Force of Gravity

by T. R. Harris

  Lila walked up to the pilot side, opened the door and slipped into the cockpit. She fired up the motor. Copernicus ran to the other side and climbed in.

  Two aliens of different species were hunched over a table in the hangar, working on a piece of equipment. They looked up when Lila started the rotors.

  “You…you are not allowed!” cried one of the aliens. “That does not belong to you.”

  The aliens ran toward the quad, one producing an MK-17. Spotting the weapon, Lila opened the door and stepped out. She began a quick march at the alien.

  Whether it was her determined pace or the serious look on her face, the alien mechanic felt threatened by her approach. He held the MK steady as the computer locked on…and then he pressed the trigger.

  The level-two bolt splashed against Lila’s chest, evoking a deep inhale from the mutant and an almost orgasmic look on her face. It would take ten such bolts before she absorbed enough energy to glow white hot. This hit was more like a strong cup of coffee. She kept advancing.

  The alien lifted the weapon again and prepared to shoot. Then the next thing Copernicus knew, the MK was in Lila’s hand, her move too fast for the Human eye to follow. Both mechanics stood frozen with shock.

  The unarmed alien carried with him a two foot long metal tool Coop recognized as a spanner wrench. He lifted it, to use it either as a weapon to strike the mutant or as a defense against her. Either way it didn’t matter. Lila pointed the MK at the alien and sent a deadly level-two bolt into his chest.

  Coop was stunned. The alien wasn’t a threat to her, not really. And then when she pointed the weapon at the original alien and pulled the trigger, his impression of the sweet and lovely Formilian was changed forever.

  Lila walked nonchalantly back to the quad and climbed in. She took the controls and then turned to Copernicus. “They were a hindrance and might have reported the theft. We do not have time for such complications.”

  “It’s cool,” Coop stammered. “I’ve never had any problem with killing aliens. Apparently you don’t either.”

  The tiny craft lifted off. It only took Lila a couple of seconds to test the pitch and yaw to determine the tolerances of the controls, and they sped off through the rocky canyon toward Boraxx.

  “Did you expect me to be more compassionate?” Lila asked a moment later. “You must realize that although I have love for my parents and feel friendship for those I work with, I have very little in common to normal creatures. This isn’t from a feeling superiority, although I am. It is just practicality. I cannot care for everything; that would take up too much of my time.”

  Copernicus watched the beautiful alien out the corner of his eye. He was already attracted to her—who wouldn’t be. But after her act of pragmatic assassination, Coop found he was sexually aroused. Although he was dating Sherri, he began to wonder if perhaps someday—

  “Do not even think about it,” Lila said.

  “You can read my mind!”

  “I do not need to. You should know Sherri is my friend, so if you do not wish to spend the rest of the trip to Boraxx out on the side rail, I would keep your animal lusts in check.”

  Even as she scolded the hunky starship repairman-slash-spy, she stretched out a thin smile. Coop was in too much shock to notice.

  14

  While scoping out the town with Sherri and Riyad, Copernicus had located the central power mod distribution center. He guided Lila to the spot, and once there, she hovered the tiny craft for a moment as she sought a safe landing area. There was a quad landing pad to the right of the building, but since there was bound to be some shooting taking place, she was looking for something a little closer to the entrance for a faster getaway. Surrendering to the inevitable, she simply dropped the quad on the small landscape feature outside the double glass doors to the building.

  Two Mutt and Jeff aliens in ugly business suits watched as the craft landed and Lila stepped out, still holding the MK-17. Without hesitation, she blasted both of them where they stood. The guard at the main entrance saw the killings and rushed inside, locking the glass panels behind him.

  “You might try to ration your shots, Lila,” Coop advised as he joined her at the doors. “You only have five level-twos left, and there may be more shooting inside.”

  Lila nodded, and then lowered her shoulder into the entrance door. The glass shattered and the guard opened fire with his own bolt launcher. Coop had a weapon of his own, one of the MKs the team had bought in town before all hell broke out. He laid out the guard with a single shot to the head.

  Now there was complete pandemonium in the huge lobby area, as dozens of aliens, panicked by the attack and the pop of flash bolts, ran…they simply ran. Lila scanned the chaotic crowd, before identifying two aliens who posed threats. She rushed through the throng and grabbed a security guard armed with a sophisticated MK-47 advanced bolt launcher. She twisted him into a pretzel before dispatching his partner with a single fist to the head. Coop rushed up and picked up the precious MK-47. He giggled like Gollum as he scurried off in the wake of the unstoppable mutant.

  Power modules are tiny fusion reactors used in everything from cars and buildings to gigantic interstellar cruisers. They’re not particularly dangerous—not with all the safety features built into them—but if enough of them ruptured, and in the vicinity of others, things could get dicey in a hurry. As an extra precaution, the mods on Siron were stored far underground to protect them against the random meteor strikes. Lila rushed up to one of the many elevators and entered one. Coop barely made it in before the door slid shut.

  “They’ll be expecting us,” he said to the ravishing, dark-haired—and cold-blooded—mutant.

  “I will lead the way out.”

  Coop could already detect the heat coming from her body. They had to be careful she didn’t absorb too many more plasma bolts. If she became too hot to ride in the quad, it would be her hanging onto the railing on the way back to Anoon.

  The pair shifted to one side of the elevator away from the doors. When they opened, four blinding bolts of energy streaked in and splashed against the far wall. Lila looked into the room and immediately set off four quick bolts of her own, each one striking its target center mass. She didn’t waste shots, but she was down to only one left. Coop handed her his MK-17, keeping the coveted ’47 for himself. They stepped out into the foyer.

  Besides the four dead guards, there were other aliens nearby, but most were running for their lives. Lila used her superior eyesight to scan the corridor both ways.

  “Follow me. The storage facility is this way.”

  After another small fire fight with three overmatched guards, the pair reached the entrance to the module storage room. It was a huge chamber set in solid rock, with towering racks of storage containers and electric forklifts to reach the higher levels. The honeycomb structure started with the smaller, low-yield modules. There were hundreds of them, since these mods could power buildings, quads, electric transports and more. These were the most in-demand units and Lila and Coop had to run past a frustratingly long row of them to get to the mods designed for spacecraft.

  They need a pair of 318s. The designations started in the one hundreds, which were used in shuttle craft and other transport and repair pods. Then they moved in number to the larger gravity generators used for interstellar spaceships. The three hundred-series was for smaller deep-well generators. The designations went all the way up to the eleven-hundred series for the huge battle-carriers.

  Lila and Coop reached the row of 300s near the far wall of the chamber. There weren’t very many of the larger modules beyond this, ending in the six hundreds for the huge ore carriers. High-grade military modules weren’t in much demand on Siron, so there weren’t any stored here.

  Coop flipped open a lid and pulled out a three-foot long module. There was a pull-out handle along the length. He took out another 318 and then took both of them by the handles. There were a little heavy, but Siron’s gravity helped with that.
/>   “Let’s go.”

  Lila led the way back toward the entrance, but near the doorway, they encountered two more security guards with weapons drawn.

  “Are you kidding?” Copernicus called out. “You’re going to fire plasma bolts in here?”

  The guards looked past the pair of intruders and hesitated. One errant bolt and the entire city of Boraxx would become a radioactive pit in the middle of nowhere.

  Lila lifted her MK-17…and blasted the two guards. Coop jumped back in fear, until he realized Lila’s shots were never errant. There was no danger of her hitting any of the hundreds of modules in the room.

  They made it back to the elevator without incident and took the forty second ride to the surface. It seemed like a lifetime before the doors slid open…and the firing began once again.

  “Hey! I have power mods in here!” Copernicus yelled out.

  “They are in protective containers,” some wiseass called out. He had a point. Coop peeked around the corner, spotted the alien, and then blasted him with his fancy new MK-47.

  “Stay behind me as best you can,” Lila instructed, and then the pair raced out of the elevator and into a hail of flash bolts. Most missed Lila, as her lightning quick mutant reactions made for an elusive target. Coop, however, took a bolt to his left leg. Level-twos couldn’t kill Humans, but they sure did hurt.

  With the extra load of the power mods, he limped after Lila until she noticed and came back for him. She placed an elongated mutant arm around his torso and lifted him off the floor. Moments later they were outside and racing for the quad-copter.

  Three aliens were standing near the craft, each with Xan-fi flash rifles slung on their shoulders. The commotion from inside the building spilled outside and the aliens took notice. One managed to unsling his weapon, while the other two were dropped by accurate fire from Lila’s handgun. The last one didn’t even get his weapon into firing position before Lila blew him away.

  Lila carried Coop around to the passenger side and threw him inside. She fired the last of her energy bolts before running to the pilot’s side. The motors spun, and with steaks of flash bolts racing by, the quad lifted into the air and flew off over the building, dropping low on the other side to avoid fire coming from the front.

  She kept the quad low, racing only feet above the roof tops of Boraxx before leaving the city and climbing high to crest the rim of an ancient impact crater. The tiny craft slid down the other side of the mountain at breakneck speed. Coop shifted the heavy power mods from off his legs and struggled to find his safety belt. He fastened it just as Lila pulled the quad into a steep climb to scale the other side of the crater wall.

  A few exhilarating minutes later, the tiny craft was lost within the jagged peaks and valleys of the rift region of Siron, hidden from everything but tracking satellites in orbit. Siron was a rough and tumble mining colony. They had no need for tracking satellites in orbit.

  “How is your leg?” Lila asked.

  He was in so much pain he hadn’t noticed until now the near-unbearable heat coming off the alien. “Don’t melt anything in here,” he said, while trying to scoot as far away from her as he could.

  Lila slid open a small side vent in the canopy, letting freezing air flow into the cockpit, cooling it instantly.

  “That’s better,” Coop said. “As for my leg, it hurts like hell, but I’ll survive.” Then he smiled. “That was quite a rush, wasn’t it? I love how you just killed everything that got in our way. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am! You’re amazing.”

  “You performed quite admirably yourself, Mr. Smith.” She locked eyes with Copernicus. “I see now why Sherri likes you so much. You two make a nice pairing.”

  Coop picked up on the not-so-subtle rejoinder. They spent the rest of the flight in awkward silence.

  15

  Sherri awoke when sounds from the hallway penetrated the walls of the surgical room. There were voices and shouting. She jumped from the chair and ran to the door. Opening it slowly, she looked out into the corridor.

  A phalanx of dirty and gritty aliens was coming toward the OR. They carried flash weapons and ugly expressions. They also seemed to know exactly where they were going.

  Sherri darted back into the room. In a panic, she looked over the still-sleeping Adam Cain and Panur. She couldn’t carry them both to safety, and if she could, where would she go?

  She could stay and fight; after all she was a Human with an ATD. Disarming the flash weapons would be a breeze. But with Adam and Panur lying helpless on the hospital beds, they could easily be injured, even killed in the fray. Of course, she was really thinking only of Adam. But all bets were off on Panur. She had no clear idea as his condition or ability to heal from injury. Fighting wasn’t the answer, at least not now. But hiding was.

  She eyed a small gown closet set in the wall near her. She slipped inside and closed the door just as the aliens entered.

  Her translator had trouble sorting out all the different languages coming through the thin door, but she did make out enough to get the message. The aliens were taking Adam and Panur. Words like liquid nitrogen and magnetic bonds were heard. It didn’t take long before the room was quiet again. Sherri poked her head out and took a look.

  Sure enough, Adam and Panur were gone. She ran to the doorway again and saw the mad mob heading for the exit to the clinic. There were no windows in the surgical room, so she slipped into the corridor and into a recovery room with a window. From there she saw the gang of vigilantes load Adam and Panur into the back of a truck and lead a small caravan away from the clinic and into town.

  Sherri pulled open the window and jumped from the second level. It was quite a fall, even in the lower gravity of Siron, but she landed in a puff of brown dust and then ran off into the clinic’s parking lot. There were only a few transport vehicles here, but one was all she needed. She rammed an elbow into the glass of the driver side window of one and reached inside to unlock the door. That’s when she discovered there was no lock. She opened the door and slipped inside, sitting on a bed of broken glass.

  Sherri followed the hard-to-miss caravan of rowdy aliens as they paraded their catch through the streets of town. She was surprised when they continued to the far side of the settlement, to a flat open field where a modest-sized ore freighter was in the last stages of landing. This wasn’t a spaceport, just a convenient place to set down.

  Sherri became caught up the every growing line of transports heading for the freighter. She thought the whole scene was odd. If they were returning Adam and Panur to Boraxx to face the gang-leader Resric, they certainly didn’t need a freighter to do it. They were preparing to take the pair into space, and that’s when reason broke down completely.

  Sherri pulled the transport up to a group celebrating aliens. She hid her face with her hand before calling out. “It is a great day!”

  “Indeed it is,” replied a dirt-covered female with four eyes and a double row of exposed teats running along the front of her torso. “There will be peace…and a reward, we are sure.”

  “One we can all share in!” Sherri added.

  “Indeed.”

  “But won’t the mutant be hard to contain?” Sherri asked, going out on a limb.

  “We have been told how to contain him.” The alien looked at her companions. “Extreme cold, is this correct?” Her friends nodded and kept cheering.

  They were told? By whom?

  A mass of aliens entered the rear of the cargo ship. Sherri couldn’t tell if they were carrying Adam and Panur or not, but she got the idea they were. Soon the crowd began to dissipate and the freighter fired off its chem drive before lifting off the surface.

  Sherri was already racing away when the ore freighter shot for the heavens. She had to get back to the Defiant as soon as possible.

  That’s when she remembered Lila could pick up on her ATD thoughts.

  Lila! Can you hear me?

  Yes, Sherri. Have they awakened?

  No…they’ve been t
aken! A mob broke into the clinic and took them. They’ve just been loaded aboard a freighter.

  This is terrible news. But we have the power modules we need. The Defiant should be able to catch up to a freighter.

  There’s more. The aliens were told how to capture and contain Panur.

  By whom?

  I don’t know. But they were also celebrating the prospect of peace, and I got the distinct impression the capture of Adam and Panur has something to do with it.

  Understood. Mr. Smith and I are ten minutes from the Defiant.

  I’m about twenty out. I’ll see you then.

  We will be ready.

  When Sherri arrived at the Defiant, a little quad-copter was parked next to it. She jumped out of the transport and ran into the open landing bay. Arieel and Riyad were there. Arieel rushed over and hugged her, while Riyad gave her a wink.

  “They’re installing the power mods now,” he told her. “We should be charged and ready to go in ten.”

  “We can’t let that freighter get too far away.”

  Riyad smiled. “You forget that with full power the Defiant is a trans-dimensional starship. Nothing can get too far away.”

  Sherri relaxed. She wasn’t thinking straight, probably because nothing made sense anymore. Why were Adam and Panur being whisked away, and to the joy of the natives?

  The rear door began to slide shut, controlled by Kaylor in the pilothouse. We are preparing for liftoff, the alien said into their minds, using his ATD; he was getting used to using it and bypassing the ship’s intercom system.

  Sherri felt a slight disorientation and heard the roar of the chem jets as the Defiant took to the air. A moment later the internals kicked in, along with the inertia compensators. Everything was back to normal.