by T. R. Harris
Adam then flipped the flash rifle from behind his back and into his waiting hands, but rather than shoot, he lifted the barrel up and into the throat of the Armplanese who had been sitting behind the desk. This one fell like a bag of cement.
In this particular fight, that was about all Adam would contribute, because next came the loud screeching sound again, yet this time it climbed to such a high pitch and so fast, that Adam fell to his knees, grasping his head in pain. The other four Armplanese, with the speakers of thece thattheir comm-units only inches from their ears, suffered the most. They all collapsed, blood streaming from their ears and noses.
The screeching stopped as abruptly as it began and Adam staggered to his feet.
“I’m going to have a headache for a week after that,” he said. “Wasn’t there anything else you could have done?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not as experienced at the art of warfare as you,” Arieel said, upset at the scolding.
“I could have taken them all,” Adam threw in.
“I thought you wanted my help.”
“When it’s needed—”
“If I knew Human swear words, I would use them on you now!”
“I’m sure you would. Now let’s find a manifest or parking schedule; we can’t waste any more time here.”
A monitor suddenly came to life on one of the now unoccupied desks. Adam rushed over only to find a blur of files already scrolling up the screen. Arieel stood in the center of the room, a far-away look in her eyes. Suddenly the scrolling stopped, and a long list written in the Armplanese language appeared.
“There is a class-two in port,” Arieel cried out. “It appears to be the only one of its size still here.”
Adam could see where the screen was displaying the information on the ship, complete with schematics, yet he couldn’t read any of the writing. “Can you decipher this?”
“Yes,” Arieel replied. “It is an old military escort almost one hundred years old, but it appeared to have passed all of its most recent readiness tests. It is owned by the Armplanese security forces and was ordered to remain in port when the rest of the ships departed. It carries a crew of twenty.”
“That looks like our ticket,” Adam said, moving from behind the desk and heading for the exit. “Where’s it located?”
“Stall 988, about a mile from here.”
As Adam reached the door, he turned to see Arieel still standing over the spread of fallen Armplanese at her feet. She looked up at him, with a look of utter coldness in her eyes.
“I have just erased all the data on the computers within the building so there will be no inventory of the ships that were in port. Yet we also cannot leave these beings alive – they will tell.” She knelt down near the bodies; some were moaning softly, others were not moving at all. “Within two of them, the brainwaves have ceased, yet the other four still have activity.”
Adam hesitated. She was right; they couldn’t leave any way of tracking them.
“I’ll do it, Arieel. You just go outside.” He knelt down beside her.
“No, I want to do it!” And before Adam could react, Arieel had pulled one of the MK-17’s that each of the aliens carried around their waists and pressed the barrel of the weapon against the head of one of the inert bodies on the floor.
“Wait, not so fast!” Adam cried out, but it was too late, at least for one of the aliens. The flash weapon discharged, and the level-two bolt easily penetrated the skull, the heat from the blast cauterizing most of the vessels and leaving very little blood to spill out onto the floor. She moved the weapon to the next one.
“Damn, woman, you’re cold-blooded!” Adam called out.
This stopped Arieel in her tracks before she could squeeze the trigger again. “Why do you say that? These creatures must die if we are to successfully escape, plus they are not Formilian, or even Human. Besides, I have felt the life energy leave their bodies to join with the other free spirits in the room. All are happy with this arrangement.”
“All but these hapless souls,” Adam said. Their eyes met and Adam saw within her dark globes not an ounce of cruelty or sadistic intent. To Arieel, this was almost like performing a religious ritual. She saw nothing wrong with the killing.
Adam backed away. “Be my guest. If this turns you on, go for it.”
Arieel stared at him for a few moments trying to decipher the meaning of his last words. Eventually she understood – or just gave up – and proceeded to blast the heads of the other three Armplanese.
And then without a grimace or concern on her face, Arieel Bol stood up and walked out of the room, about as casual, untroubled and nonchalant as could be.
Adam called after her. “Oh and Arieel,” he began, “don’t think you’re doing me any favor by releasing my energy back into the wild. I’d rather that happen on my terms.”
As they quickly made their way toward landing stall 988, Adam thought of the twenty crewmembers of the ship that awaited them. They would have no idea what was about to happen to them, but it was a necessary evil in order to preserve peace throughout the galaxy.
Adam was also curious what kind of thrill Arieel would get from the casting of twenty additional spirits back into the ether? She was a strange one – dangerous and strange – with a darker side he’d not seen before, where life and death were merely a different state of being. Of course, she had feared for her own life, but even psychopaths sought their own self-preservation….
Adam had been kicking around the galaxy for a decade now and he had encountered dozens of different cultures, religious beliefs and sensibilities, so it was hard for him to judge others, except in relation to his own moral compass. Arieel had been right – the Armplanese could not be left alive. He would have executed them for the good of the mission himself, and yet he would have felt some regret. Or would he? He had done horrible things to some deserving and some not-so-deserving aliens. It was just what he did for a living.
Yet Arieel Bol placed an importance – no, a benefit – on the act of killing. Did that make her more compassionate, or did it make her more willing to commit the act with little or no remorse?
As they neared the squatty-looking craft that would hopefully get them off Bor’on and back to Formil, Adam knew one thing for certain: Arieel could be relied upon in a fight to do what was necessary, even if that meant killing at a moment’s notice.
There was only one other woman he felt that about, but she was over six thousand light years away, and probably completely oblivious to his current situation.
“Thirty-million-freaking-credits! You’re shitting me?”
Kroekus shook his head, a head that took up nearly the entire width of the monitor. “I’m afraid not, Sherri. And I have to say, I am appalled at the response this bounty is generating. My sources put the number of ships out looking for them at over one thousand.”
“And you’re sure they’ve not been found?”
“It would be major news if they had.”
“And it’s been twelve hours since the broadcast went out?”
“Longer than that; it has been twelve hours since they were last spotted in the Siyvelan system, just before they disappeared.”
“How far is that from Belson?”
“Approximately six-thousand.”
Kroekus could see Sherri doing some quick calculations in her head. Then she looked back at him, her jaw tight and her eyes glassy. “That’s over a month away, even in the Pegasus.”
“Whatever is going to happen will be long over by then. There is nothing you can do; there is nothing any of us can do to help. They are on their own.”
“I’m going back to Pyrum, Kroekus. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you here, but I have to be there when he returns.” And then softly under her breath: “If he returns.”
“I understand completely.”
There was a commotion behind Sherri and the image of two disparate beings appeared. One was tall, with two long appendages dangling below each ear,
and pale, almost translucent skin, revealing the faint traces of blood vessels under the skin. The other creature was half as tall, squatty, with a thick coat of hair and a snout ending in a shiny, almost wet-looking nose.
“Administrator Kroekus, greetings,” said Kaylor Linn Todd, Dignitary-at-Large of the Belsonian Consortium. “Jym and I would like to accompany Sherri and Riyad back to Pyrum-3. We do not know what we can accomplish there, except to give moral support to her and the other Humans, but I feel it would be appropriate. I assume you have no objections?”
Kroekus stretched out a wide grin. “Of course not, my old friend; I may myself endeavor to make the journey for the homecoming. It has been a very long while since I last saw all my old friends and adversaries from the Fringe worlds. I hope it will be for joy that we meet … and not tragedy.”
Jym pushed himself up in front of Kaylor. “Adam Cain is a very resourceful creature – eerily so,” said the little bear-like creature. “I am sure that even now he has successful evaded his pursuers and is leisurely closing in on the planet Formil.”
“But the others had flash weapons!” Arieel cried out from where she was hiding, as bursts of soil and sparking metal danced all around her.
“Yeah, and who uses projectile weapons anymore, except us Humans?” Adam lifted up from his cover and sent three quick shots toward the large generator transport where the five Armplanese had taken cover. Adam had already dropped another five, but that meant there were still fifteen armed and dangerous aliens to contend with, five outside and other ten inside the ship.
With overconfidence, Adam and Arieel had casually strolled up to the Armplanese military craft, expecting the crew to be armed with flash weapons – devices Arieel could easily turn into either unless paperweights or small hand-grenades. Instead, they found that these particular Armplanese carried small handguns that fired dart-pointed projectiles. With no electronics governing their operation, Arieel was powerless to counter them.
Adam’s Glock was more powerful that the alien weapons and he was much more accurate with his shots. Five aliens had died almost instantly, yet the other five, who had been lingering outside the ship at the time, had taken cover behind the large metal truck.
The other Armplanese within the ship had attempted to liftoff, leaving their comrades to die at Adam’s hand or by the blast of the chemical exhaust. Here Arieel had earned her keep. She shut down all the systems onboard the ship, including the weapons, and then sealed the doors so none from inside could assist those outside.
Once Adam could subdue these last five pesky aliens by the generator truck, he and Arieel would then deal with those inside the ship.
Yet who would have guessed that the Armplanese weapon-of-choice would fire projectiles? His carelessness had almost cost them their lives.
The Armplanese security forces outside the ship had panicked when they saw their comrades fall, and so they had indiscriminately began firing dozens of the dart-projectiles in their direction. This went on for several minutes, as Adam slapped two more magazines into the Glock and kept firing. He dropped another one of the aliens before an odd silence came from behind the generator truck.
There was shouting going on – shouts of panic. Adam had a pretty good idea what had happened.
He set of at a sprinter’s run for the truck. In the light gravity of Bor’on, he crossed the short distance in a blur and jumped to the top of the truck. Unfortunately, his momentum was too much for him to counter, and he fell off the truck and landed within a circle of terrified Armplanese sailors. They all instinctively aimed their weapons at him, yet no shots were fired. They were out of ammunition.
Adam smiled up at the aliens from where he lay, and then in rapid succession, proceeded to blast gaping holes in each one of them with rounds from the Glock.
When he stood and rounded the side of the truck, Arieel came running up to meet him. They both then turned their heads to the towering form of the spacecraft soaring over them, and through the forward viewport, could see a whole crowd of scared Armplanese looking down at them. Their mouths were all moving rapidly, yet no sound could be heard through the thick shield of the viewport glass.
Adam and Arieel looked up at them with expressions of annoyance. It would be simpler if they would just surrender. Sure, they’d still die, but it would save Adam and Arieel the trouble of trying to flush them all out.
Adam looked down at Arieel. “Any suggestions?”
“I could turn off the air supply, but that would take too much time for them to die.” And then her eyes lit up. “Or I could leak chlorine gas into the air system.” Her gaze went blank as she stared off into the distance. “Yes, there is a series of bypasses I can reroute the gas through.”
“Can you flush it out then before we go aboard?”
“Very easily, especially with the vessel still on the surface of the planet.”
Adam was amazed at the cavalier attitude the tiny alien took to mass killing. Despite all their apparent differences, maybe Humans and Formilians were both cut from the same cloth?
Ten minutes later the deed was done. Arieel opened every hatch and vent she could find and forced a new supply of fresh air to circulate throughout the starship. Another ten minutes passed before they felt confident enough to enter.
Even with the new air the smell was almost unbearable. Like nearly all creatures, most of the Armplanese had defecated when they died. Their deaths were still too recent for the scent of dead bodies to spread throughout the ship, but the smell of alien shit was disgusting enough.
It took Adam another thirty minutes to round up all the twenty dead bodies and store them in a section of the ship’s landing bay. He didn’t want to leave any of them lying around outside, that would have immediately alerted others to the fact that the Armplanese security ship had been taken. Once they reached space, Adam would dump the bodies … an event made even more urgent by the overpowering stench permeating the vessel.
They lifted off on chemical drive, but within thirty seconds, Adam engaged a shallow gravity well while still within the atmosphere. The hull heated up quickly, yet no damage was caused before reaching the coldness of space.
Adam set them on a course toward Formil, yet not directly at it. With all the willy-nilly movement of ships between here and Formil, a vessel on a straight-line course for the planet might stand out. He would steer slightly to the right of the system, toward another system not too far away, and then change course once they got closer. If they could maintain their anonymity for even a couple of days, then they just might be able to slip through.
There biggest problem came with just the time required for a ship of this classification to transit the distance. No matter what Adam and Arieel could do, they couldn’t change the laws of physics. Without any more diversions, they would arrive at Formil with only three hours to spare.
15
“I hate this fucking planet!” Furkril heard one of the Humans say. A pair of the near-hairless creatures was standing around the corner from him, looking out at his family’s Number 39 Dung-Pit, a vast expanse of bubbling black and green goo that was just on the verge of cultivation. Furkril was sure the Humans had some rules against expressing themselves in such a manner while on another world, but he was sure they didn’t even know he was there.
Even so, overhearing the undisguised feelings by the alien did help to fortify what the other alien had been telling him for some time: The Humans hate the Jusepi tribe and will massacre them at the first moment they feel justified.
These particular Humans were part of a settlement delegation that had come to meet with Furkril to discuss a land-use proposal. His series of dung-pits were the largest in this hemisphere and of extreme value to the Jusepi. Yet even with their round spaceships, capable of transiting the entire planet in a matter of minutes, these aliens still felt the need to infringe on his land and his livelihood.
Furkril flicked his ears in a sign of pleasure. He would make them wait a little longer. He was
fully aware that the Humans found the fragrance of the pit to be offensive – another odd thing about these creatures. So he would let them stand outside, enveloped in the strong, sweet scent of the massive pit, just to cause them a few more moments of discomfort.
Just then it occurred to him that these foreign creatures probably would not like the taste of his people’s most-prized delicacy, either. His ears pressed back against the sides of his head, an anger building up inside.
How have these things come to attain such technology and such power, he asked himself silently, when they cannot even appreciate the finer things life has to offer? If the events do come to past, then they will deserve all they receive.
When he could delay no longer, Furkril came around the corner, making his presence known.
Both Humans turned towards him and began the curious dance with their mouths that he had seen them do on almost every prior occasion. At first they would stretch out their mouths, exposing their smallish, dull-ended teeth. But then they would immediately pull in with their lips and cover their teeth again, as if they were ashamed of them. The initial reaction seemed to be the most-genuine, with the re-covering of their teeth the thing that caused them concern. Furkril was at a loss as to the meaning of the expression.
If Furkril believed the Jusepi and Human races had a future together, he would have paid more attention or tried to understand their habits a little better. Yet by all indications, such endeavors would not be necessary.
Furkril was part of a major underground movement working closely with the other aliens to bring about the removal of the Humans from his home planet of Duelux, as well as from the entire region between here and the Outer Nebulae. The task wouldn’t be easy, and certainly not possible simply by the Jusepi alone. Yet the silver creatures had already provided his people with many ships and weapons, all effectively now hidden away and waiting for the time of revolt.