by Lace, Lisa
“Holy shit,” Jakk said under his breath. “Get that camera washed off, Mellora, now. It’s close to a main wall. We don’t want that acid eating into the hull.”
Mellora was out the door in an instant and we saw her a couple minutes later outside the ship, in her space suit, cleaning the camera. It fell to pieces in her hands and she gave up, simply replacing it instead. We once again had a perfect view of the hostile squid.
“Are you convinced he’s not peaceful now, Aritza?” Jakk said, turning disapproving eyes on her. She shrugged, clearly trying to look nonchalant.
“Who knew he had acid spit and an incredible range?” she said.
“Lock on to the hostile alien,” Jakk said, giving Elara a look.
“Locked on,” the ensign said.
“And fire,” he said. We all watched as the photon torpedoes shot out of our ship, moving at a terrific speed.
The squid barely moved, but it was just enough to evade the torpedoes. We looked at each other in astonishment.
“Oh, you did not just do that,” Jakk said, looking stunned and then furious. “Double the payload and fire when ready.”
We all held our breath as we watched the torpedoes go out and once again miss their target. The squid was almost to the ship by now.
What was it going to do when it got here?
It got closer and closer and then suddenly and completely without warning, it seemed to disappear.
“Show all cameras on the outside of the ship on the view screen,” Jakk ordered. “We need to know what that damn thing is doing.”
“Where is it?” Elara said.
“More importantly, what is it?” Jakk said, looking troubled. “This doesn’t make any sense. A biological life-form that can withstand the vacuum of space? How can it fly at speeds similar to a space craft? It spits acid at long-range that melts some of the hardest materials known to science, and can disappear without a trace.”
“Don’t forget, it can shape shift, as well,” a voice said from behind us.
We whirled around.
I saw something I never wanted to see again. The last time I had seen him in real life was on an alien ship, but he had shown up every night in my nightmares.
I glanced at Dar, willing him not to do anything stupid with my eyes. He looked back at me. Did he understand my eye movements? I hoped he was saying that he certainly wouldn’t and that he knew better now.
It warmed my heart that we could have an entire conversation with one glance.
“Who the hell are you?” Jakk said. “And what are you doing on board my ship without permission?”
“You little folk, always going on about your funny rules. You should know by now. I don’t need anyone’s permission to do anything.”
“He’s the alien that was aboard the first ship that showed up out of the wormhole,” I told Jakk and Elara.
“You are still trespassing and I still ask you to leave,” Dar said.
“I should have mind-wiped you when I had the chance,” the alien said. “But your mind looked so nice and clean at that point, that we thought — why go through all that bother? When I get you back on my ship, I won’t make that mistake again.”
Jakk and Elara looked at Dar.
“I had amnesia,” he explained. “We hid it. It wasn’t a good idea for the king of Susohn to suddenly be unavailable for duty. At first we thought I actually was mind-wiped but I kept having flashbacks. And just now I hit my head again and regained my memories.”
They stared at him, opened mouthed.
“I know, it sounds like something out of a movie or a book,” he said, looking sheepish.
“No,” Elara said. “It sounds like traumatic amnesia which is caused by a brain injury. The memories disappear suddenly and usually reappear suddenly.”
“Two years of a psych degree before she switched to astrophysics,” I told Dar. “Because physics just seemed simpler than psychiatry.”
“You bastard,” Jakk said, finally finding his voice. “You never even told me. I thought something seemed off.”
“Sorry,” Dar said. “I know I should have told you. I wish I could have. But it was almost like a state secret.”
“Your conversation bores me,” the alien said, drawing our attention back to him. “It’s time to get down to business.”
He sounded testy. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Elara was backing up very slowly towards the door.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“So I can take you all prisoner, of course,” he told us with a wicked smile.
DAR
Not this again. Kenna was right. Enough was enough. This alien squid-man-thing was a caricature of a villain. I had a feeling that he had studied up on bad guys and was doing his best impression of one. We needed to deal with this asshole permanently.
I drew in a deep breath and felt the full knowledge of who I was and what I was capable of flowing through me.
“No more of this crap,” I said. “You’re not taking us prisoner without a ship.”
“That’s what you think,” he said, reaching into his pocket.
The security officer didn’t waste any time waiting to see what he pulled out. She just whipped out her gun and shot him in the head.
We could add bulletproof to the list of characteristics that made this alien really hard to kill. He seemed to absorb the bullet into himself and stood there looking chipper.
“You little shit,” he said, flinging his arm out towards the security officer, who went flying into the wall. All of a sudden, I understood why it had seemed like he had barely touched me when he’d thrown me. He was using an explosive pulse wave that pushed the people he threw without him touching them at all.
I winced as the security officer hit. I hoped she woke up with her memories intact.
While the alien was busy with the security officer, Elara had slipped out the door and he hadn’t noticed. I hoped she had a plan. Well, I could keep him busy.
“What do you want from us?” I asked. Might as well cut right to the chase. “You’ve gone out of your way more than once to capture us.”
“You’re right. You, in particular, are very important. I want you to use your influence to help me round up more slaves. No one else has to get hurt.”
I blinked in surprise, completely taken aback. I hadn’t expected that answer. Kenna stepped up beside me and he looked at her. The moment he looked at her, I wished that he hadn’t because he was leering in a way that made me want to tear him limb from limb.
“Apparently this body still remembers how to procreate,” the alien said, taking a step towards Kenna. Her eyes widened in fear. My stomach turned and I moved so that I was in front of her. He glanced at me. “Oh, yes, I forgot. You creatures come in pairs. Well, this body doesn’t want you. It only wants her.”
“You’re not going to have her,” I said.
The alien stalked over and with a sick feeling in my stomach, I noticed his bulging pants. Gross.
He began to lift his hand to send me flying out of the way. But just as he got ready to send out the pulse wave again, he disappeared. What the fuck?
We all looked around in confusion.
“Mo, get a lock on the alien. Where is he?” Jakk shouted into his comm unit.
“He’s in the pedestrian air lock,” Mo said.
“What’s he doing there?” Jakk said, confused.
“Elara asked me to transport him there,” Mo said.
“On screen,” Jakk ordered, his voice short.
We watched as the alien struggled to transform back into a squid shape, but couldn’t because the airlock was only big enough for one human-sized body to enter. There was no way an enormous squid could fit into the tiny airlock.
At that moment, we saw the light come on that signaled the lock was being depressurized. The air began to be sucked out of the room, leaving only a vacuum. We saw his eyes bug out as he realized that soon he would be subject to zero atmosphere in a frail hu
man body that was ill equipped to deal with the rigors of space.
“That’s it. Try to get out of this one, you bastard,” Jakk muttered.
As we watched the screen we saw him trying to change his shape. After several false starts, he finally managed to do something. He shifted part of his body. His squid mouth was in the place of his human face. Gross.
In horror, I realized what he was going to do.
He shot a large gob of spit at the door of the air lock. It immediately began to melt and as it disappeared, he shifted more and more of his body into its squid counterpart. As soon as the hole in the door was big enough, he began shifting his squid form out into space until he was completely free.
He turned back towards the camera. A squid’s face cannot show much emotion, but he seemed to mock us.
Fuck. He was getting away. And there was nothing we could do about it.
I supposed we should just be glad he was running instead of trying to take us all prisoner — me especially, since he wanted me to aid him in enslaving all our peoples. That was not a desirable promotion.
As I watched the disgusting creature fly away from the ship, I wondered how long it would be until he came back again for me.
We would destroy the last remaining alien space craft. We had to. There was no need to worry. He would be blown up along with his ship and the threat to our galaxy would be at an end.
“Mellora, grab a team and get out there with lasers. Cut off any piece of the ship that’s been touched by the acid. We don’t want that stuff eating its way into the main supports of the hull.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Jakk could take a crew and run down that last ship. I trusted him to mop up this mess. If there was anyone who could take care of the last remnants of this problem, it was him.
“Permission to run that bastard down and blown him and his ship into tiny pieces,” Jakk said to me. He was asking permission from me, the king.
“Permission granted, my friend. As soon as you repair your ship, restock your supplies, and pick up more crew members, of course.”
Jakk laughed.
“You got it, Dar.”
KENNA
I was reading in the ship’s library, tucked away in a cozy little bubble that were sunk into the walls. I needed some head space after all that crazy squid nonsense. Dar was busy being a king.
When I heard someone come in, I didn’t think anything of it. It was a public space. I just kept reading. But when I heard someone else come in and their whispered conversation turned to talking and then to raised voices, I had no choice but to pay attention.
“I really, really don’t want you second guessing my decisions like that in front of the crew, Elara,” Jakk said.
Oh, so it was Jakk and Elara. I peeked out, watching Elara draw in a deep breath.
“Am I not entitled to an opinion as one of your senior officers, sir?” she said, bravely.
“You are certainly entitled to it, but you are not required to give it in front of everyone, and undermine my authority.”
She took a step closer to him and I saw her hands tremble — she was nervous at confronting him. She closed them into fists and spoke.
“If a little nerdy scientist like me can undermine your authority, perhaps you might want to work on your leadership skills,” she said, getting bolder by the second.
He frowned. Their gazes held. And that’s when I realized I was eavesdropping. But there was no way I could leave now without letting them know that I had heard everything they said. They would be embarrassed and so would I. I opted to stay where I was.
“Are you questioning my command, Ms. Aritza?” he said, inching a little closer.
She didn’t step back as he moved into her personal space.
“Not at all, sir. Just establishing my right to help you make good decisions.”
“And you think you do that,” he said, never backing off.
“Just look at the destabilization of the wormhole, sir,” she said.
“That did work out amazingly well,” he said, as if conceding a point.
And all of a sudden I knew that there was a subtext to the conversation that I hadn’t been picking up on.
“It did. And you should listen to me more,” she said, lifting her chin. “Because sometimes I’m right.”
“You weren’t right about the alien being peaceful.”
“No, but you didn’t know that before you hailed him, so you gained useful information.”
“Are you looking to move up in the ranks, Ms. Aritza?”
“Isn’t everyone?” she said, evading his question.
“Well, it isn’t easy to be promoted on my ship. You have to work hard, and show me you’ve got what it takes.”
“Not a problem, sir,” she said. “But there’s one thing you should know about me.”
“What’s that?”
“I like a challenge,” she said, repeating the words he’d said when they were destabilizing the wormhole. She smiled at him and leaned closer until they were almost close enough to kiss.
The tension was thick and tangible. I shouldn’t be here. They stared at each other and I held my breath. This was better than a movie! He leaned in an imperceptible amount so that their lips were hovering over each other. All it would take would be the tiniest movement forward from either of them and they would be kissing.
Then Elara twisted away without touching him in the least, leaving quickly and forgetting her book on the table.
Jakk let out a long breath. He seemed surprised. Then he flashed a cocky smile and walked out of the library whistling.
DAR
While Kenna was off reading in the library, I asked Jakk to come have a beer in my quarters. The Three knew we needed it.
Kenna said she needed to decompress from all the anxiety of our encounter with the squid. The best way for her was to burying her nose in a book.
It was a new fact that I hadn’t known about her. But I supposed that we hadn’t had a lot of time to learn all the nuances about each other. We knew the major things but not the tiny details. I looked forward to learning everything there was to know about her, now that I could actually remember her again.
I waited for Jakk to show up. He had said he needed to talk to one of the crew members before he came over. When he arrived, his face was flushed and he looked out of sorts.
“Everything okay, Jakk?” I said, stepping back to let him enter the room. He looked at me in surprise.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“You look a little disappointed, that’s all.”
“I’m fine,” he said quickly.
“Come on in,” I said, going to the refrigerator and getting him a cold beer.
“I’m really happy for you, Dar,” Jakk said without preamble. And he almost managed to look happy. We were drinking Viran beer. The Viran might be violent assholes but they could make a delicious drink. “Kenna’s great.”
“I know it can’t be easy for you to hear about me meeting my sheeranla, Jakk,” I said, sitting down beside him and taking a pull of my beer.
“Nah, it’s okay,” he said. “I think it’s amazing that you found her. I guess I should have waited for mine before I got married.”
He sighed deeply.
“I’m so sorry about your marriage, Jakk,” I said. No point in dancing around the issue. He took a long drink and then played with the label on the bottle that was wet with condensation, peeling it off a little bit.
“I thought I loved her. I never thought she was my sheeranla but I don’t believe in stuff like that anyway, so I wasn’t worried. But I never thought she would end it like this.”
“It was unexpected?”
“No, we both saw it coming for a long time. I didn’t think she would really divorce me. Our love’s been gone for years now but we stayed together because we were comfortable. Then she got brave.”
“Maybe you’ll find your sheeranla now,” I said. “For now
, let’s just get drunk and listen to old-time, depressing Susohnnan music from the era of the plague. That ought to cheer you up!” I said, clapping him on the back.
“What if an enormous squid shows up while we’re fucked up?” Jakk said.
“That’s why I have a woman and you have your crew. They’ll handle it. The world did without the real me for quite some time, and I’m the king. They can do without you for the time it takes to get drunk and then sober up again.”
“You do make a good case.” He lifted his bottle and we clinked the necks together.
“My mother was a lawyer. You bet I can make a good case.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you had lost your memory.”
“It sucked, Jakk. It’s not something I wanted to talk about. Plus, mother made me pretend that nothing had happened to me. That jerk, Vordeeran, always believed that I didn’t have what it takes to be king. He’s been trying for years to get his son on the throne.”
Jack shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. Every Susohnnan knew about Vordeeran’s lust for power.
“If I had shown a weakness Vordeeran would have eaten me alive. I could have been deposed and his son on the throne before The Three could blink.”
“I guess you’re right, but I wish you could have told me. I could have helped.”
“I feel really badly now, Jakk. But I didn’t remember you before. I didn’t know what good friends we were or what we had been through together.” He glanced at me, remembering the battle at Dorl, no doubt. I had saved his life.
“That’s another reason why I would have liked to help. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Jakk. You would have done the same for me,” I said.
“Well, I could at least have given you a good knock on the head. That would have maybe got things moving in there.”
I laughed.
“Yeah, you could have done that. Silly me for not asking you for help getting my memories back. Want another one?” I said, getting up to get myself another beer. “You and Elara did an amazing job with the wormhole. I’ll be writing a full report to your superiors about it.”