by R. McGeddon
“I don’t have a neuro-synaptic transmitter.”
“Well, can you get one?” asked Emmie.
Arty shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no such thing as a neuro-synaptic transmitter,” Arty said. “But, you know, if there was it’d be really handy right now.”
Emmie stared at him. For a very long time she just stared. “Useless,” she said at last. “Absolutely useless.”
“I don’t see you coming up with any brilliant ideas,” Arty sniffed.
Sam looked up at the mother ship, then down at the aliens. Finally, he looked around at the town. His town. He loved Sitting Duck. Oh sure, it was full of weirdos, the shops were mostly terrible, and things kept trying to kill him, but he loved it all the same, and there was no way he was letting it fall to an alien invasion. Not today.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Sam. Emmie and Arty turned to look at him.
“Oh yeah? What is it?” asked Emmie.
Sam winked at them. “This,” he said, then he turned and ran straight for the aliens. “Coo-ee!” he cried. “Catch me if you can!”
A barrage of blaster fire erupted around him, and Sam dived out of their path. He was off and running almost at once, zigging and zagging to avoid the laser fire as the aliens gave chase on their stumpy little legs.
“Get back here so we can shoot you!” bellowed one of the aliens.
“Well, that’s not going to work now, is it?” scolded the other. “He means come back so we can be friends,” it called, but Sam was sprinting away and it took all their energy to try to keep up.
“The idiot!” hissed Emmie, when Sam and his pursuers were out of sight. “He’s going to get himself killed.”
“Maybe,” Arty agreed. “But he’s not an idiot. He’s bought us some time. The ladder’s clear. We can go up.”
Emmie followed Arty’s gaze. The base of the ladder was completely alien-free. “Hmph,” she grunted. “He’s still an idiot.”
Arty stared up at the massive saucer hanging in the air above them. He swallowed nervously. “So … are we going to do this, then?” he asked, but then he realized he was talking to himself. Emmie was already several rungs up the ladder and climbing fast.
“Well, come on then,” she hissed. “We haven’t got all night!”
The inside of the spaceship looked exactly like the inside of a spaceship. Lights blinked on and off along the chrome-colored walls. Doors went sssht and opened at their approach. Strange alien symbols hung down from the ceiling, including one that Emmie couldn’t help but think looked like a tiny cowboy riding a cat.
The farther they went into the ship, the darker and less polished it became. The shiny walls turned to dull black metal. Brass pipes snaked along the ceiling, with something wet and gloopy-sounding bubbling along inside.
Steam rose through vents in the floor, and every surface seemed to shiver and vibrate as Arty and Emmie crept stealthily by.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Emmie whispered as they rounded another bend and waited for a door to hurl itself open.
* * *
Interpreting Alien Signs
• This way to the cafeteria
• Exterminate inferior species on sight.
• There’s no I in TEAM PLANET TAKEOVER.
* * *
“Not really,” Arty admitted. The door clanged wide and they stepped through. “But my guess is the main controls will be right at the heart of the ship. If we can reach there, we might be able to disable it.” He dabbed a tear from the corner of his eye. “And Sam won’t have died in vain.”
“He hasn’t died!” Emmie barked. She thought about this. “He probably hasn’t died,” she corrected.
She thought about it a moment longer.
“There’s a good chance he’s still alive,” she said. “Well, a chance anyway. A slim chance.” She sighed. “He’s toast, isn’t he?”
“Probably,” Arty said, and his bottom lip began to tremble.
“So we do this for Sam,” Emmie said, and even her voice cracked a bit, though if you asked her she’d say it was from the heat and the steam and all that stuff. “Okay?”
Arty nodded. “For Sam,” he said, then another door slammed open and there, before them, was Stella Gazey.
She stood at a control terminal in the center of a large round room, tapping keys like they were going out of fashion. Stella looked up as Arty and Emmie entered, and her eyes reached dizzying new widths of wideness.
“What on Earth are you two doing here?” she gasped.
“I don’t even know how you can bring yourself to say that word,” said Emmie, cracking her knuckles menacingly.
Stella frowned. “What, ‘here’?”
“No, of course not ‘here’,” Emmie snapped. “You wouldn’t get very far not being able to say ‘here,’ would you? I meant ‘Earth.’ I don’t know how you can say it after you betrayed it the way you have.”
“No I haven’t,” said Stella.
“Yes you have—look.” Emmie pointed to Stella’s fingers, which were still dancing across the keys.
“Oh, that!” said Stella. “I can see why you might be confused.”
“I’m not confused,” Emmie said. “You’re confused.”
“You’re confused about being confused,” insisted Stella.
“The only confusing thing around here is how confused you are about me being confused about being confused,” Emmie said.
Arty tried to make sense of that last sentence, but only succeeded in giving himself a nosebleed. He butted in before the other two could carry on.
“So … if you haven’t betrayed the Earth, what are you doing here?” he asked.
Stella smiled nervously. “Sabotage!” she said. “I’ve tricked the little blighters, y’see? I told them I was offering myself up for experimentation. Aliens love a bit of that. They think they can just come down here and shoot our mayor and steal our planet. It’s not cool!”
Her fingers clacked across the keyboard. “Almost done,” she said. “Any moment and I’ll have complete command of this ship. All I have to do is … Oh dear.”
“Oh dear?” Emmie said. “What do you mean ‘oh dear’?”
Stella hit a key and a holographic display blinked into life between them. It looked like a computer screen just hanging around in the air paying gravity no heed whatsoever. A number of cryptic alien symbols flashed up on the display.
“What does it say?” Arty asked.
“Hang on, I think I can get it to translate,” Stella said. She began tapping buttons that floated in the air beside the symbols. As Emmie and Arty watched, the shapes began to shift and change until they formed a word.
“Drowssap?” said Emmie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re on the wrong side of the hologram,” Arty pointed out. “We’re seeing it backward.”
“It says password,” Stella said, and a flicker of worry darted across her face. She looked through the screen and met Arty’s gaze. “Don’t suppose you have any experience in cracking codes, do you?”
Arty flexed his fingers and shot Emmie a told-you-so sort of look. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny you should ask.”
Chapter eleven
Arty was quickly coming to realize that it was much easier to crack a code when you actually had a code to crack. Inside the password box were three shapes: a triangle, a heptagon, and a square—that was it.
“Try password,” Emmie suggested. “It’s always that.”
Stella typed the word password. The screen flickered red and made a sound like a buzzer from a TV talent show.
“It won’t be that obvious,” Arty said. “Try aliens.”
Stella typed. The screen went red. The buzzer buzzed.
“Baad-Vaart,” said Emmie.
“Andromeda,” said Arty.
“Quarg,” they said together.
Stella typed all three, but all three were wrong
.
“What about … I don’t know … one-two-three-four?” Emmie said.
Stella typed. The screen went red and on came that buzzer again.
“Not it,” she said.
“Still,” said Arty, “at least all these failed attempts haven’t triggered some sort of alarm.”
Some sort of alarm suddenly triggered. The lights in the room dipped to an ominous shade of red as sirens wailed throughout the ship.
“One day you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut,” said Emmie, shaking her head in disgust.
“They’ll be here any minute,” Stella fretted. “We should run, get out, get away!”
“No way,” growled Emmie. “We need to crack this and we’re not leaving here until we do.”
“Maybe you were onto something,” said Arty. “With the numbers, I mean. Their initial message to us, it was all numbers, wasn’t it? Maybe the password is, too.”
“What’s the name of their planet again?” Emmie asked. “Sulphurius … something. What was the number?”
“Three-seven-four, of course!” Arty cried. “That’s what the shapes are all about. It’s the number of sides on a triangle, a heptagon, and a square.”
He elbowed Stella away from the keyboard and hammered in the digits one after the other. The screen flashed red, but they couldn’t hear the buzzing over the scream of the alarms.
He punched the keys again.
3
7
4
He stopped.
He stared.
He sweated.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the screen flickered green and the room was filled by a circle of holographic screens. The displays encircled them like a record-breaking doughnut, displaying digits and symbols and maps and other fancy stuff like that.
“We did it!” Arty shouted.
“I can’t believe your dorky treasure hunt and code breaking paid off!” Emmie said.
“I told you it was a good birthday present! Look, are those the gas pods?” asked Arty, pointing to a display that showed one of the devices in action.
“And this looks like the force field on this one,” added Emmie.
“We did it,” breathed Stella. “From here we can undo the damage. We can fix this!”
Her fingers were back on the keys, tapping and clicking and clacking in a blinding blur of keyboard skills. As Arty watched, the on-screen pod stopped glowing and became dark. The smoke, which had been hissing from it, curled lazily off on the breeze.
“Pods deactivated!” he yelped.
“Get the shield down!” Emmie cried. “Quick, before the Baad-Vaarts get here!”
“I’m working on it,” Stella replied. She tippity-tapped like a madwoman, until smoke poured from between the keys. “Almost … done.” She jabbed a finger against a final key and Emmie watched the force field fizzle out of existence.
Arty and Emmie whooped with delight. “You did it!” Arty cried.
“We did it,” Stella corrected. “I couldn’t have done it without you two.”
Emmie shuffled uncomfortably. “I’m … I’m sorry I doubted you,” she said. “I’m sorry I thought you’d betrayed us.”
Stella winked one massively magnified eye. “Think nothing of it. I just hope now that we can be friends.”
“Yeah, of course,” smiled Emmie.
“Excellent!” laughed Stella.
And then she exploded.
* * *
How to Be an Alien Resistance Fighter
Want to join the resistance against the Baad-Vaart? Check out our strict requirements below to see if you’ve got what it takes.
1. Must Resist Aliens. This is a key requirement. We do not have time to waste on Alien Resistance Fighters who are unwilling or unable to resist aliens.
2. Must Fight Aliens. Again, very important. Resisting aliens is all well and good, but to be a true Alien Resistance Fighter the fighting bit is pretty vital, too. That’s why we put it in the name.
3. Aliens Are NOT Allowed. Only members of the human race are eligible to become Alien Resistance Fighters. Or animals, I suppose. Yeah, only human beings or animals. If you’re an alien then I’m sorry, you cannot become a member.
4. Must Be Brave and/or Stupid. From sneaking on board alien spaceships to climbing down the gullet of a Flarglewhapian Slime Beast, the life of an Alien Resistance Fighter is often dangerous and usually short. Only the bravest or most dim-witted should apply.
5. Must Have Own Uniform. Sorry, we are unable to supply uniforms at this time. However, badges may be purchased from your direct superior for a nominal fee. Terms and conditions apply.
* * *
Chapter twelve
One moment Stella was there; the next she was a small pile of colorful dust on the floor. Her glasses landed in the dust pile with a soft plop, their massive lenses melted and warped.
“S-Stella?” Arty whimpered, although what he was hoping for was anyone’s guess. Stella was in no condition to reply. Or to do much else, for that matter, except maybe act as cat litter.
“Oh dear, and you came so close,” squeaked Quarg, toddling into the room on his teeny-tiny legs, a small band of aliens in his wake. Smoke curled from the barrel of his ray gun. He tried blowing it away, but as he was still wearing his space helmet, he just looked a bit stupid.
“You shot her,” growled Emmie.
“She tricked her way on board, broke my pods, and lowered my shield,” replied Quarg. “So I’d say that makes us even.”
The alien commander gestured toward the center of the room with the gun. “Away from the controls, please,” he urged. “I don’t want any more funny business.”
Emmie and Arty shuffled away from the screens, their arms raised, their hands in full view. “You won’t get away with this,” Emmie warned.
“Oh, but I will. And I am,” laughed Quarg. “The Earth will be terraformed. Your atmosphere shall be replaced. Every living Earth creature will die most agonizing deaths, and there is nothing—let me say that again so I make myself quite clear—nothing that you can do about it.”
Quarg stepped closer to them, but not close enough for Emmie to make a grab for him. She kept her hands raised, waiting for her chance to strike.
“I am not an unkind evil alien warlord,” Quarg said. “So I’m going to be generous.”
“You’re going to let us go?” asked Arty.
“No. I’m going to kill you both right here and now.” He raised the gun and aimed it right between Arty’s eyes. “Don’t say I’m not good to you. Any last grauak?”
Arty blinked in surprise. “Any last what?”
“Gerumk,” coughed Quarg. He dropped his gun and pressed his hands against the side of his helmet. “Umffark! Nooooooo!”
With a hiss and a click, Quarg’s helmet snapped back into his suit. The alien’s stubby fingers clutched at his throat as his head began to swell like a rapidly inflating balloon. His fellow aliens looked equally uncomfortable.
Arty and Emmie both stepped back. “This is going to get messy,” Emmie warned.
“You can say that again,” said a voice from behind them. They turned to see Sam standing by the control panel. On-screen, a diagram of a Baad-Vaart space helmet flashed on and off.
“You’re alive!” cheered Emmie.
“Of course I’m alive. All I had to do was outrun some pesky tiny aliens. And once they heard the alarm, I slipped onto the UFO right behind them.”
“Told you he’d be fine,” grinned Arty. He turned back to Quarg and the others, who were now roughly the shape of beach balls, and getting rounder all the time. “Now what do we do about…?”
Bang!
Soggy chunks of exploded alien splattered across the room, caking the friends from head to toe. Silently, they wiped the oozy blue goo from their eyes, and then staggered as the ship was rocked by a series of gloopy pops.
“I think we should probably run,” Sam suggested.
“Yeah, I think you’r
e probably right,” Emmie agreed. “What do you think, Arty?”
But this time it was Arty who was already on the move. He hurled himself through the door and they heard his voice echo back at them along the corridor.
“Well what are you waiting for? Run!”
They slid down the ladder into a scene of absolute chaos. Humans and aliens alike were running around screaming and waving their arms like teenage girls at a concert by some terrible boy band or other.
The streets were awash with blue sludge. From all directions came the pop, pop, pop of exploding Baad-Vaartians as their protective helmets opened and the Earth’s atmosphere took a very firm stance on marauding aliens. Some of the aliens desperately tried to keep their helmets pulled forward as they attempted to get back to the spaceship.
Just as Sam and the others reached the ground, the ladder began to retract back up into the ship. A few alien stragglers hung on for dear life as their fellow extraterrestrials exploded in a blue goop. The whole spacecraft shuddered violently to one side, and for one terrible moment the trio thought it was going to drop right on their heads, which would have been a really depressing end to the story.
But probably quite a funny ending, too, now that I think about it. Anyway, it didn’t do that. It just lurched about for a bit, then with a final Earth-evacuating launch-spin it rocketed upward toward the vast abyss of space. The leaderless alien survivors made an embarrassed exit out of Earth’s atmosphere.
Sam, Emmie, and Arty watched the spaceship get smaller and smaller. Soon it looked smaller than the Moon. Then it looked smaller than a much smaller Moon. Finally, it looked smaller than them both.
And then, it was gone.
Emmie shook her fist in the direction of the fleeing ship. “And don’t come back!”
“I reckon this is one planet they won’t be trying to conquer again in a hurry,” Sam said.
Arty looked worried. “But what if they do? What if they come back?”
Sam put his arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Then we’ll be waiting for them, won’t we?” he said. “Now come on. Let’s go home.”