by M. D. Cooper
“It’s what brought us to this planet, and we need it to get home. And we’re willing to trade for it.”
“A trade?” the man lowered his slingshot. “What do you have to trade?”
“How about your life, small reptile man?” Strax scowled, “we come from the Order, what part of that do you not understand?”
“I’m sorry about my buddy here,” Steve interrupted, shooting a glare in Strax’s direction. It was like being stabbed between the eyes. “He just really needs to take a dump. And he doesn’t like doing that in the forest, he’d much rather use the one in the ship.”
Strax wanted to strangle him. But he was managing to de-escalate the situation.
“Dad? What’s going on?”
At the stoop of the dwelling stood a young Sybillian woman, a reptile in a loose flowing dress. She could have been called beautiful, if you were into that sort of thing.
“Go back in side, sweet fang,” said Yaris, “Daddy’s conducting business.”
“Who are they?” she asked, “Are these spacemen?”
“They are, I guess, they’re from some place called the Order,” he said, “but don’t worry about them.”
Then Yaris abruptly did a double take. Before the woman could turn around, he grabbed her by her arm and brought her into the clearing.
“Folks, meet my daughter Yana,” he said, “and if you can find her a suitable husband, you can have my ship.”
“Hi Yana,” said the human, “I’m Steve!”
“Hi Steve,” said Yana, “do you mind holding on for one second? I need to murder my father.”
“Now Yana, be reasonable…”
“Are you so desperate, dad?” she snapped, “You need me to marry so much, that you’re going to put my future in the hands of these… space freaks? No offense, space freaks.”
“None taken, stranger,” said Steve. Strax wanted to shoot these two down on the spot for showing such disrespect to an agent of the Order, and could not tell what was stopping him from doing so. So, he did what any officer would do: he pulled out his sidearm and fired.
Of course, with his arm off, he missed.
Part of the house exploded, the wall flying out in small chunks and covering the ground with more gravel. Three pairs of eyes turned to Strax in anger.
“Give us what we came for, and no one will get hurt!”
“Why you-”
Yaris reached for his slingshot, and Strax reacted instinctively: he shot out a warning blast, and missed.
Yaris fell dead at his daughter’s feet.
“DADDY!” she cried, falling to his corpse and letting out a wail of pain.
“And the humans are the rash ones?” Steve shouted, dashing to her side.
“I was defending myself!”
Steve said nothing. He crouched beside the girl, tentatively reaching an arm for her shoulders, but before he could touch her, she dropped her face and began to nibble on her father’s arm.
And then, she really tucked in.
The two men watched as the sobbing reptilian woman completely devoured her father, blood spilling across her face, hungrily eating him down to the bone. Strax felt horror inside his shell, a cold sensation like ice in between his layers.
When she finished, she stood up, wiped an arm over her mouth, and let out a belch loud enough to wake the entire Ascendant in time for morning rotation. It was only after the gas had fully cleared her mouth that she lunged at Strax.
“You killed my father!” she screamed, her hands outstretched, ready to strangle him. Which was useless, considering he never really had a neck. He evaded her easily, sidestepping away.
“And you ate him!” he said, clasping her hands easily in one of his claws and twisting them back so that she could no longer make an attempt on his life, “and stole my ship, I might add.”
“Stress eating! And it was honorable!” she snapped, “I was supposed to kill him! Me! It was my duty as daughter to kill and eat his remains when his line was passed on! And now I can never murder him with my own hands!”
“You hear that, commander?” The human said gingerly, “you robbed her of the chance to kill her father.”
“I heard quite clearly, Lieutenant,” he replied. He wasn’t so pleased having everyone come up against him. “Now, Yana, was it? We’re taking our ship.”
“The hell you are! You robbed me of my father, you will not rob me of my ship!”
“She has a point, commander,” said the human.
“She robbed us first!” said Strax.
“Look, Yana,” Steve turned to her, “we’re sorry about all this. You have a little blood, there, by the way. Anyway just tell me what you want for the ship. We’ll be gone before you know it.”
“Hell no, I’m keeping the ship,” she snapped, “with my father dead, I no longer have anything to barter for marriage. The ship is mine. Not get off my land!”
“You forget who has the upper hand, girl,” said Strax.
A second later, she kicked him in the shin, sending a splintering of pain up his leg. He howled, and in the process let go of the woman, who dashed off, grabbing the grenades before he could say another word.
“Get back!” she said, clutching one of the small bombs above her head, “get off my land! I’m warning you!”
“Come, commander,” said Human-Steve, “we’ll leave her in peace. So sorry, Yana, you’ve been through so much today.”
“Lieutenant, we cannot leave.”
The Lieutenant met his gaze, and then, very slowly and deliberately, closed one of the eyes. It was exactly like the look he had thrown Strax in the negotiation room. Perhaps the human had a plan this time as well.
“Fine, we leave. You will be compensated for your father’s death, girl.”
“Whatever, just get off my gravel, I need to have it properly raked now.”
She burped again, and the duo left the property, walking back into the forest with their hands empty.
“I assume you have an idea, Human-Steve?” said the commander, the second they were out of hearing range.
“Yeah, you stay here, and don’t show your face to that poor girl ever again. Understood?”
“Lieutenant, I…”
“I have a plan,” he continued, cutting him off. The Nerve. “I’m going to seduce her. I know, it’s a base thing to do, what with her having just lost her father, but it’s the easiest way for us to get the ship. I distract her with some simple comfort and you get the brush off the shuttle. Then I’ll sneak out and we can leave the planet together.”
Strax balked.
“Ok, let’s do this, then,” said the human, taking his commander’s silence as grounds to begin his stupid plan.
“Human-Steve!”
“I know, but it’ll work, I know it will.”
“Seduce the reptile? You?” Strax blew air out heavily from his nose. “Not hardly. I should be the one to try, she would appreciate me far more.”
“The man who just murdered her father.”
“A commander of the Universal Order!”
“She doesn’t know what that is! And might I remind you, you killed her father?”
“But you are pink! Fleshy! She would fine my shell lustrous and appealing.”
“So what is this, now? Do I need to pull down my pants and grab a ruler?”
“Only if that helps you feel better about having a lesser chance with the lady Yana, sure.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Human-Steve, practically snarling. “First you accuse my race of being brash and stubborn. Then you storm this stranger’s house, shoot her father dead, and expect her to find you attractive? No, even me trying to seduce her will be a long shot. But with you…”
“And you,” the commander scowled down at this insubordinate human, “you disgust me. You try and bargain with these lesser beings. You strut around like you – you! – know better than me. And now you will betray your mate and lie with a…”
“My mate?” Human-Steve c
hanged colors again, this time turning bight red, almost purple. “Who are you…”
“Human-Juarez, I believe their name is.”
“How did you know Juarez and I are a couple?” he took a step back from the commander, eyes wide with shock. “The only way you could… you heard, didn’t you? You overheard me talking to her last night!”
Strax blew out a cleansing breath. He had underestimated the human’s intelligence. This creature was becoming more and more of a nuisance with every passing moment.
What did he even need the human for? He could finish this mission alone! The pesky creature was constantly getting in his way, thinking he could take him over without a second thought… well, he had a lot of nerve!
“I did,” said Strax, proudly. “I heard every word. I heard you speak as if you and the other humans could do what thousands of the Order cannot… So yes, I do think humans are brash! And vain, and egotistical and…”
“Can we just stop? We have a mission here,” said the human, “I have tried to keep it professional, but you have no faith in me. I have trained my entire life to be on missions like this one, and have already proved more than my worth to you. So are you going to trust me, at least until this mission is done, or am I going to have to take matters in my own hands?”
With his good hand, Strax retrieved his pistol from his holster, holding it up to the human’s eyes.
“Lieutenant Human-Steve,” he said, “you are hereby relieved of your duty.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, after everything I’ve done? I saved your life!”
“Please relinquish your weapon and…”
“We’re the only two people not under Travan control!”
“Don’t make this any harder, human.”
“You know what?” Steve tossed his weapon to the ground, glaring. “You realize this isn’t just for the Order to test out humans, right? It’s also for us humans to see if we want to be in the Order. And right now, you’re not making the Order seem like such a great place.”
“It looks like you just wasted your opportunity.”
“And it looks like you just wasted yours,” the human left out a very long breath, “but I care too much about this universe to let it go without a fight.”
With that, the human punched Strax squarely between the eyes, knocking him out cold.
Chapter 10
“Did you kill him?”
Strax woke up surrounded by women, which was a very odd sensation. Especially when he couldn’t feel any of his extremities.
“Human!” He shouted. There was no point in pretending he was unconscious, when so many had seen him awake. “Show yourself, Human-Steve!”
As his vision began to clear, he saw that what he thought had been a crowd of women was, in fact, only three people. Two human females, and Yana, the reptile woman from before. And she was wearing an Order Uniform.
“Ah Strax, thanks for joining us.”
The human women stepped back as Steve emerged, cleaned up and looking smart in a freshly laundered uniform. Without the blood, dirt, and ash on his face, the human looked quite remarkably like he belonged in the grey and blue of the Order.
But that was probably the chemicals in his brain talking. The endorphins that swam in his green matter, telling him he was alive. And, for some reason, that Steve was wearing his uniform in a handsome way.
Fuck those endorphins.
“You rendered me unconscious!” he shouted.
“Well, you were holding me back,” Steve replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look. Since you’ve been out, my team here has recaptured the Ascendant. It’s in Order control. Good, right?”
“How the… what?”
Strax didn’t know what to reply. Recaptured the Ascendant? But how? There were only four humans, and their leader had been here, planetside, with him. How they could have defeated an entire Travan legion was beyond him.
“It was easy,” said one of the human females, looking smug. “The thing you and the Travan have in common is that you wait a fucking long time before taking action. This plan has been in place for most of a decade, believe it or not. And the one variable they hadn’t taken into account were us humans.”
Strax was beginning to feel a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since he was in basic training, all those years ago. Was it… fear? He struggled to keep himself centered, the urge to reprimand these creatures becoming overwhelming.
“So you took the Ascendant back – the three of you?” he asked, disbelieving.
“I have to admit, the Travan’s plan was excellent and effortless. They had the ship surrounded before the Order could react – well, they could have reacted, if they weren’t waiting for orders and following protocol. Since they understood the Order’s strategy of waiting for sure outcome before acting, the Travan overwhelmed the ship in just a few minutes.”
“So how did you take it back?”
“Simple: we pulled a Leroy Jenkins,” said the small one – Human-Patel, was it?
“And what is a Leroy Jenkins?”
“We knew the Travan were also counting on orders and control in order to keep the ship,” she explained, “so once their commander was out of reach, we ran in, guns a ‘blazing. It was simple, really. They never knew what hit them.”
“You… let me get this straight. You just…”
“Burst through doors, took them all by surprise, and gunned down everyone inside. Grabbed all the weapons in the armory, and reclaimed the ship, room by room,” she said, baring her white fangs, “Distributed weapons to our own, and kept going until the ship was all ours again. Your people took a while to understand how to act in such a situation, but once they were firing, they really got into it.”
“We have over fifty high ranking Travan officers in the brig,” the other human female said. This one was the one Human-Steve was coupled with, Human-Juarez. Or Human-Paige? It was hard to understand human names. They had too many of them. “Our man Mike is with them now. We came down to the surface to help you and the Lieutenant take down the Travan overlord.”
“He’s here?” Strax sat up straight, though his head was still groggy. The human had really done a number on him. He would have reprimanded him, but he was too much in awe of the news he had just been told to do anything about it.
They had saved his ship.
By storming into rooms and shooting up the invaders.
Genius.
Terrifying.
“The Travan overlord is convening with the Sybillian emperor as we speak,” said Human-Steve, “and we’re going to kill them both.”
“Come now,” said Strax, “there must be a diplomatic…”
“You hate the Travan empire!” he scoffed, “you’ve been at war with them for over a thousand years! And now that you have the chance to take them down, you’re going to pass it up for diplomacy?”
“There’s always a…”
“Fuck no,” the human spat, “we live in this universe too. We might not be in the Order – yet – but we don’t want the Travan playing us for the fools the way they’ve been dealing with the Order since before humans even conceived the concept of aliens. If you’re not going to kill him – we are. It’s our duty to the universe.”
“But…”
“Listen,” Human-Steve moved in close, glowering. Strax could feel the creature’s warm breath on his cheek, the smell of earth strong on his breath. “We’re not in the Order. Whatever we do, we do in the name of Earth, and you don’t have to be attached to it. So, if you want to sit this one out, fine by me: this mission will go forward whether you’re on board or not. But if you want a chance to actually take down the biggest villain this galaxy has ever known, you’re invited. Not as my commander, but as a commander, my brother in arms. What do you say?”
“Wait, you’re inviting this freak?” Yana snapped at Steve, “He killed my father! I thought you said I could rough him up a bit before we went?”
“Just take out your
frustration on the emperor who’s been making your family live in exile all these years,” he said.
“This… creature is coming with us?” Strax couldn’t understand why the human would even want this dead weight to come along. She was a farm girl who had just eaten her father, not a trainer war hero like himself. Being put on the same level as her was demeaning.
Discovering that three soldiers from a primitive planet like Earth could do what his entire crew could not was demeaning as well, but let’s not go there.
“I told Yana here she can come with us when we’re done,” the lieutenant said to Strax, “she doesn’t have to be involved with the Order, but we’re giving her a ride in exchange for her help.”
“We don’t need her,” Strax scoffed, “and who are you, doling out rewards for non-Order…”
“As I already said, you don’t need to be a part of this mission,” the lieutenant looked stern, but somehow calm. “You can take the shuttle, reach the Ascendant, take your crew and warn the Order about what happened here today – or almost happened. We’ll take it from here.”
“No,” he said.
He found himself standing now, pushing himself to his feet, giving the human an appraising look. Even if he was shorter than the commander, he somehow had the air of someone much more imposing. Strax had to admit – he was impressed.
Even more so at himself, and what he would say next.
“I want to do this.” He couldn’t stop the words once they started flowing. “As much as I hate to say this – your methods work. And I am not going back to my ship with the Travan threat still so close. And you are correct: even if we were to return to the Order with this information, they would take months to decide on their next course of action: in which time the Travan would advance even further. It is time to fight. Just show me the way.”
“Wow, this is beautiful,” said human-Patel, “I never thought I would see one of the Order’s own commanders embrace the way of the fuck-all attitude so quickly.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“No sir,” she replied, but she was showing her teeth very much now. It was rather unsettling. But, in an attempt to gain her trust, Strax feebly did the same. He lifted his upper lip flap, turned the corner of his mouth upwards, and made eye contact.