by G. L. Argain
Suddenly he heard footsteps in the armory; he took cover in one of the aisles. He saw two aliens, both green-skinned and white-eyed, walking down the main aisle, searching for the noise Andrew made earlier. One was five feet tall and the other was about half the height. The half-height one seemed vaguely different with its figure, other than height, but Andrew couldn’t tell why. However, when the human and the aliens came into range with each other, he pressed the button. The sword expanded into full length so that it looked like a blade now; furthermore, the blade heated up quickly to an orange glow, and as he rushed forward and swung it, an intense heat rushed towards the aliens. This heat was strong enough to set the aliens on fire without the blade itself touching them. Andrew himself could feel the heat up ahead, but it wasn’t burning hot to him. Both the aliens had fallen down hollering and burning, and the human felt bad for them because they weren’t technically doing anything wrong. He had to guess out of self-defense that they were going to take him back to Commander Fall. He looked at his blade for a second, seeing how all the air past the handle seemed to be blazing hot, but his hand felt just fine on the handle. The dull side of the blade also seemed to be less scorching. He let go of the button and ran out of the armory, careful not to let the blade get too near himself. He didn’t care about anything else in that place—this sword seemed pretty effective to him.
As he took the first turn, he noticed another alien in front of him that had black eyes, yet it’s muscles weren’t dark enough to show through. Andrew was spooked for a moment, then the alien talked in English.
“Don’t swing that! I’m here to rescue you! Just come with me!”
Andrew was really skeptical as the alien was walking swiftly towards him, backing Andrew up to the wall.
“Look, I’m a robot, and I’m not going to hurt you, but we can’t stick around here! Just come with me!”
“Okay, fine, but seriously, what is—”
“Just start running!”
The human’s instincts told him to follow, and so he ran.
After running a couple hundred meters, Andrew noticed there was a sound coming from the alien’s feet that almost sounded metallic, but it was muffled by the material of the black suit on his feet.
“Are you really a robot?”
“Yeah, I just look organic from the outside.”
He would have to take his word for it. Or her—Andrew wasn’t sure whether robots were designed with genders or not.
“How come no one’s around?”
“I disabled all the cameras, led anyone around the halls elsewhere, and opened all the necessary doors. Although I’m sorry I didn’t see those two earlier.”
“You did all that?!”
“I’m a robot, and a good one at that. I know exactly how to operate a good plan, especially when it comes to controlling electronics. Organics fear us for that.”
“They always have.”
The robot ignored this statement and kept on running. However, at this point, there were sounds gaining on them from behind, and Andrew started to worry.
“There’s someone behind us—are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I know exactly what I’m doing, because we’re almost at our destination.”
In a couple of seconds, they took a right and found themselves in front of several doors. “All of these are escape pods. You may enter whichever you may like. But make sure to put on the suit before you launch.”
The sounds from earlier were very close, and there were more approaching from the other side as well. “Hurry! You’ve got to get out of here!”
“Wait! Why are you even helping me?! Are you gonna escape too?”
“No, I’ll hold these people off. I don’t need to escape.” At that point, the doors to the nearest pod opened, and the robot pushed Andrew into it. “Put on the suit!”
Andrew found the suit being referred to within the escape pod. It was heavy, hard, and white. It was also extremely large, considering it was designed for a Selentor. Perhaps this suit was made for the big ones that were as tall as six feet, like the commander. As he got his pants into the suit and soon his arms, the aliens came into view, mostly consisting of the black-eyed, dark-muscled kind, and the robot left, saying, “Good luck.” The doors closed, Andrew got his helmet on, and he could see the robot taking out two laser guns—vaporizers, to be precise. He took down a few aliens, but he was far outnumbered and terribly out-gunned, so parts of his body came flying out in metal chunks and sparks as he was hit. Andrew was tempted to help, but suddenly he saw an alien break past the robot’s remains, heading towards Andrew. He saw a large bright button to the left of him and guessed it was the button to send him off to space. He pressed the button, and the escape pod shot up and out of the flying saucer with such intense force that Andrew blacked out within seconds.
The pod didn’t accelerate past five G’s, but it steadily increased its velocity to twenty kilometers per second. Something inside the pod made a quick flash, followed by some needles and tubes inserting themselves into the suit and into Andrew’s body, giving him oxygen and nutrients for the next month until he would reach Ku-an Doel. Luckily for Andrew, humans and Selentors require similar nutrients, so Andrew wasn’t poisoned with anything.
When the pod launched itself away from the ship, there was the chance that the aliens on the ship could have just used a tractor beam to retrieve their subject. However, the robot disabled all the tractor beams, too. He was so considerate and helpful, and yet Andrew never found out why he rescued such a human. At least, he wouldn’t figure it out for at least a while. Come to think of it, he didn’t know why the robot didn’t rescue him before the aliens found him in the teleporter.
Chapter 9
Back to the present.
With Andrew’s tears coming to a stop, Juvir set up the teleporter again. Some people may think that Andrew was a crybaby because maybe there were worse things than losing what you love, but considering how Andrew hadn’t wept like this in several years, this was not a scene to be taken lightly.
“I told you all those facts because you needed to hear them,” said Juvir. “They are things that shall be applicable to your life from now on.”
Andrew stood back up and wiped his eyes. “Why? Is it as if you won’t send me back to Earth?”
“Precisely. If you were to go back to your home planet and let everyone know you were captured by intel-beings–”
“They wouldn’t believe me. There are many people who say that they’ve seen or contacted aliens before, but there’s never enough people to panic over that. It wouldn’t matter if I told them about you guys or not.”
“That’s not it. It’s a matter of breaking the treaty.”
“What treaty?”
“It’s a treaty that we made with several other interstellar species that are in conflict with the AOIB—it involves forbidden species such as yourself.”
Andrew had the feeling that this was the same treaty that the Selentors had mentioned before. “Go on.”
Juvir continued his speech as they teleported back to the assembly hall; Andrew barfed again, but this time he wiped his mouth afterwards while the stomach acid disintegrated upon contact of the floor. “No one at all is allowed to contact the forbidden species and let such species know of our existence. If a member of that species does contact us, then they are prohibited to go back to their native planet.”
This disheartened Andrew, but he wasn’t nearly as emotional as before, so he said in an accepting, cynical manner, “Looks like I was doomed from the start.”
“I know that I’m not the first intel-being you’ve seen so far. What happened to you before you landed on Ku-an Doel? And just for the record, ‘intel-being’ is short for ‘intelligent being.’”
“Well, there were these aliens that took me away from Earth, and—”
“Let me guess….the Selentors?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what they’re called.”
“I though
t so; they’re known to be the most eager in going after your planet. They’re the ones who are most likely to break the treaty.”
“Haven’t they already? I mean, they admitted that they’ve captured many humans before.”
“Well, have they directly talked to your species on your home planet, saying that they want to negotiate some relations?”
“Oh, hell no. Rumor has it, they capture people wandering in deserted areas for experiments, although they are sometimes captured by us humans in secret government facilities.”
“Those are just rumors, so we can’t know for sure. By the sounds of it, however, they are very close to breaking that treaty.”
“From what I’m hearing, they have been for decades. Those rumors about aliens on Earth have been around for at least eighty years. And that was when people actually paid attention to aliens! Basically, they may have been lingering around Earth for much longer than that.”
“So this has been going on for a while? And all the while you are the only one, supposedly, to meet some aliens other than the Selentors.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, who took some time thinking about what to say next, but failed to come up with something meaningful. “What now?”
“Tell me in detail about your life and your encounter with the Selentors, please.”
So Andrew told Juvir about his life, ranted about his opinions of American society, and described his close call with the Selentors.
Referring to the scene where Andrew was in the armory, Juvir says, “That explains how you got that ancient sword.”
Andrew still had his special sword by his side. “Huh? It seems pretty high-tech to me.”
“Like I said before, that sword looks like even your species could create it. It’s millions of years outdated.”
“So you’re saying that those laser guns of yours are so much better?” Suddenly, Andrew thought about the various weapons from Star Wars. He said enthusiastically, “Ooh! Do you have anything like lightsabers???”
“No.”
His smile instantly switched off as his mouth remained partway open. Andrew didn’t expect Juvir to be so blunt on that. “Umm, okay?”
“Although there may be something that will match some of your expectations in the weapons facility.”
“If we’re going there, can we not use the teleporters? I don’t think I want to taste my own puke again.” The taste from the past two incidents still lingered on his tongue.
“We won’t need to—it’s just down the hall. We can walk if you want. Just leave that sword here so that we don’t have to worry as much about any accidents occurring.”
As Juvir and Andrew walked down a lit green-gray hall with no windows—they could be underground—Juvir said, “I noticed that a robot helped you escape the Selentors’ grasp quite effectively….”
“And he didn’t bother to rescue me from the start either.…don’t get me wrong, I’m still thankful, but I just don’t know why he made his move after I saved my own self out of that operating room and found this sword.”
“That sword is irrelevant, but from the way you tell it, the robot wanted you to become familiar with the Selentors and their ways—perhaps also to decide whether you were worth saving.”
“Whoa, ‘worth saving?’ You mean that robot could’ve saved more humans in the past but didn’t bother to? That I could’ve died if I did something wrong?”
“That, or he—rather ‘it’, considering it has no gender—never got the chance to do so in the past. Besides, I find it very odd for a robot to be helping an organic being out in the first place. Usually they are not that fond of organic beings.”
“Maybe it was because I was a different species in which it had hope in me?”
“Perhaps. The robot must have thought that you would be cooperative rather than undermine its words. Organic beings aren’t fond of the robots they create, either, and a lot of prejudice can occur. For example, most organic people refuse to be ordered around by a ‘mere’ robot.”
Andrew was bewildered by the fact that these aliens, having thousands or millions of years of cultural experience beyond that of humans, would still have conflicts over robots. Giving a few seconds of silence before speaking again, Andrew said, “That guy gave his life for me. I saw him literally get blown to bits.”
“Robots don’t fear death as much as humans do. They can just be recreated with their personalities intact.”
Andrew felt unsatisfied by that statement. The robot he met had disobeyed its masters, and if by some chance they chose to recreate it, it would have a new personality that would never be the same.
“Well, here we are.”
Large doors slid open to reveal a huge warehouse of weapons and tools within. There were several floors, all heading downwards, with the bottom floor barely within sight. Each floor had a specific category for weapons or tools that would help any military out.
Andrew wondered why an political organization consisting of multiple species would have a place to store lots of weapons. It would be like the United Nations having an armory that wasn’t just for the military.
They walked down to the second level, which, according to Juvir, contained plasma weapons. One of these weapons was the closest thing to a lightsaber, known to the AOIB as a plasma blade. The hilt was just a cylinder of metal with a large, circular cross-guard—nothing fancy like the hilt from the other sword Andrew had. There was a big hole in the front of the hilt, with a thin rod coming out of it where the blade ought to be. There were support rods attaching the main rod to the inside of the hilt at the entrance of the hole.
“Seriously? This thing is hardly a weapon, and nowhere near any kind of lightsaber or plasma sword or whatever.”
“Just grip the hilt forcefully.”
When Andrew firmly grasped the hilt like Juvir said, all of sudden an enormous amount of energy surrounded the main rod up to its tip. It appeared to be a lot like lightning, but unlike the tree-like branches of paths that lightning randomly goes off into, the energy surrounding the rod seemed controlled and stable. Andrew couldn’t figure out how it was possible.
Revising his rating on the plasma blade, Andrew said, “Oh, wow, that is pretty cool….um….now I know it works, but why? How is this possible?”
“It all involves electrons. First off, you send electricity through your nerves that connect to the muscles in your hands. When the electrons currently flowing through your hand are plentiful enough, which in this case occurs when you tighten your hand by grabbing onto the hilt, those electrons transmit a signal that triggers on a system within the hilt.
“Okay, so it’s basically like a pressure-activated system.”
“Essentially. After that triggers on, electrons are produced and sent out of the hilt, into the air surrounding the rod you see here. They react violently from being sent out with such great force, causing them to change atomic orbitals and give off energy. Since the rod is magnetized, the electrons are confined to an area around the rod, therefore keeping this smooth, stable shape. If this rod were not here, you would be projecting electricity all over the room, unbound with the power to kill an unarmored life-form.”
“How come I’m not affected? I mean, if it’s so powerful, why am I not being shocked right now? Or you, for that matter?”
“As for me, it’s for that confined space from the rod that I just mentioned earlier. But for you, the entire hilt is made of a non-conductive material that keeps any electrons from breaking through and shocking you. I could go into detail, but it would take hours or even days to explain everything. What I’ve said is the basics of the plasma blade.”
Andrew pondered all of this for a few seconds as he loosened his grip and turned the sword off. He came up with another question to ask, but when he hardly opened his mouth to talk, Juvir said, “I presume you want to know how this works in battle, but it would be better for you to learn that from experience rather than from my lectures.”
Andrew had an epiphany aft
er hearing this statement. He now knew that Juvir was planning to place him in some sort of battle or alien boot camp or something. He wasn’t going to stay on this world just as some sort of civilian.
“And yes,” Juvir added, “you are going to be a test subject. Not for anything like being a slave, though. I want you to be a soldier. To become one, however, you’re going to need some proper shots and tests taken.”
Andrew wasn’t fond of fighting or wars in general. He had never been in a fight in his whole life, and he had no gauge as to what an alien military would be like. Although, come to think of it, he had endured the sodium hydroxide on the Selentor ship, plus he beat down that one guy as well. Even with all these ideas in his head, the dominant question that came out of Andrew’s mouth was this: “What do you mean by ‘proper shots?’”
“Genetic shots. They’re a part of a procedure that will change your genes to make your body more efficient, for battle and in general.”
Chapter 10
“Do I really have to do this?”
“Well, you aren’t going back to Earth anytime soon, and all the people outside of the AOIB can’t know about your existence, so….yes, you’re stuck here.”
Nearby an operating table, Andrew argued why he, out of all the other things he could do on this planet, let alone in this universe, had to become a genetically-engineered soldier.
“Furthermore,” Juvir continued, “I can tell by mapping your genes whether your species has physical potential; with the right genes, you could be one of our elite soldiers.”
Andrew liked hearing the idea of him being “elite,” but now wasn’t the time for pride. Now was the time for hiding in a hole. In any other time and place, he wouldn’t argue. But this was a moment of uncertainty and fear, and Andrew hated to take big risks even more than arguing.
“Can I be honest? I scared about this—I don’t know what’s gonna happen. What if—”
“You sound like I’m going to make the mistake of doing the procedure myself.”