Rebel Fleet

by B. V. Larson

  I looked around and spotted the marine. He was standing over Dr. Chang’s slumped body. Gwen lay there too, unmoving.

  “Samson?” I asked in disbelief. “I just killed you last night!”

  “Drop your weapon, Blake!” he repeated. Then he dropped his, and it clattered on the deck. “Drop it, or you’ll forfeit the win.”

  “What win?”

  “The first heat is over. You made the cut. Only five aboard did.”

  I suspected a trap, but I was confused. I calculated he was too far away to charge me.

  “Why do you give a shit whether I win or not?” I asked.

  He grinned, and it was then I noticed he wasn’t one hundred percent healthy. He moved with pain. Could his body still be recovering from the bullets I’d pumped into him a few hours ago?

  “I want you to make it to the next round,” he said, “so I can beat you down personally. Nothing else matters to me right now. I missed my chance this time because you were so chicken-shit you evaded the ship until the last minute.”

  Seeing he’d dropped his club, I warily set mine on the floor as well. But I kept my eyes on him every second.

  He relaxed fractionally, leaning back against the nearest wall. “That’s better. I’m still hurting from your slugs. You hammered me up pretty good—the bullets almost made it through my vest.”

  “I should have shot you in the face,” I told him.

  He gave me a rumbling chuckle and made a kissing face at me as he leaned against the wall.

  Following his example, I leaned up against a wall too.

  “We’re not in good shape for more of this,” I said.

  “Won’t matter,” he said. “We’ll be patched up before next time.”

  Shaking my head, I mustered a smile. “I got Dalton.”

  He guffawed. “That little shit deserved it.”

  Nonchalantly, I moved to check out Dr. Chang. He looked dead to me, but it was hard to be sure. Dalton and Samson had looked dead, too.

  Samson coughed, and that distraction was the moment I was looking for. I grabbed up Dr. Chang’s club and swung it two-handed for the marine’s face. This time, body armor or no, he was going down hard.

  But my sneak-attack never landed. I did get the pleasure of seeing surprise register on Samson’s features, but that was all.

  My whole body filled with numbing pain from the electrical shock I’d just received. I’d been tased twice before in my life, and this sensation reminded me of that.

  Slumping to the floor, I was helpless at Samson’s feet. I could still hear and see, but I couldn’t move. I fully expected him to rain blows down upon my skull.

  But he didn’t.

  Another set of footsteps approached.

  “That was a clear foul,” a familiar voice said.

  “Yeah, but he missed the rules session,” Samson said. “Don’t kick him out for this.”

  “The rules are the rules. We can’t be soft.”

  “I know, but he didn’t know what would happen.”

  “You told him not to attack.”

  “He probably thought it was a trick,” Samson insisted. “I was his enemy. He had no reason to accept my authority. He struck first, just as I would have.”

  “That’s true… hmm,” the man said. “All right. I’ll amend the logs. He’s moving forward to the next round with you. Hope you’re happy.”

  “Thank you, Admiral Shaw, thank you!” Samson said.

  I heard the sound of heavy boots striking the metallic floor as they walked away.

  Then Samson got down on his hands and knees. He peered into my staring eyes, and he grinned.

  “You made it, buddy,” he said sarcastically. “We’re going to be best friends now!”

  He laughed and jeered into my frozen face.

  But I wasn’t listening to him. I was thinking about the man in the boots. The man in charge. He was Vice Admiral Shaw to me—but who was he really?

  =10=

  Within a few minutes, I was able to move again. Shaw’s voice boomed through the ship full of dead and wounded.

  “Everyone who can walk must now move to their individual cell. Anyone not in their cells will be purged in five minutes. This is your only warning. Move!”

  Struggling to get up, I found Samson was trotting away down the passage. I saw his feet slapping on blood, hair and leaving a trail on the deck. He certainly seemed to be in a hurry.

  Where his feet struck the floor, the floor glimmered yellow now. Red had meant open combat. Green had meant enforced safety—what could yellow mean? Could it mean the environment itself was dangerous?

  I didn’t know, but I levered myself up and onto my feet. My side stung where Dalton had stabbed me, and my head was a swollen mass of lumps.

  Figuring my cell must be the one I’d started out in, I stumbled to it and stepped inside. There’d never been a door on this chamber, but when I entered one appeared behind me, sealing me in. The floor beneath my bloody feet went green then. Apparently, this was my home sweet home.

  Squatting in there, I rubbed my injuries. I checked the wound in my side, expecting to see a bloody mess. It wasn’t pretty, but it was already healing. Could that be the work of my sym? The idea of something slithering inside my blood was upsetting.

  After several minutes, I began to hear wild screams outside the door. I thought it was—yes, it had to be Gwen’s voice.

  “Gwen?” I called out.

  “Leo? I’m hurt. I’m frying!” she could hardly get the words out between screams.

  “Get up and find your cell!”

  She screamed some more. I struggled with the wall where it had been open before. Could this be why she’d been picking at it earlier? Had she seen these doors open and shut?

  I called out to her a few more times, but I didn’t hear anything more. I didn’t know if she made it or not. At last, it was quiet outside.

  Then things changed. I thought I felt my cell move. I was sure of it. It felt like being in an elevator, like I was being shunted somewhere.

  The feeling was an unpleasant one. I had no trust whatsoever concerning my captors. What could be their purpose? They might be doing all this just for their own entertainment. I wouldn’t have put it past whoever had designed these cruel games.

  The sensation of movement suddenly stopped. My club was in my hand, and I stood where the door should be. I was breathing hard, ready for anything—or so I thought.

  Every few seconds, my eyes flicked down to the floor, checking the color. It was still green.

  “There will be a rest period before the next phase,” announced the walls. “Survivors of the first phase will be required to socialize and recuperate.”

  “Screw you, Shaw,” I muttered to myself.

  Thinking it over, I decided I hated Shaw most of all. Dalton was an evil prick, sure. Samson had shot Kim to death before my eyes and sawed her head off. But I hated Shaw even more because he was orchestrating this torture-session.

  The doors vanished again. I’m using the term “door” loosely here. In reality, a section of the honey-combed wall simply melted away.

  The passages I’d seen before were gone. Instead, there was an open area. All around it, cells were standing open. Five of them.

  Warily, the inhabitants leaned out to look at one another. I recognized the faces. Dalton was to my left, eyes slitted, shoulders slumped. Samson was to my right. He filled the doorway of his cell.

  The fourth door revealed a cautious face. One I hadn’t expected to see again.

  Gwen stood in the cell across from me. I wouldn’t have seen her at all, except for the fact she couldn’t hide in there. She was at the back of the space she’d been trapped within. Her eyes slid around wildly then fixated on me.

  “Gwen?” I asked, incredulous. “How can you be…?”

  “I did my damnedest,” Samson said. “I really did. Shit.”

  “That bitch was dead on the floor!” Dalton declared, pointing at her. “She never
should have made it to her cell! I swear it’s a cheat!”

  Gwen didn’t speak. She licked her lips and eyed us with fear and savage determination. I felt sure she was planning our deaths—or how to trick us again.

  My eyes went to the last door, but whoever was inside, they must have been hiding.

  “She’s tricky,” Samson said, pointing at Gwen. “That must be it. Just like this asshole, Blake.”

  “Blake’s not that smart,” Dalton told him. “You’re the problem. You’re a complete prat. You’re aware of that fact, aren’t you? I can’t make it any simpler, sorry.”

  The two snarled at one another and squared off.

  “Guys,” I said, pointing to the floor. “The deck is green. Let’s get along for now.”

  Mumbling curses and threats, they stepped out into the open and nursed their injuries. In the middle of the floor, there was a large black object that looked like it was made of porous stone. A random pattern of holes covered the surface of it.

  Dalton and Samson pushed their tubes into these holes. They fit perfectly, then the stone began to glow.

  Several things occurred to me at that moment.

  “You guys have done this before…” I said.

  “What was your first clue, Blake?” Samson asked. “We washed out last time.”

  “You came back?”

  “We were finalists. They came back for more recruits, and we must have still been on their lists.”

  “Recruits for what?”

  “For their ships, professor,” Dalton snorted. “What do think this is all about? We’re trying out to be crewmen.”

  I stared at him. It had to be true. Why else would they heap such abuse upon us? Was I being subjected to tests of fitness? Just so I could fight for some kind of alien army? I didn’t like the idea. I began immediately planning to lose the next round.

  “What happens to those who lose badly?” I asked.

  “They die—for real. The near winners, the ones that show promise and impress their syms, they get to keep on going. Sometimes, like this time, they might get several chances to come back and try again.”

  Samson shrugged. “It’s like trying out for a team.”

  Dr. Chang finally appeared at the fifth door. He’d been pressed up against the wall, hiding and listening.

  “I guess you aren’t going to start clubbing one another,” he said.

  He stepped up to the central rock and shoved his metal tube into it. “Why are we doing this, exactly?”

  “The tubes will fill,” Samson said.

  “With what?”

  “Whatever we need,” the big man answered with a shrug. “Whatever our sym tells the rock to put into it.”

  Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I joined the circle.

  “I wish for a tube full of hard bourbon,” I said earnestly. “Tennessee whiskey, not the cheap stuff.”

  The others chuckled, and I thrust my tube into the slot. There was one more open spot. I looked back at Gwen.

  She was still lingering in her cell, silently regarding us.

  “I know you’re a worrier, Gwen,” I said. “And I don’t blame you at all. But you were told to participate. I think it would be safest for you to join us.”

  She shrank back so I could hardly see her.

  “The floor is still green,” I said. “Take advantage of it.”

  The guys were watching her. We all were, except for Dr. Chang. He was examining his tube closely. “I think something is filling it. I don’t see where it’s coming from.”

  Gwen stepped out at last. She walked forward on feet that were almost silent. She didn’t meet any of our eyes. She plunged her tube into the rock, and then she backed away like she thought it might explode or something.

  The rock glowed green-white, and I realized that I knew that light. Next, it grew cold.

  “That’s what the rock did at the bottom of the sea,” I said. “That must be when I got the sym.”

  The others looked at me then squinted in the silent glare coming from the rock. The light faded quickly.

  Nothing special happened for about a minute after that. At last, Dalton lost patience. He drew his tube back out and opened a sliding compartment. Inside was a syringe.

  He grunted with unhappiness. “What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Stick it in your ass,” Samson suggested.

  “I’m a physician,” Dr. Chang said, “maybe I can be of help.”

  “Back off!” Dalton said. “Nobody is giving me a shot. I’ll do it myself.” He took the syringe out and plunged it into his arm. The thing morphed as he did so.

  “Oh shit! Get it off!”

  The syringe melted, shrinking, until it vanished.

  “Where did it go?” Samson asked.

  “It went inside me. It was a trick! That bastard Shaw... I think I’ve been poisoned.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Dr. Chang said. “Their technology is way beyond ours.”

  “You think so?” Dalton snarled.

  “Yes, clearly. What I think they did was present you with a normal-looking syringe in order to inform you as to appropriate usage—in this case, physical contact. Upon touching it with your flesh, it melted into your bloodstream.”

  “That’s bullshit… but… I can feel it in me. Something’s there. Makes me a little sick.”

  He looked a bit green. I opened my tube and found a roll of bandages inside. I wrapped them over my head as well as the puncture wound Dalton had given me. The injuries immediately began to feel better. Soon, the bandage disappeared.

  Samson got a tube of liquid, which he drank. Dr. Chang found several medical instruments. He was happy about that. He wanted to examine the rest of us.

  “Those instruments are for you, Doc,” I told him. “Try them on yourself.”

  He did, and they melted away too. He complained about this. “Doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “Maybe it does if you’re an alien,” said Gwen, “or a sym looking out of human eyes.”

  We all looked at her. She had taken her tube and retreated with it to stand in the doorway of her cell. I could tell now how she’d survived. She was more paranoid and sneaky than the rest of us combined.

  “Open it,” I told her.

  At last, she did. She laughed. She pulled a lovely purple blossom out of the tube. It was a Hawaiian flower.

  “I might as well make the aliens happy,” she said, and put the flower in her hair. It immediately sank into her scalp, healing the lumps on her head.

  She walked over to me and looked shy. “Sorry about trying to beat your brains out,” she said.

  “It’s okay. That was your sym at work.”

  “I guess so—but at the time, I really, really wanted to kill you.”

  “I believe it. How about now?”

  She shook her head no. “Hey, have you got any more of that bandage? My neck still hurts and my ribs are sore, too.”

  I looked at her side, where the papery cloth didn’t cover. I caught quite an eyeful, as we were all almost naked.

  “Um… I’m out of bandages,” I said. “Hey, I’ll catch you next time, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  I had to smile. Was she being nice for real, or just to soften me up for the next round? It was hard to tell, but it was impossible not to respond to her positively. She was a lovely girl.

  After we’d all retrieved our tubes and taken our medicine, the floor changed to yellow. I really did feel better, that was the strangest part. It was as if I’d slept a few nights and had several good meals. I was even able to open my right eye fully. It’d been swollen half shut up until now.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Chang said, “but we’d better get back to our cells.”

  Gwen was already in hers, and the rest of us followed suit.

  “What’s happening?” I demanded of Samson and the others.

  “I don’t know,” the big guy admitted. “W
e didn’t get this far last time.”

  “Why not?”

  “We hit each other right here,” Dalton said. “Shaw said to socialize, remember? We broke the rules and hit each other while the floor was green.”

  “Yeah, you screwed it up,” Samson said. “We got all healed and ready for more fun—but the next thing you know, we’d been dumped in the ocean.”

  “I would have killed you, meatball, if they’d have let me!”

  “Wait,” I said, interrupting the two. “You guys started in Hawaii last time around, right?”

  “Nope,” Samson said. “Jersey for me.”

  “And I’m from Manchester, U. K,” Dalton said. “But the ship dropped us in the sea near Hawaii.”

  That made me frown. If I was kicked out of this ship for some kind of failure, where would it drop me?

  “But I never saw any reports of a ship coming down to grab people before,” I said. “Have you?”

  “No,” Dalton said. “This time was different. There were lots of big ships tonight, not just one small one. This time it seems like a bigger deal.”

  “I think it’s the last time the aliens are coming,” Samson said.

  “How do you know that, shit-for-brains?”

  They began arguing, and I wanted to ask them more questions now that I had them talking. I wanted to ask about Shaw—and a dozen other things—but there wasn’t any more time.

  The door to my cell materialized again, sealing me off from the others. The sensation of movement returned. My cell was sliding upward. Where would I come out next?

  My heart began to pound, and it became hard to swallow. My club was in my hand, gripped tightly.

  I was determined to get in at least one hard blow before I went down.

  =11=

  After a brief period of time, the doors vanished again. We were shocked to find ourselves face to face. The central chamber was gone. Our cells were gone. At least three of the four walls of each cell had vanished. We were all in a single large room looking at one another warily.

  The floor was still green, or I had no doubt these people would’ve started smacking each other again.

  “This round will be different,” Shaw’s voice said. “The group of five you’re with is a team for this round. You’ll be facing other teams. You’re not to damage anyone on your own team—not even by accident. Instead, you must defeat all the others.”