by Chris Lowry
"But she wasn't. Besides, you'd have to pay extra for that."
"For what?"
"Being dominated."
"You think you're funny," said Dawes. "This is a serious situation."
"Who you telling? You don't have to tell me. I know the situation. I know the situation better than you. I'm driving ain't I?"
"Flying."
"That's what I said. I'm the pilot, that means I'm in charge."
"Human in charge," said Helen. "The Herd demands you surrender earth to the rightful heirs."
"What's she talking about?"
"Who's that?"
"Dude, I'm standing here with you. Human side, remember?"
"I know that. It's not like I expected you to really know who she was, I was just asking, you know."
"No, I don't know."
"What's she doing?"
"Are you even listening to me?" Dawes grumbled. "It's like talking to a wall."
"You hurt me Dawes, you cut me real deep."
"There's a tissue in my pocket. You can have it."
Carver waved him off and pointed to the view screen.
""Turn it up."
"Do I look like I've got the remote?"
"You're the pilot."
"Then you're in charge of sound. What was Uhura?"
"Who?"
Carver froze with his hands over the console.
"Man, don't even say you don't know who Uhura was. I'll unbuckle from this seat and kick your ass up and down the aisle and out the airlock."
Dawes nodded with wide eyes.
"Oh, Ohara, from Star Wars, right? I know who that is."
Carver lunged from his seat but the restraints held him back. He struggled for a moment to unbuckle, but Dawes got the jump on him and escaped first.
They floated freefall, swimming in the air, the young black man chasing the cowboy around the cockpit as he attempted to escape.
"When I catch you, I'm kicking your ass. Star Wars!? Star Trek!!"
"Same thing, right?" Dawes swam harder but got no further ahead.
"I. Will."
Carver pushed off the wall and zoomed across the narrow space.
Dawes shoved off the other way.
They had a small slap fight as they passed each other. Carver landed a solid glance off the other man's shoulder and sent him careening into the pilot console.
His boot glanced off the controls and sent the ship spinning slowly around them.
"Can you hear me humans?" a woman's voice sounded like a robot through the speakers.
They froze mid-flight, still drifting as the ship spun around them, and stared at the screen.
"She sound like a robot to you?"
"Could be the speaker."
They swam to get closer to the view screen.
"We can hear you!" Carver shouted.
"Don't you have to hit transmit or something?"
"Man shut up and let me handle it. I'm handling it alright."
Carver stuck a fist under his chin and gave his best goo goo eyes at the screen, blinking twice, oozing charm.
"Hey baby girl, we can hear you."
"She's with the space cows, dude."
"Shut up man," Carver hissed out of the side of his mouth.
"Humans," the voice continued. "I will repeat. Surrender now, or die."
"Does she mean us or the whole earth?"
"I don't know what she means."
"Ask her."
"Don't tell me what to do," Carver turned back to the screen, amped up the charm again, this time with his best smooth Barry White voice.
"Hey girl, you mean us, right? This ship."
"Surrender earth to the rightful heirs or die."
"That sounds serious."
"Death is always serious man, why you think they playing?"
"Tell her we don't speak for the whole earth."
"Man, you ain't got no game do you. First, you got to impress her with being a space pilot and what not."
"She's in space."
"She ain't a pilot though," Carver cooed.
"Now listen baby girl, why don't you tell me all about it. I can-"
"Surrender human."
"You sure this isn't a recording?" asked Dawes.
Carver blinked as it dawned on him.
"Maybe it is? Hey girl, how do I know you ain't a recording? You just keep saying the same thing over and over again. Tell me about you. What's your sign?"
The girl on the screen blinked twice and stared at them as if her gaze could pierce the veil of space. She slowly turned to a figure off screen, opened her mouth.
"Moo."
"Did she just moo at you?"
"They cow people man, what do you expect?"
The figure on the view screen distorted as the camera pulled wider in a shaky jumping manner.
The tiny figure of the woman stood next to a giant bull standing on two legs. His arms and chest were massive, with a nod toward being a minotaur. He wore a space suit that looked like a combat uniform.
"The Admiral," breathed Carver.
"Admira-bull," Dawes corrected.
"Moo," the woman said again.
The Admira-bull turned his massive head to glare at the view screen.
"Moo," he roared.
"The Admira-bull demands your immediate surrender," she said. "Stop your ship's rotation and prepare to be drawn aboard."
Carver stared at the ship rotating around them.
"Hey man, the walls are moving."
"She said we were rotating."
"What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," Dawes defended.
"You're the one piloting this thing."
Carver floated over to the console and pressed some buttons.
Nothing happened.
"You broke the Star X ship."
"I didn't do anything."
"You're not going to pin this one on me,"
Carver made a grab for him, but Dawes used the tips of his fingers on a piece of metal in the ceiling, floor, ceiling to push himself out of reach.
"Humans!" the woman sounded a little more panicked now. "Control your ship!"
"Just stop it," Dawes yelled.
"I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
"Shut up man and let me concentrate."
Carver stuck his tongue between his lips as he concentrated on lining up the X on the screen with what looked like an airlock on the side of the ship.
"You think that's why they call it Star X?" Dawes indicated the crosshairs.
"You're messing up my aim," Carver huffed under his breath.
"You're doing that all on your own. I'm just asking a question?
Carver gave him some serious side eye.
"Your questions are trying to distract me so I mess up again. Then you can keep on talking about it, like it's something I meant to do."
His elbow brushed the stick and activated the retro rockets. It sent them slightly off course as the X drifted further off the airlock target.
"I'm not trying to distract you," Dawes countered. "I'm just making an observation."
"It don't matter if you're trying to do it, you're doing it, and that's the point."
"You better pay attention," Dawes pointed.
"Don't tell me to pay attention. You're not the boss here."
Dawes pointed again, but this time he didn't say anything.
"That's how you do it," Carver said with a satisfied smug and turned back to the reticule.
"Shit," he gasped and yanked the joystick to one side.
The X overshot the airlock as they zoomed closer to the alien vessel.
He struggled to bring it back in line.
His jerky movements kept sending the nose of the ship first one way, then the next.
The X was off center, as they crashed into the side of the ship, half on the airlock.
Carver was yanked to a halt by the straps on the seat, but Dawe was sent flying into the console.
His fingers
scrambled for purchase before he slammed into the bulkhead, and caught on the tip of a button, depressing it.
The airlock clamps engaged, digging into the side of the ship, but making an incomplete seal.
The automatic cycling sequence beeped and the airlock chamber opened up.
Instead of venting into an equally pressurized airlock though, the escaping gas shot out through a narrow slit in the broken seals against the alien ship.
The air knocked the Star X ship into the side of the alien vessel, the half engaged clamps keeping one edge hinged like a lever.
Dawes bounced off the side of the wall as the long module bounced against the side of the ship once, twice and broke free to spin off along the hull, dragging and scraping metal against alien technology.
Pieces of debris floated off as their rocket dragged against the hull and drifted off into orbit on the outer edges of the stratosphere.
Carver coughed.
"Man, you almost got us killed. These straps are going to leave bruises."
Dawes looked like he'd been through four rounds with a rampaging rhino and lost. He gripped the edge of the console and hauled himself up. His legs kept drifting up past his head, and he almost passed out from the blood rush.
"You don't look so good."
"I don't feel so good."
A beeping alarm sounded on the panel in front of them.
"You know what that means?"
"Can't be anything good."
"Maybe you should buckle up this time."
Dawes shot him a look.
"Maybe you shouldn't crash the ship again."
"Man, you know you were distracting me. That wasn't my fault."
Dawes dragged himself into the second seat and fumbled with the straps.
"That's it," he grumbled. "You're done driving."
"It's flying, not driving."
"Flying. Driving. Whatever you want to call it, you're done."
"If all you're going to do is bitch about it, then maybe you should do it your damn self."
"I will."
"There you go."
Carver crossed his arms across his chest and tucked out his bottom lip in a pout.
"Do it then."
Dawes studied the layout of the buttons under the joystick, his eyes darting from the view screen to the console and back again.
He saw something on the screen and blanched.
"Carver?"
"No man, you said you were the pilot now. Pilot this damn thing."
"Carver!"
"Go on pilot. Fly. Be free."
"Carver!"
Carver glanced over and saw Dawes pointing at the view screen. His eyes locked on the image of the alien ship bearing down on them, twisting end over end as its orbit decayed.
"Shit!" he screamed.
"Drive!"
Carver lunged for the joystick and pressed buttons. All of them.
Nothing happened.
"Do something."
"What do you think I just did."
Dawes cringed as the cow ship bore down on them.
"Do something else."
Carver closed his eyes, and pressed a button.
The airlock eclipsed open to the size of a baseball and a claxon warning alarm shrieked through the cockpit.
Air shot out through the opening as the cockpit vented. It sent them tumbling out of the way of the main body of the hull.
The edge glanced against the smaller ship and sent it tumbling faster.
"Can't. Breath!" Dawes gasped.
"Can't. Either." Carver answered.
His finger jabbed the button again and again until the tiny opening in the airlock whisked closed.
The claxon alarm stopped but another took its place.
"What's that mean?" Dawes struggled to ask.
Carver studied the layout of the board.
"Man, I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?! You're the pilot."
"You keep changing your mind about that."
“Are you getting hot?”
Carver glanced at a gauge on the console.
“Yeah, we’re crashing. Again,” he rolled his eyes.
“How many times is that? Three?”
“Look man, I’m getting sick of all this negative criticism. You want it done your way, you do it.”
“My way? I’d just like to land the normal way for once.”
“I would have done that but you wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“You bounced off an alien ship and knocked it down to earth.”
The could see bits and pieces of the alien cow ship breaking up in the atmosphere.
Even as they watched, hundreds of tiny escape pods jettisoned from the main ship, spreading out over the continent of North American and the Midwestern states.
Then the view screen flared orange and burned out.
Gravity grabbed Dawes and slammed him into the floor of the ship. He crawled across to his seat and strapped in.
Carver pulled his buckles tight.
The roar of the atmosphere outside of the cockpit made speech impossible, but if Carver could speak with his eyes, he’d be screaming.
And hold on.
“Oh shit.”
They lunged into their straps as emergency rockets kicked in and slowed them down from a thousand miles per hour to only three hundred.
Then bounced again when three chutes deployed and arrested their descent speed to only eighty miles per hour.
Just as they caught their breath, a third blast deployed, halting them in mid-air twenty feet above the ground.
The wind caught the chutes as they settled into the ground no harder than jumping off a two story building. The chutes dragged and scraped them across the earth until they came up against a hill and snagged.
Inside the cockpit, Carver moaned.
“You alive?”
“I think so,” Dawes groaned.
“You better move your ass,” Carver unstrapped and limped for the small opening.
He put his shoulder against it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“We can’t get out,” he hissed.
“It’s inescapa-bull?”
“Stop.”
Dawes put his shoulder next to Carver and they shoved together. The hatch didn’t move, but with a grunt, a groan, a moan and no confession to piss, it screeched open large enough for them to squeeze through.
“Me first,” Carver pushed Dawes aside and slithered through the opening.
Dawes dropped and crawled out beside him.
The dirt around their crash site was chewed up and muddy from fluids they couldn’t recognize or name.
The ship itself rested at the bottom of a small rise, where the parachutes fluttered in the breeze above them.
The men limped to the top of the hill and stopped.
They were surrounded by cows.
Thousands of space cows disgorged from escape pods resting in the surrounding pastures.
“Hey man,” Carver whispered.
“Yeah?”
“You seeing this?”
“Yeah.”
“They walking on two legs or did I hit my head harder than I think.”
“I hit mine too cause they’re walking.”
The alien cows were built like the bull in space, bipedal and large. They were clothed in variants of space suits and carried blasters as they approached.
“We should probably go this way,” Dawes tugged on Carver’s sleeve.
They turned to scramble down the rise and paused again.
The cows had them surrounded and the circle was closing tight.
Tight and fast.