I glanced at the windows. Great, we were in space. I had to gain control of the lander, and that fast. I roared at him, and faked with my head.
He was twitchy, this last Saurian. He leaped, but I stayed where I was. No doubt recognizing his mistake, his tail lashed out for a stool to redirect his flight path. I heaved his dead buddy at him. Then I launched myself. The dead Saurian struck the living one, and that’s all the chance I needed. In these grisly moments of hack, slash and spill green blood, I’d gotten a lot better at weightless maneuvering.
The gruesome game ended with his death. I panted as I yanked my Bowie out of his chest. With all this jumping and pushing, I’d become thirstier than ever. Now I had to concentrate. I floated to the controls, or to one set of them. I tried to remember which button the lizard had pushed that had turned off the gravity.
Maybe it was this one. I pressed it, and I thudded hard onto the floor. I missed striking my chin on a panel by the barest fraction.
Standing, I wondered what I should do next.
Rollo shouted from the other side of the doors, “Creed! Are you okay? What’s going on in there?”
I strode across the bloody chamber with its lizard corpses and pulled a lever that looked like it should open the portal. It worked: the doors swished open.
“Listen up,” I said.
The two men stared at me. I imagine I was a sight, with a green-bloody face and as I clutched my gory Bowie. Their glances took in the dead lizards.
“You killed them all,” Rollo said.
“I tried to get them to surrender first,” I said.
“Who’s going to pilot the ship?” Rollo asked.
“His girlfriend,” I said, pointing at Dmitri. “Get Ella up here pronto. We have to figure out these controls before we reach the mothership.”
“There may be some Saurians left hiding on our lander,” Dmitri said.
“Rollo, go with him,” I said. “Kill every lizard you find. But you two have to hurry. We’re running out of time.”
“What are you going to do?” Rollo asked.
“I’ll start messing with the controls to see if I can figure something out.”
“I know you are cunning,” Dmitri said. “And I do not question your wisdom. But is it not possible you might accidently open the outer locks and let out the air if you ‘mess with the controls’?”
The Cossack had a point. “Okay,” I said. “Ella is supposed to be Ms. Brainiac, right?”
“Brainiac?” Dmitri asked.
“Smart, wise, a mystic scientist with good guesses,” I said.
“Yes,” Dmitri said, “she is very smart.”
“So go get her. Until she comes, though, I’m going to try things. It’s how we’ve gotten as far as we have. I’m not going to play it safe now.”
Dmitri gave a worried glance at the lander’s controls.
“Go!” I said. “We have to get this ship turned around. And see if you can find us something to drink or I’m going to turn vampire and start sipping their blood.”
Dmitri gave me a strange look. “It is said the Mongols, when they lacked other nourishment, used to open a vein on their horse and drink its blood. After the Zaporizhian Cossacks, the Mongols were the world’s greatest warriors.”
“Drinking alien blood makes us great?” I asked.
“Likely, if you drank their blood, it would be poisonous to you.”
I blinked several times, studying our Cossack. “Get Ella,” I said, “and do it now!”
Dmitri nodded curtly, and he went. Rollo raised an eyebrow at me, and then he went too.
-7-
I sat in the control chamber with Ella Timoshenko. She wasn’t naked anymore, although she was still barefoot. She’d put on Rollo’s parka as if it was a dress, leaving her legs exposed. She peered intently at the various panels, no doubt trying to decipher their functions. So far, she’d avoided looking at me and had said even less.
Dmitri and Rollo stalked the lander hunting for Saurians. I’d told them to cleanse this craft of alien invaders. It was an Earth ship now, our only one. I intended on keeping it that way.
I badly needed water. I suspect we all did. My lips were chapped and the armor had begun to stir restlessly on my skin.
There had to be a water source aboard ship. How otherwise had the aliens kept the Russians alive for two days? I would have asked Ella. I’d heard her speak to Rollo and knew our scientist spoke broken English, so we could communicate. But she had a graver task to perform just now. We desperately needed to gain control of our ship.
Ella had narrow, pretty features with a little triangular-shaped chin. She continued to blink like a woman missing her glasses. She turned her head toward me, but refused to look in my eyes. Was she shy or still upset with me? “This must be life support,” she said, indicating a panel. “So never touch these controls.”
Did she think I was an idiot or a Neanderthal? “Sure thing,” I said.
Ella stood. She had nice legs. She wiped her hands against the parka’s fabric and moved to the next stool. She carefully sat down, pulling the parka around her. Then she began to inspect the new panel. Soon, she rubbed her forehead, shook her head and gave me another side glance.
“I cannot be certain,” she said.
“I get that,” I said. “I’m amazed you can tell anything at all. But our time is becoming more critical by the second. We have to try something.”
The lander’s engine still throbbed and the ship presumably blasted at takeoff speed toward parts unknown. How long would it take the mothership to notice us? How many landers did the aliens possess? If a few, they would notice sooner. If hundreds, well, maybe we still had a chance. We operated in the dark, but we were lucky to be in this position at all.
Ella Timoshenko spread her slender hands over the panel, wriggled her fingers and dared to touch a control.
The vibration under our feet quit in an instant.
I glanced at her. That was impressive. Maybe our scientist did indeed possess intuitive abilities.
“I have shut off the engine,” she informed me.
“How in world did you know to press that control?” I asked.
Whether out of modesty, because she was too busy thinking or found talking to me too difficult, she just shook her head and went back to studying the panel.
At that moment, a screen to my left flickered with images. I must have noticed it with my peripheral vision. I turned toward the wall screen and saw a Saurian. It peered at me. This one had discolored scales around its left eye.
My stomach knotted. The bastards had found us. There went our element of surprise. We could still ram them, though. I didn’t want to die, but I wanted to float in a specimen jar even less. I could give them the finger a second before impact.
My upper lip curled. The Saurian must be some kind of traffic-control operator. Likely, he was on the mothership, checking in on the lander.
The lizard hissed at me. I wished I could have shot him in the head.
“Can you turn off that screen?” I whispered to Ella out of the corner of my mouth.
She looked up and must have seen the lizard for the first time. She gave a sharp gasp before saying, “I am not certain. No, not immediately,” she added.
I faced the lizard. After chasing the two Saurians around in this chamber, I’d begun to distinguish their expressions. Clearly, the lizard-operator didn’t like what he saw. He spoke sharply before his image disappeared.
I stood, and I considered smashing the screen.
Before I could proceed, another image appeared on the screen. A human-looking alien wearing a dark jacket turned around and faced me. He appeared to be listening to someone speaking off-screen out of my sight. Maybe it was the lizard-operator reporting to him. The man had blood-colored skin and narrow features. He had dark, extremely intelligent-seeming eyes. When he opened his mouth, I noticed pointy teeth like a piranha.
The alien spoke, or his mouth moved. From a speaker under our
screen came Saurian-like hisses.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked Ella.
“He must be the Jelk,” Ella said in a low voice.
I turned to the scientist. She had been staring at me. The minute our eyes met, hers dropped.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We’re not at a dance. We’re about to die.”
Her gaze lifted, and she glared now. “You stared at me before.”
“Yeah, well…I couldn’t help it. You’re pretty. Now what’s a Jelk?”
She glared for a moment longer. Then the outrage in her eyes flickered off, and she had a business look, a coldly logical expression. “The Saurians spoke about the Jelk. I remember being intrigued, as it seemed clear the Jelk controlled the expedition.”
“So that’s the Saurians’ boss?” I whispered.
Ella glanced around me at the screen. She nodded, adding, “Most certainly.”
I turned back to the Jelk. This was the bastard I had to kill, who must have ordered the thermonuclear bombs rained onto Earth. The joker must be on the mothership. He regarded me closely and a cruel smile appeared. Those eyes…they showed wicked intelligence, something twisted like a biblical demon. I had the impression of advanced age. That daunted me.
He spoke again, and instead of hisses, English words came out of the speaker.
“You are humans, Earthlings,” he said.
“Obviously,” I said. “Are you the Jelk?”
His eyebrows rose, and I found that disconcerting. Aliens from the stars should be different in thought and actions from us, right? Those raised eyebrows were a human-like gesture. What did it mean if we had similar facial gestures?
“Ah,” he said. “You wear a symbiotic battlesuit. I begin to perceive the situation. The chamber shows stains of combat. Yes. You have gained control of the vessel. How foolish of the Family. I had thought they could collect specimens without endangering themselves. You Earthbeasts are more cunning than the indicators showed.”
My gut tightened. Beasts, this joker called us beasts, too. What was with these aliens? Were they all a bunch of arrogant pricks? I breathed heavily, and I told myself getting angry wouldn’t help me now. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“Why do you believe we’re beasts?” I asked.
The smile widened as if he was amused with me. “It is self-evident,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We’re talking, right? Speech implies intelligence.”
“How interesting,” he said. “You attempt to reason with me. Very well, if it’s logic you desire, I will accommodate you for the moment. Your lander-capturing feat deserves a reward. I am in fact impressed with you. You wear a bio-battlesuit. That was a clever tactic.”
I couldn’t understand his calm. We had his lander. We’d killed his Saurians, but he didn’t seem concerned with their deaths. It told me he was cold-hearted. I suppose I already knew that, since he was genocidal.
“You claim to have risen above the level of beasts,” he said. “Yet I know that a few short years ago your species avidly attempted to destroy each other. Our X-tee sociologists studied Earth several cycles ago. At the time…” He leaned toward the screen and pressed three fingers against his forehead. If I were to guess, it looked as if he was thinking or attempting to recall facts.
“Ah, now I remember,” he said, confirming my suspicion. “The German Imperium attacked the Soviet Empire, creating widespread destruction. At the same time, the American techno-wizards solved the atomic equation and annihilated Japanese militarists.”
I glanced back at Ella. She didn’t notice. With her features scrunched in thought as she observed, she obviously studied the Jelk.
A light bulb went off in my head. The atomic equation did it for me. “You’re talking about World War II,” I said. “You had observers watching us back then?”
The Jelk showed off his pointy teeth. He might look human, but he wasn’t the same as us. “Animals destroy in a reflexive manner,” he said. “The civilized solve in a constructive way.”
The genocidal freak was a hypocrite. I’d had my fill of them. “Oh sure,” I said, “civilized. That’s why you nuked the Earth and sowed death spores everywhere, right?”
“Unsurprisingly, you labor under misinformation,” he said. “It was not I who did these things, but the Lokhars.”
“Oh-oh,” I heard Ella say behind me. “The engine has come back online.”
I glanced at the Russian. Her fingers were pressed against a panel. At the same time, I felt the vibration under my feet.
“Did you turn the engines back on?” I whispered.
Ella looked up at me, and she bit her lower lip. “Negative. I think he did it.”
“You are observant,” the Jelk said. “That’s another point in your favor, I suppose. Yes, you’ve noticed that my operators have taken remote control of the craft. In several time-units you will join the fleet.”
I remember the police driving me to prison. I’d sat in back of a police car, with my wrists handcuffed. Fear had filled me then. I’m not letting this prick capture me. He thinks I’m an animal. Remember those dissected people on the tables? I rubbed the back of my hand against my lips. Maybe there was a way to short-circuit the remote control. We had battlesuits and some alien weaponry. I wasn’t about to call it quits just because this grinning bastard spoke to me in a high-handed manner.
“It appears your rationality is lower than you realize,” the Jelk said.
Keeping my features neutral, I faced him. “Yeah, how do you figure?”
“Why would I eliminate your species in a violent act of destruction and then send down craft to collect specimens for bio-battlesuit testing?”
“You tell me,” I said.
The smile evaporated, and the coldness of his dark eyes became more pronounced. “You are a rash creature, too full of your own importance. I suppose your present feat has puffed up your hubris to inordinate levels. Know, Earthbeast, that a single command from me will cause the atmosphere in your vessel to flee into the vacuum of space around you.”
“You’re threatening to kill us?” I asked. Call me beast one more time… “Mister,” I said, “I’ve been ready to die for a while now.”
“A threat is not an action,” the Jelk said. “It is instead a possibility. You may yet live, but that will depend on the next few moments and what you decide.”
I wanted to shove his face against a block of cement and grind it to paste, but I was unable to think of anything useful to say, so I just nodded.
“Interesting,” he said. “You now exhibit caution. Maybe the observers underrated human intelligence. In any case, as I was saying, your rationality, your reason, is weak. The Jelk Corporation does not waste resources. The assault upon your planet…hmm,” he said. “I suspect that the Lokhars feared you enough to act aggressively. It is possible they learned of my plan and attempted to neutralize my recruiting grounds before I could reach this system.”
“Yes,” Ella whispered behind me. “The aliens want us as soldiers. I was right all along.”
“What are you saying?” I asked the Jelk. “You wanted to hire humans as mercenaries in a galactic war?”
“Again, you misunderstand. The Jelk Corporation does not indulge in war, not in the style or manner of beasts. The Lokhars, however, do not abide by civilized conduct. They are a betweener species, climbing upward from beastliness to sophistication.”
Not only was he irritating but confusing. “Who are the Lokhars?” I asked. “Is that your name for the Saurians?”
“How you strive for understanding,” the Jelk said. “I applaud that. Yet it is difficult for you to comprehend concepts beyond your intellect to process. You are a fighting beast with the rudiments of rationality. That you wear the bio-battlesuit and have destroyed the workers proves it.” He pressed his fingertips against his forehead. “I had not anticipated this pseudo-intelligence. Perhaps I can recoup my investment after all.”
He removed his hand and his smile reappe
ared. “This wouldn’t be the first time that the Jelk on the spot understands better than the policymakers back in the conglomerate. Listen to me, Earthbeast, comprehend if you can the offer I’m about to make you.”
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to squeeze anyone’s neck more. I felt helpless, and I had no idea how to fix this. If he wanted us as mercenaries…that would be one thing. But this idea I was a beast…
The Jelk cleared his throat. The sound had a gritty quality like a two-pack a day smoker. “I had planned to use you Earthbeasts as ground troops. There are enough transports en route to move several hundred million of you, once you had been put to cryogenic sleep, of course. The bio-battlesuits were an investment—oh, never mind. I’m sure you cannot comprehend. The point is that now a paltry few million of you have survived the planetary bombardment. Your amazing feat of conquering a lander and taking it into space… I believe I can recoup expenditures by taking the best of you and rearming you as space-assault troopers. You appear to possess enough wit to successfully operate in a vacuum and weightless environment.”
Was I hearing this right? “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re offering to hire us as space mercenaries?”
“Crudely stated, but accurate to a point,” he said.
My thoughts threatened to whirl around and around. I didn’t want to end up dissected on a table, and I dreaded the idea this slug was lying. I didn’t want to live the rest of my days in an alien cage, either. But fighting space wars as a mercenary…
“Won’t the Saurians want revenge for what I’ve done to them?” I asked.
“By Saurians—oh, I see. You’re referring to the Family. Certainly, the workers would prefer to see you destroyed. But that has no bearing on my offer.”
“The Saurians…the Family works for you?” I asked.
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