Alien Victory

by Mark Zubro

  Mike let his hands roam slowly over Joe’s body. He touched the hands, calloused and hard, felt the shoulder muscles ripple under the shirt, touched the chin, felt the evening bristles scrape his fingers. With one finger he traced the jawbone, the cheek, nose, eyebrows.

  Joe closed his eyes. Mike touched the shut lids, caressed the youthful lines of the forehead. He let his fingertips whisper over the closed lips.

  Their tongues twisted and tangled in a wild kiss under the moon and stars. When they stopped to draw breath, Joe reopened his eyes. Mike gazed into them as he drew his hand to the sinewy chest, felt the pectorals, found the valley between them, let his hand trail slowly down to the belt buckle, paused, continued down the front of the pants. He spread his fingers on the bulging hardness.

  Joe reached in reciprocation, but Mike caught the hands gently, kissed them, placed them back at Joe’s sides.

  Joe smiled. He understood.

  Mike resumed his exploration of the reality under the clothes. He placed his hand on the slender hips, explored he valley where the legs folded into the body. He placed one hand on the penis, with the other felt for the balls underneath. He knelt on the cooling mountain slope and laid his head where his hands had felt a moment before. He inhaled deeply. With his tongue he outlined Joe’s cock through his pants. He swirled a trail of saliva over and around the zipper and the surrounding area. He rested his head against Joe’s crotch, let his hand roam over Joe’s ass, down the back of his legs, the calves, to the shoes, and then up the front.

  Still on his knees, he embraced him fiercely. He felt Joe’s hands move to his shoulders, caress his head. Joe stooped quickly, reached and pulled him up.

  Standing, Mike was met with another fierce kiss. A man’s kiss, rough and aggressive. He returned the pressure, felt Joe bending backwards.

  Despite their exhaustion and near despair, they both did their bit for claiming the planet as their own.

  When finished they lay side by side arms and legs entwined murmuring softly.

  Alarm bells blared through the night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They jumped up.

  “What the fuck?” Mike asked.

  They hurried into their clothes and rushed down the mountainside. Men poured out of the underground entrance. They clustered around the communications buildings.

  Mike burst through the door, Joe and a few others close behind. There Brux sat twirling dials, pressing buttons, humming happily. He wore the modified tunic he always did. He called it a moon uniform. He gave them an enormous smile. “Hello dears,” he said. “Welcome to my little queendom.”

  Mike gazed around the room. Every wall from floor to ceiling was electronic gadgetry. Lights blinked red and yellow. The command console Brux sat at was five feet long, two feet wide, and crammed with buttons and dials. Mike could see black squiggles and dots at random intervals on different consoles.

  Brux wore a communications headset, microphone built-in, ear phones in place. With a flourish he flipped a switch. “Good evening.” The echo bounced off the mountains. “Welcome to your new home. We have provided all the comforts of civilization for you, the main one being the lack of Religionists.” The machine squealed and crackled sounding to Mike like a combination of feedback from a sound system and the crackling of ten million packing bulbs being snapped at the same time.

  They covered their ears. Brux hands flew and after ten seconds the sound stopped.

  Mike interrupted. “Uh, Brux.”

  The old queen flipped the ‘off’ switch on the microphone. “Atmospheric interference. Can’t do much about it. Yet.” He turned to Mike. “Yes, dear, what can mother do for you?”

  “How about turning off the alarm system too?” Joe asked.

  Brux seemed to notice the distant blaring for the first time. “Of course, my dears, no problem.”

  He twirled a dial, touched a button, and the noise ceased.

  “Thank you,” Mike said.

  “Testing the equipment,” Brux said.

  Seeing there was no emergency, the men began drifting away. Joe left saying he wanted to make a last check on the incipient irrigation system.

  There was only the one chair in the room, so Mike perched himself on the command console. He let his eyes rove leisurely around the room. Brux, ignoring him, continued to play with the black buttons.

  The interior space was barely larger than one of the living quarters.

  Without further preamble Brux began to explain. “This place is incredible. Look at these.” He drew Mike’s attention to a separate grid of tiny black buttons on the side of a large box. Mike guessed there were about one hundred of them set into a space barely ten inches by ten inches.

  Brux said, “These, my dear, are set for deep space communication, including visuals of anything within this solar system.” He pointed to the buttons next to these, similar in size and configuration, but bright red. “And these provide a radar image of this entire sector, which includes about a hundred suns.”

  “You mean we can see any ship that approaches.”

  For an answer Brux pointed at two screens over the console. He pressed his hands rapidly over both sets of buttons. The screens lit, one with a view of the vast stars of the galaxy, the other with a grid of green lines.

  “The view on the left,” Brux explained, “is the widest range scan of the galaxy I can give you.” Mike saw a panorama of their solar system appear on their screen. The sun, he knew was seventeen times the size of Earth’s.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mike said.

  Brux now pointed to an oval grid. “Those points are actually millions of miles apart. They’re guard buoys and ships. It’s as close to a wall as they’ve got around us. The odd thing is they must have spent a ton of cash to set it up.”

  “Why’s that odd?”

  “We have no way to get near to any of those to try to get out. Pretty much anybody with enough moxie, cleverness, or outright firepower can get in.”

  “How narrow can you focus the picture?”

  “Narrow enough to show you a farl in orbit fifty thousand miles above the planet.”

  Speaking and thinking in the language of Hrrrm was so natural to Mike that his mind automatically transferred all but the most obscure idioms in his head. But he didn’t know this reference. “What’s a farl?”

  “A tiny little bug, native to half the planets on this side of the galaxy. About as big as a small drop of water.”

  “And this could see that?”

  Brux nodded.

  “I’m impressed.”

  Brux shrugged, “I didn’t do it. I just pushed the ‘on’ button.”

  Mike looked at the radar screen, twin in size and shape to the view screen. He said, “Besides the guard ships and buoys there’s nothing there?”

  “Just our little corner of the galaxy. There isn’t supposed to be anything for a week or so until the supply ship shows up.”

  Mike said, “Speaking of supply ships. I know we’re not supposed to get more colonists for months, but could you set up protocols for settling new arrivals?”

  “Sure. It’s not hard. Not like we’re the first colony ever built, but I’ll have it organized.”

  Mike asked, “Why is this building above ground?”

  Brux shrugged. “Leftovers from some previous colony, I presume. In the first gale they’ll all go over.”

  “Can we move them?”

  “Moving it without damage? Of course I can. I’m a genius. I already found a spot. Right inside the entrance which we’ll be expanding at the same time. I’ve checked with the engineers already. My crew of five and I can accomplish the digging in a few hours. It’ll take another half day to move the equipment in and hook it up. It would take less if my five so-called communications specialists had more than a three-month crash course in a training camp.”

  “We’ve all got the same problem,” Mike said. “We’ve all had woefully inadequate training.”

  Brux said, “The
n you’re lucky they included me in this expedition.”

  “Speaking of people included,” Mike said, “this Krim kid, do you know anything about him?”

  “The one that follows you around like a lost puppy dog, with those beautiful brown sad, basset hound eyes, and slender hips, and fine developing muscles, and tiny ass. I think I’ve noticed him once or twice.”

  “Seeing you take an interest, I’d like you to take him under your wing.”

  “I’d like to take him under many things, but I like them older, more muscular, like late twenties, nearly six-feet-tall, slender colony leaders.”

  Mike laughed. “Sorry, I’m spoken for.”

  “I know. Our delectable but depressed youth is safe from my clutches. And I will take him in hand so to speak. Unless he’s not watched carefully, something that young, gorgeous, and innocent could cause havoc in this place. Tonight it’s sexual release. Soon these men are going to want relationships and permanence. Competition and jealousy are inevitable.”

  Released from the captivity of the ship, Mike hoped that those who wished were fucking like bunnies. He didn’t care who was hooking up with whom. It wasn’t his business. He wasn’t interested in the outlines or details of other people’s sex lives.

  “I know,” Mike said. “I’m hoping the work will keep everyone exhausted and keep problems to a minimum. What about you?”

  “Mother never kisses and tells, but I will say this much. I have my eye on a burly number in the agricultural section, balding, with muscles, and just thirty. Sigh.”

  “I wish you the best in your pursuit.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Mike stood up, gave a last look around. “I wish we could add some kind of weapons system to this. I know we wouldn’t be able to put together much, but I’d feel more secure if we had something. I don’t trust the Religionists, or the central government for that matter, and there are Sky Pirates.”

  “Anything we could set up wouldn’t stop a simple battle cruiser much less the government’s main fleet. The Religionists have gotten their way. Why would they bother to show up? Besides you, we have absolutely nothing of value that a space pirate would want. I don’t imagine there’s a big trade in billions of tons of sand and rock. We have no interstellar or interplanetary ships, not even any ground transport besides our own two legs. We don’t even have a stun blaster. If we’re attacked by ravening beasts, we don’t even have spears.”

  “There are no beasts ravening or otherwise on the planet,” Mike pointed out.

  Brux sniffed. “And a good thing.”

  Mike looked wistful. “It was a thought.”

  “You give up too easily.”

  “Huh?

  “You’re not the only one who wants to build a home never to be lost. You’re not the only one who doesn’t trust the universe to smile benignly on us. I’ve given it some thought. Talk to Snek. Maybe we won’t be completely defenseless.”

  “I spoke to him on the ship here. I’ll talk to him again. And Brux, I’d keep it quiet. I think the Religionists would be more than a trifle upset if they knew we were thinking of defending ourselves.”

  Brux nodded. “Speaking of defenses and power. The rumors of your abilities increase with each parsec of space. What can you really do?”

  “I can fend off attacks and protect the ones I love.”

  “That could come in handy.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Mike walked to the door. He turned back at the opening. “And Brux.”

  “Yes, dearest.”

  “Could you limit the use of the alarm system.”

  Brux gave him an indignant look. “I only do what is necessary. And now it is necessary for me to work safe from the sallies of less gifted mortals.”

  Mike laughed. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  Brux grinned. “I always get my beauty sleep. I need as much of it as I can get. And don’t worry about Krim. I do need someone as an assistant. Interplanetary communication is not a picnic, and close to immortal as I might be, we need someone besides you, Joe, and me who will know how to work the system.”

  Mike left. He checked outside the entrance. Moonlight and starlight illuminated the planet’s surface. The world seemed less harsh in this light. Joe was coming up the last few steps from the road to the ground. They descended the interior ramp and crossed the storage room. A few of the men stood talking in a small group at the entrance to the living quarters. They stopped and spoke with them briefly, then went on to their room, the first on the left as you walked in. Mike had not laughed hysterically when the Religionist in charge of rooms had told them each was to sleep alone on the planet. There was no way for them to enforce such a rule, and he had no intention of doing so. He’d kept his mouth shut.

  They embraced then lay down on their uncomfortable and tiny slab. They used their packs for pillows. It was only Joe’s closeness that gave Mike any comfort.

  He tossed and turned for a few hours. His dreams and visions concentrated on the enormity of the task ahead. He wanted to fall asleep. He was angry and annoyed with himself for not being able to do so. Careful not to disturb Joe, at 4:00 A.M. he got up threw on a pair of shorts, socks, and shoes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mike stepped into the hall. He gazed down its length, unable to see the end in the dim light. The night noises of the colony’s men sifted down the corridor. He wondered how many others were awake. He turned and walked into the storage room. Dim lights cast uneasy shadows. He ambled through the vast aisles of boxes toward the ramp up.

  He reached out, touched one of the boxes, stopped. His touch became almost a caress. He trudged up the ramp. At the entrance on the surface he paused. The lights were off in the communications shed. The moons had set. Gazing up, Mike surrendered himself to the glory of the galaxy. He took several minutes to turn 360°. He gaped in wonder.

  For a moment he felt a chill breeze that must have come from the frozen peaks far above. Like deserts on Earth, this one cooled quickly at night. Mike shivered in the brief coolness. He reflected that the universe could be cold lonely place.

  He walked down to where he knew the headwaters of a pumping station would be flush to the ground. He then followed the dry watercourse to the first of the fields. He willed himself to see newly green vegetation, and in the dim night he could almost make believe. He shut his eyes. I’m too tired, he thought, this is all too hopeless.

  Mike strolled further onto the plain, his work shoes scuffing the gray surface, the air cool on his bare chest. He found that the land was not uniformly flat. There were crumbling canals and small declivities, dunes that rose only a few feet. The view from the hangar shelf with the sun at high noon had hidden any shadows or variations.

  After a long while he came to the end of the furthest field. He looked over his shoulder at the mountains. He could see the flashes of the storms like soundless special effects used by Cecil B. DeMille to indicate God on Mt. Sinai in the movie The Ten Commandments. Mike liked the cheesy effects at the time Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea. In the movie, Mt. Sinai always looked kind of red and stormy and far in the distance. Well, unless you were getting direct dictation from God, in which case you were in the middle of the storm.

  Mike could no longer see the communication shed or the bridge. He turned back to the vast emptiness. Unbidden into this memory came the Peter, Paul, and Mary version of the old Woody Guthrie anthemic song, This Land is Your Land. For a few seconds he almost smiled as he gazed at the vastness of land and stars.

  The faint sound of someone crying reached his ears. He looked around, saw no one. He listened for the sound, followed it for fifty yards. Finally he could make out a figure sitting at the edge of a small sand dune. The person had his head bowed. He was sobbing and trembling. As Mike drew closer, he recognized Krim. The boy sat on the lip of a dune in a shallow hollow, his knees bent, feet resting on the slight decline.

  Mike sat next to him. Krim looked up. The glow
ing stars gave enough light in the shadows for Mike to see the tear stained face. Mike waited in silence.

  “I’m so scared,” the boy said when the tears subsided.

  “I am too, sometimes.”

  “You are?” The boy stopped sniffling, wiped his hand across his nose.

  “Yep.”

  “What do you do to make it go away?”

  “What I can, not think about it, keep busy.”

  “But you’ve got Joe.”

  “You’ll meet someone.”

  “But they want to kill us.”

  “Yes, many of them do.”

  “We could work here for years and then one day they could just kill us anyway. I know. I may be only fourteen, but I understood the decisions they made. In two years they vote on keeping this place open. But it really means they want another extermination vote. They think they’ll win next time. All we do will be useless, and all we’ve done before now is useless.” Tears started down the boy’s face again.

  “Yes,” Mike admitted, “I think they’ll try to vote extermination, and there’s no guarantee about the outcome of that vote.” Mike couldn’t think of a dumber time to mutter useless platitudes, even he and Joe never said to each other anything like, “there, there, everything will be all right.”

  Krim burst out, “Why don’t you give up? Why don’t we all surrender? Save the bastards the trouble? We can’t survive here. There’s thousands, millions, probably billions more going to show up. We’re all going to starve and die. How can you go on?”

  Mike stared out at the distant plain. He took a long while to answer. He looked at Krim, into the soft brown eyes and saw the lost innocence.

  “I was there,” Krim whispered. “At the massacre.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mike murmured. He knew what the boy was referring to. There was only one “massacre”, the one on the planet Tarnall III. Over a thousand LGBT people had died.

  The boy’s tears fell. He trembled as he told the story. “I was in love with a boy. We thought we were safe on our home planet. The announcement for collection came. No one could believe they’d be able to do that. We went to protest against the Collection Laws. It was a beautiful day on Tarnall III. Thousands of us gathered in a vast park. It stretched for miles along the ocean shore, within twenty miles of Bex’s Summer Palace. Without warning, battle cruisers from the home fleet far above the planet started firing.”