by Chris Winder
The device recognized an animal in need and teleported Precious directly to the Neavautian zoo for observation, study and medicine. Aging could be reversed in such a simple creature and its disease could be cured. Its fate would be a long, happy life of play.
When poop touched the device the second time, Edith was already holding it. The device had another decision to make. Poop was present, and something else was too… a species it had never encountered. It tried to contact the main server to get an update on available species, but there appeared to be no online servers anywhere on the planet. Therefore, it followed its guidelines and determined that this creature had a brainwave pattern similar to the sentient poop on some of the disposal planets. The guidelines said that if this ever occurred, it was better to be safe than sorry. So the device sent her to a disposal planet to live among her kind.
3
Admiral Eekbo watched the scene unfold across all seven monitors at the front of the bridge. Displayed on them were three video feeds from the outside of the capture ship, one feed from the captain, and the rest were filled with scrolling, blinking and static instrument readings.
The saucer-shaped capture vessel slowly made its way through the atmosphere toward the designated location the scientists had chosen. The entire crew leaned closer to the front of the command deck, eyes bugging from their gelatinous bodies, the peppery scent of anticipation heavy in the air.
“Capture ship is now entering the atmosphere”, its Captain reported. “Engaging peace-lights.” Peace lights were traditional across all species of aliens, besides humans, but the Kalaxians didn’t know that. All they knew was what was described in their handbooks — the three-ring binders of the Kalaxian Empire.
Everything a Kalaxian might need to know was contained in handbooks. There were handbooks for cooks, for Captains, for weapons officers, for communications officers, and every other job, purpose or title the Kalaxians could think of. These had to be updated from time to time, of course, as new technology, new ideas and new procedures were discovered, voted on, discussed and implemented.
Once a change was identified, it was up to the Archive Department to update their archives and make it appear that the changes which were made were always that way. To suggest otherwise would suggest that the Imperial Senate was fallible, made mistakes and couldn’t be trusted. That was a quick way to earn your place working in a salt mine somewhere. Kalaxian flesh was particularly sensitive to salt, so the sentence was equivalent to death… a slow, bubbling, painful, writhing death and a corpse too shriveled to identify.
Part nineteen, section fourteen, subsection eight, subsubsection three, paragraph twelve of the Capture Ship Captain’s Guide states the following:
When entering a target planet’s outer atmosphere, if said planet has an atmosphere and hostile actions have not started in accordance with this guide, B.B.B.L. (Bright Border Blinking Lights), commonly referred to by the lesser species as Peace Lights, must be engaged. As hostile actions have not yet been engaged, the B.B.B.L. engagement will prevent most sentient species from firing upon a craft of the Kalaxian Empire in accordance with Galactic Common Law. Failure to do so is punishable in accordance with Part Three of this guide.
Captains, Commanders and Admiral were all expected to memorize their guidebooks, but as there were frequent changes, few actually did. Instead, they pretended as if their guidebooks were memorized and instead hid them somewhere in their private quarters or ready rooms.
A little light illuminated just below the screen, indicating that the Captain had activated his B.B.B.L. in accordance with his Guidebook. The cameras displayed the grotesque amount of lights on the planet’s surface. No thought to tactical awareness, Admiral Eekbo thought to himself. This battle could be over long before it started if this is what Earthlings considered to be preparedness, awareness and defense.
Then he had a thought. He wondered if this grotesque display of light, this perverse exposition of color, was actually a ruse of some kind. It was his job, as Admiral, to think of such things. It was the job of the others to do exactly as they were told. He watched the garish scene unfold.
Also, it seemed, Earthlings had a proclivity toward building things out of dirt. In this area alone, there were tens of thousands of dirt buildings and barriers, none of which seemed to provide any kind of tactical advantage whatsoever. Even a hand-held sonic weapon could reduce one of these buildings to powder with single shot.
The others on the command deck, it seemed, were filled with as much disappointment as Admiral Eekbo felt himself. Pheromones didn’t lie, and the air was as thick as Borlactan blood pudding with them. The crew had just as much to gain from a glorious battle, and just as much disappointment if the battle didn’t turn out to be as glorious as each obviously hoped it would.
They’d win, Admiral Eekbo knew, but if the fight was too one-sided, there would be very little honor in it. Enough with the negative thinking, Eekbo thought to himself. Find your center… find your center.
“We have a possible specimen located, Admiral”, the Captain’s voice announced. “Beginning initial analysis.”
The crew waited for word that the specimen was acceptable. The scanners aboard the capture ship would check for weapons, explosives, bio-weapon signatures and other markers which would designate a targeted specimen too dangerous to bring aboard a Kalaxian vessel.
“Admiral, the specimen shows suitable on all scanners. Permission to capture and bring back to the science vessel?”, the Captain asked.
“Affirmative”, the Admiral replied. The bridge erupted into a loud squeak of cheers. The Admiral did not cheer, however. Cheering was for lower-status Kalaxians. Admiral never showed their emotions, otherwise what where their pheromone glands for? They’d be as useful as an extra bone and not using them as they were obviously intended demonstrated a distinct lack of respect for one's own species.
One other Kalaxian, he noticed, did not cheer, but remained as stoic and silent as he. This was the female, Pobka. A fine example of female Kalaxian she was too. Her skin glistened like the trail of a giant mook-slug after a torrential downpour. Eekbo imagined it was as soft and supple as a Gnupid’s cornea and shuddered slightly. A mustardy-smell began to waft from him and only a powerful effort got his emotions back under control.
It wasn’t right, anyway. Pobka was his subordinate, and there were certain rules and protocols which must be followed aboard a Kalaxian vessel. Sharing one’s DNA characteristics with a subordinate was not acceptable. It said so right in the Admiral’s Handbook and the Admiral’s Handbook was never wrong.
The crew leaned forward again, and Admiral Eekbo noticed that the weapons officer had a tentacle hovering over one of the four buttons on its control panel.
“Weapons officer”, the Admiral said in a calm but warning tone. “Please remove your tentacle from the firing button. You will only destroy the capture vessel or specimen if I order it.”
The weapons officer turned one eye to its Admiral, then turned it to the hovering tentacle, and recoiled it away from the button quickly. “My apologies, Admiral”, it said.
When Admiral Eekbo looked back up to the displays at the front of the room, he just caught the last of the capture procedure. The specimen had been captured by a gravity beam and the bottom of the capture ship was closing like a giant, metal sphincter. Even before the captain announced it, the video displayed that the capture was successful.
Already the Admiral had achieved more than any in his species in over three hundred years. Eekbo was an Admiral, he hadn’t killed anyone important without a good reason and now he was the first to capture an enemy to study in preparation for invasion.
No matter what happens for the rest of this battle,Admiral Eekbo thought, my legacy is secure.
So long as you don’t lose, a little voice inside his head whispered.
4
The examination room just needed a bit of the dust removed from the counters, cabinets, instruments and examination tables
in order to make it ready. The tools were charged and sharpened, the probe-lube was warmed and the participating scientists onboard the science vessel were being immunized against all known deadly viruses. One could never be too careful.
The hunt had gone well, Admiral Eekbo thought to himself. Very well indeed. Almost too well. True, his special forces soldiers were the finest in the galaxy, possibly the finest in several galaxies, and equipped with the very rare, but very effective cloaking field generators in existence, but even then… Something wasn’t sitting right in his fourth stomach. There was an uneasy feeling that perhaps he might be underestimating his foe. But he decided to push that feeling aside. He needed to show confidence in front of his crew and the glandular secretions he was producing could be interpreted as weakness or uncertainty. That would be unbecoming for an Admiral.
Admiral Eekbo stretched-out one great, gelatinous tentacle and tapped one of three buttons he had at his disposal. The button he tapped was green, and when he tapped it, it turned to a satisfying shade of yellow. “Status report!”, he ordered.
The far-left screen of the bridge sparkled to life and an encapsulated squid-looking thing appeared. Its three great, bulbous eyes were crusted around the edges with what appeared to be six or seven days of dried, translucent, yellow eye fluids. Eekbo fought back a wave of jealousy. Having that many eye-boogers was not only considered to be high-fashion, it was also considered to be very attractive by all three genders of his species, the third of which was open to interpretation.
Eekbo made a mental note to have this scientist killed in some way. It didn’t do well to out-fashion an Admiral, especially when you were under his command. If he could sneer to express his displeasure with the fashion faux pas he just might, but the chemical secretions from his glands would suffice in informing everyone on the bridge of the current condition of their Admiral’s mood. It was unfortunate, he thought, that technology had not progressed enough to allow his pheromones to traverse sub-light transmissions so the scientist could become aware of his error.
The stinking rotten-tomato smell of annoyance mixed with a slight hint of burned-rice anger was easy to identify. As soon as the odor reached the rest of the crew, the Admiral knew he could watch them work very hard not to cower in fear, wondering if it was they who had annoyed him so.
“Our tools, instruments and probes are ready, Admiral. We await the arrival of the first specimen”, the scientist reported. The science vessel, shaped like a slightly-squashed grape, was situated half-way between the invasion fleet of seven hundred carriers, drop ships, one assault ship and the command vessel. It could get close enough to a planet to allow the capture ship it launched to have enough fuel to reach the surface, abduct a typical intelligent life-form using a gravity beam, render it unconscious and bring it back for examination and tests, none of which would be painful as the creature was, of course, unconscious.
“Good, good”, the Admiral replied. The sharp odor of sour cream wafted from his glands, informing everyone on the bridge of his pleasure. “Let me know when the specimen is returned to the science vessel and the procedure is started.”
“As you wish, Admiral”, the scientist replied.
With that, Admiral Eekbo tapped the yellow button, which turned green again, and the scientist’s eye-crusted image vanished. Eekbo leaned further back into his Chinese-spoon-shaped command seat and splayed all six of his tentacles over the sides and top. Today was the day he’d make a name for himself. Becoming Admiral in the Kalaxian navy wasn’t such a big deal these days. Really, all one had to do was survive, not murder anyone important without good cause, show no fear and not lose any battles… as if there were battles to lose in this, the kinder, gentler galaxy. However, being the first to invade a planet, destroy its defenses and enslave its population, now that was something special, especially in this galaxy.
According to the Treaty of Mic-Nic-Talawic, alien planets could not be invaded unless and until they discovered one of several technologies. By discovering one, they would then be removed from the Protected Primitive status and would be promoted directly the the status of Advanced. As soon as a civilization became advanced, it could be contacted in one of several ways by another advanced species. One of those ways just happened to be warfare.
One of the technologies that was considered to be advanced was teleportation. Admiral Eekbo’s fleet just happened to be in the area when his ship detected the signature of a teleportation device being deployed on Earth. And, as he was first in the sector he, according to the treaty, got first dibs on the invasion.
He leaned even further back into his command seat and allowed his imagination to wander. He closed two of his three eyes and imagined himself receiving awards in on live holovision for the entire galaxy to see. Chances are they’d have to invent new awards for him because it had been nearly three hundred years since any planet had been conquered. Not only he, but also his entire species, would benefit from the esteem this conquest would bring.
Female Kalaxians would swoon in his presence and line-up to help him spread his distinct DNA sequence across his species. They would fight for him, battle to the death, and the victor would obtain the right to lay eggs, filled with his offspring. The thought of watching female Kalaxians battle for him, the gore, the green blood, the tangled tentacles brought about a feeling, which of course was expressed by his glands as mustard. When several nearby females extended antenna from their bodies, trying to discover the exact direction from which the alluring odor was coming from, Eekbo quickly thought of the impudent scientist, which brought feelings of annoyance back to cover-up the stench of male Kalaxian arousal.
Admiral Eekbo was grateful to hear a wet, squishing sound, which announced to him that the specimen had arrived on the science vessel. He tapped the green button on his control console and when it turned yellow he ordered, “Put the procedure on the holo-vid. I want to see our enemy.”
Instead, the scientist’s face appeared on the left-most screen. Eekbo wasn’t in the same room as him so he couldn’t smell the scientist’s emotion, but the shivering tentacles suggested that he might be… afraid? He couldn't be certain, but yes, he thought that’s what he was observing.
The Admiral leaned forward and considered his subordinate for a moment. The odor of rotten tomatoes seeped from his body and the scent of fear, which might remind other species of vinegar, wafted from the others. Together it mixed it into the delicious aroma of leadership.
“A-admiral”, the scientist stammered. “The specimen we collected is… uh… well, it’s horrible. Are you sure you want to see this?”
“What do you mean, it’s horrible”, the Admiral sneered.
The scientist’s eyes, all three of them, withdrew slightly into its bulbous, greasy, gray head. The crew on the command desk all squished a gasp. Not only was it considered childish to express one's emotions physically, to do so by withdrawing one's eyes into one's head was considered the epitome of infantile behavior.
If Admiral Eekbo could smile, if his mouth were more than just a segmented tentacle-like tube from which he expelled digestive juices and then sucked them back up once their work was complete, if he had teeth, lips, anything resembling a hole in his head, he would have lost his own control over his emotions and witnessed the open scrutiny of his crew. Perhaps, he thought, he would not have to kill the scientist himself. It was likely his crew would do it for him.
“I-it’s all just… wrong! It doesn’t have enough eyes. It’s skin has horrible, garish colorations. It’s tentacles… it must have a million of them. Oh - and the pheromones… the horrible pheromones. They’re making it past our air filtration units. I’m pretty sure I can actually taste them. They’re horrible. I have no idea what mood this horrible creature is in, but the pheromones!” Then the scientist’s head shuddered. Though Kalaxians had no physical way to gag, they did have a way to express their displeasure and revulsion beyond pheromones. Shuddering was their way, and the message was received.
Admiral Eekbo didn’t want to look weak or cowardly in front of his crew. “Put the procedure on the holo-vid immediately”, he ordered, speaking very slowly.
“Yes, Admiral”, the scientist said before reaching out with a tentacle to tap a button. A moment later, his ugly, eye-booger-encrusted ocular organs disappeared and the center viewing area of the bridge illuminated to reveal an examination table, a surgical team, surgical tools and most importantly, probes.
The creature the saucer-shaped hunting ship had captured was indeed different from anything Admiral Eekbo had ever seen before. It was wearing a uniform of some kind, but the uniform did not seem to have any functional armor to speak of. In fact, it wasn’t much of anything at all.
The part that should protect the torso, where several species stored their vital organs, was very minimalistic, not even meeting in the middle and consisted of two layers. It appeared to be constructed out of some sort of mixture of organic and inorganic filaments, knotted together to form some kind of fabric. The outer layer was reddish in hue, while the layer beneath it seemed to only function as a way of holding a couple of very large external glands in place. Perhaps, Admiral Eekbo thought, those short appendages could be useful in a fight or were otherwise dangerous if they were not contained. The scientists seemed to agree, as that layer was left untouched.
“The lower half of the uniform”, one of the scientists said as he narrated his work into a Universal Recording Device, “appears to be, based on initial tests, constructed nearly completely of polymer. It is thin and flexible, and probably aids in the maneuverability of these grossly rigid creatures. It is so short, it appears to barely be able to cover its reproductive and elimination orifices. Perhaps this one is a very powerful warrior and does not need the extra armor or protection. We must be certain that it remains unconscious for the entire procedure.