the thought dawned on him. And if I find him, I can get home.
Bei's amber eyes studied Charlie. "So Mister Resistance Fighter, do you have any idea why you have to meet him, or what your mission was? Or has that all been blanked too?"
Charlie shook his head. "All I have is the name and the place. Not that either will do me much good. That silver woman wants me dead. I know it."
"So you've had a run in with Executive Ko?"
"If you mean that plastic-faced silver woman, then yes, I've had the pleasure."
Bei gestured towards Charlie's nose. "You must have pissed her off plenty. The interrogators rarely get physical days. Not since the Corporation came up with the pain juice." He patted Charlie firmly on the shoulder. Charlie almost slid off the bench. "Good for you kid."
Then the blue man reached down and pulled up his trouser legs, revealing a pair of weathered, tan boots that clashed harshly with the rest of his attire. Charlie wondered how such a smoothly dressed customer ended up with such of shoddy footwear. Bei then proceeded to stick his hand deep inside the boot. When the hand came back, the fingertips were coated with a translucent jelly.
"Here," Bei said and smeared the sticky substance onto Charlie's broken nose.
It smelt like the contents of his house's toilet the morning after a curry night. He went to wipe it away. But then abruptly stopped. A pleasant coolness enveloped the centre of his face, clearing his sinuses and washing away the pain.
A minute later he was breathing through his nose, all pain gone. He reached up and touched the bridge if his nose. The smashed skin had healed and besides a slight bump it seemed fine. Though he would have to inspect it later to be sure.