The Time Ender

by Debra Chapoton

  There was so much chatter on the comm that I couldn’t make sense of most of it. I rolled my eyes at Alex and he leaned in to give me a short summary.

  “It’ll be all right, Selina. Coreg is monitoring a massive offense to get through the Gleezhian sentry ships. Your dad and the other Earth pilots will draw them off to the far side while we swoop in on their capitol city. And they’ve brought the purlass capsule. Look at the lower screen. See that? That’s where we’ll land.”

  The planet was a dusty dark orange, scabbed with craters. There were no lakes or seas other than a few brown splotches too small and too muddy to be of interest to any aquatic life, in my opinion. But then I knew nothing of Gleezhe.

  “We’ll be able to breathe there, right?”

  Rander turned his head my way and said, “Yes, the oxygen levels on Gleezhe are within point zero seven percent of those on Klaqin. There were no reported problems among the first citizen exchanges. You will be fine.”

  I nodded my thanks for his response. Rander had an aura around him, like an abused puppy that was unsure whether to wag its tail or cringe. I noticed four marks on his cheek shaped like the Big Dipper that might have been scars from acne or maybe they had chicken pox on Klaqin. I guess he felt me staring because he shifted in his seat and turned to rattle off some Klaqin gobbledy-gook to Coreg about formation flying.

  The next thing I knew Coreg was ordering the Parallaxers to precede us in a ground-hugging stealth flight across half the planet. We were going to come in low and fast and undetected. Or so the plan was. Unless the Gleezhians were idiots you’d think there’d be a defensive system in play around their capitol.

  But no. Either it wasn’t working or they were idiots. We managed a quick and unopposed landing. Coreg and Rander peeled out of their positions and stepped over those still sitting to pull out weapons drawers and distribute arc-guns to us all. Even me.

  My hands thought it was a hot potato. Other parts of my body reacted to it as well. My eyes for sure grew larger, my heart searched for my lungs, and my feet began a shuffle dance that wasn’t going to win any prizes. For freaking out loud we were on another planet! My fourth!

  “Easy. Relax,” Alex said. “Here. Hold it like this. My dad showed me how it works. You can’t possibly hurt yourself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “How’d you know?”

  His warm hands on mine helped. He educated me in patient words and slow fingers. That calmed me, oh, about five percent.

  I heard Rander explaining the same thing to A.J. and Henry. An arc-gun was not so intimidating if you understood it. Its bio-metals were dormant until connected to flesh. My thumbs trembled over its sides, but once I accepted the feel of it in my hands I embraced the confidence it gave me. An arc-gun wasn’t going to shoot bits of metal, or bullets, at lethal speeds, no, its workings were more complex and would use my own energy to force a deadly burst of power toward an enemy. A heart pulse, Rander called it. I noticed that Coreg gave the Gleezhian guards arc-guns in exchange for the weapons they had. Coreg chucked the confiscated items into the galactic lard processor and patted the guards on their humps with extra enthusiasm. Interesting. I wondered if the arc-guns would work in their hands.

  Before we exited the ship Coreg made each of us drink full bottles of what he called extended flight nourishment. I downed mine with no side effects, thankfully.

  We left the ship to join the rest of this herd of invaders, all nervous with the exception of the girl pilots who seemed prepared to command each of their little contingents with authority. An Earth ship landed behind three smaller Parallaxers and we watched as the purlass capsule was rolled out on a large platform and attached to straps that six Fourth Commanders intended to pull. Quite primitive, I thought, but maybe the topography would be too pitted for conventional travel.

  We spread out in a V with Coreg and Za at the point. The ground beneath us pitched and swayed. Half of our group fell on their butts. So this was why they trained on swaying bridges. I’d kept my balance and so had Alex and Coreg and Za, of course.

  Alex wedged his weapon under his arm and pulled gently on his fingers, cracking his knuckles one by one and making sounds like pine sap popping on a campfire. When he finished with his thumbs he took my free hand in his and nodded at the landscape. Those who had fallen regained their footing. When the next tremor hit fewer of them fell.

  “Our fourth planet. Can you believe it?”

  I couldn’t. I’d been avoiding looking any farther than my nose, but now I looked up. There were dingy clouds beneath a gray-blue sky, pretty much like the November sky I’d left in Michigan. At least it wasn’t cold here. I calmed down another ten percent. The ground felt familiar too, not spongy like on Klaqin or Azoss, but firm and keeping its contours even though it dipped and rocked. What was on the ground was another matter. Flat seed pods. Brown or nearly black. Crumbling to dust under our feet. No trees or bushes or any type of grass. Not so much as a tumbleweed. No wind, no sounds. No life at all. The planet was parched.

  We were in a land depression so we couldn’t see beyond the rim in any direction. I supposed our ships were hidden here, but I had no idea how they could camouflage themselves with nothing to blend into except Gleezhian dirt. Not a pretty planet.

  We moved like wingless geese up and over the rise. Alex and I were closer to the front of the V formation and on the right side so as soon as there was something to see we saw it.

  Waves of thick grass. No, not grass. Maybe it was an element, a metal like iron ore; if it was of plant origin it was petrified now. The grassy blades of it were short at first and then rose to our knees as we marched through it, crunching a path. Burnt sienna, if my color memory was correct. Their prickly edges whipped our calves as we passed and broken off bits of it clung to our legs. Antique brass, beaver, and shadow, hashtag Crayola crayon colors. I used to read the names off to Buddy.

  I looked up again and nearly lost my balance with the next bucking of the terra not-so-firma. The sun was out now and we were exposed under an arch of sky so immense that it made me dizzy and chilled to the bone.

  “Bender.”

  It took me a second to register the unspoken command behind Coreg’s gruff effort to grab my attention. I knew what his facial expression meant and I immediately relaxed my hold on time. No sense in making our journey longer than it needed to be. He and Alex doubled up on pacing then and our little army swept across the barren fields and up to a brown rise, the edge of one of those craters I’d seen from space. Its rounded sides wrenched as if they were caught in the rapids.

  I was suddenly aware that some piece of this quiet landscape had detached itself. Behind us came a thunder of hooves. I swirled and held my arc-gun ready, expecting to see horns or fangs or claws. But there was none of that, not even hooves. The sound came with a fearful rush. But we weren’t under attack. It was a dust storm. Those with neck flaps on their uniforms pulled them up and over their heads … or had someone do it for them, like Alex did for me. My last glimpse of the storm boasted the colors sepia and sunset orange.

  Someone yelled in three languages to lie flat on the ground. I felt Alex’s arm across my back, heavy. If he was pacing us through this it sure wasn’t working. The sand storm kept rolling over us. Moisture leeched out of my body and through the suit as if this dry squall’s purpose was to hydrate itself with my body fluids.

  Half an eternity later—not my fault—the dust storm passed over the ridge and silence reigned again. My whole body was bruised from the bouncing and swaying of the ground. My fingers were gritty and stiff from holding the flap so tight, but I managed to pull it back into position. I shook my hair out and rose to dust myself off. Between the bits of metallic grass stuck to my legs and the layers of brown Gleezhian filth on the rest of me I must have looked like the creature from the mud pits of Hell. Score one for this awful planet. I tried to spit out some grime, but I had no saliva.

  I glanced at the sky, no longer so vast. Its blanket o
f rusty clouds threatened not rain, but more dust. “Alex,” I croaked, “are you as thirsty as I am?”

  He nodded and that little bit of action made a haze of particles fly in my direction.

  Za removed his robe and gave it a good shake; others did the same. Those in uniforms swatted each other until what little dusting was left was absorbed into the bio-materials. The purlass capsule, I noticed, had repelled all the dust and remained clear and bright despite the lack of sunshine. I wondered if someone was stashed inside, invisible. I hoped to heaven it wasn’t Buddy. The capsule bobbed on the ground; the particular plot it was on rose and dipped in a regular rhythm. I expected Alex to notice and give it a musical designation, but he didn’t.

  Coreg gave a quick lesson on setting the arc-guns to semi-blast and clearing the dust from their inner workings. He also checked something on his thumb ring before announcing that we were set to enter the Gleezhian capitol.

  Za and Coreg bowed their heads toward one another and spoke in tones that affected Alex. He hated dissonance with a passion and began to hum to block out the argument. It didn’t last long though. Coreg signaled several people to surround me—and Alex by default since he wasn’t going to leave my side. They blocked my view of what was around us, but Alex could see over most of their heads.

  Another group huddled around Marcum’s parents and another around Henry and A.J. I guess they had some value as hostages for one side or the other.

  The rest of the Special Commanders that Marcum had trained, girls I slightly knew, crouched along the edges of the large group, waiting for orders. It wasn’t long before Coreg had them split into groups of three and sent them in different directions. He instructed those hauling the purlass capsule to continue pulling it toward the main entrance, quite a ways around the crater. Then Coreg led our group up over the rise and along a ridge until we came to a structure that looked like a marriage between a Disney castle ride and apocalyptic ruins.

  “Why didn’t we see this from space?” I tilted my head back and took in the entire thing. Its reddish brown shape and curved sides helped me answer my own question. This was obviously built to resemble a crater, if you looked straight down from space. But from here it was pretty awesome, in a dull anti-architectural way. And it moved. I was known to get car sick, sea sick, and space sick, so I did not have a good feeling about keeping that nutritional drink down. The movement might be better in slow motion.

  “Bender … Selina, please stop your time manipulation. We have located Za’s unguarded passage.” Coreg pressed his way between Alex and me and stared, trying to intimidate me.

  “Sorry, cousin. Uh, are you sure it’s unguarded?”

  Pretty bold of me to ask, but there were remnants of past visions floating freely around in my head. One of them included large Gleezhian guards in a castle-like setting. This was the place. I wasn’t positive, but I had that creepy feeling. Maybe it was a premonition, maybe fear, maybe nothing at all, but I touched Coreg’s arm, willing him to see what was in my head.

  Didn’t work, though. He brushed my hand off and ordered everyone to have their weapons ready. Za opened the passageway and we went in.

  CHAPTER 15

  #Veils

  THE FIRST THING I noticed was the stink of decay and a strong whiff of well-aged perspiration. Gleezhians get low marks for hygiene. There was also the tang of fresh sweat. I recognized it from the time Alex dragged me into the boys’ locker room after his first basketball game. That wasn’t a mean prank; he was trying to get me to a private place to recover from one of my episodes. The smell seared itself into my memory.

  I sniffed and detected overlying layers of less repulsive odors, but those could have been from the bodies surrounding us.

  “Hear that?” Alex whispered. We moved forward to allow more to enter.

  “No.”

  We crowded farther past the entrance and down a passageway, gloomy but lit well enough to see high ceilings, brown of course.

  While I’d been focused on smells, not able to see much from my disadvantageous shortness, I hadn’t heard anything other than the rustling of our group’s boots on the rough ground. Everyone must have entered because I heard the entrance click shut.

  “Listen.” Alex cocked his head like a dog and I did the same. I heard nothing at first and then flurries of dried seed pods roiled past us like somebody was using a silent leaf blower ahead. Next I heard a sound like squirrel feet on roof shingles.

  Flaming wall lights burst on to reveal our passageway opening onto a wide sweeping area, filled with armed Gleezhians. So much for a secret, unguarded entrance.

  I said a potty-mouth word under my breath when I saw more guards on higher levels, all looking down on us.

  Coreg shook his head and said something unintelligible, no doubt the Klaqin counterpart to my four-letter word.

  It felt like all the air in the room had been removed by a vacuum. No one breathed. I stared at the upper guards; their backs were strapped with extra weapons and they stood straighter with no humps visible, their faces expressionless behind so much hair.

  And what happened to the planet’s bucking and swaying? They must have engineered this structure on springs and coils to counteract the movement. It was dead still.

  Coreg nodded; his own expression was one of pleasant detachment, arrogance maybe. The room’s oxygen was restored as though by magic, and normal time resumed. I swear I hadn’t done a thing.

  Za spoke in a commanding voice to all the Gleezhians present. Those among our group sidled out to the edges and turned their arc-guns on us. No surprise to me. It didn’t matter if Coreg had given them powerless weapons, there were enough scary looking boxes and metallic objects in the hands of the rest of them that we were outnumbered and out-armed.

  Coreg took two long strides and got into Za’s face so quickly he didn’t react at first. Coreg jerked the front of Za’s robe into his tight fist and twisted the material up and hard against his neck. Then with his other hand still clasping his weapon he punched him, first in the face and then in the stomach. Shouts of alarm went up all around, but miraculously no one fired a shot at Coreg. Za coughed up something vile and spit it out on the ground. Coreg stepped back and in a more formal gesture handed over his arc-gun to Za who stood not quite as straight as before.

  “It’s a double cross,” I mumbled.

  I wondered what good the rest of our troops outside would do … or were they already caught? And what about our ships around the planet? Had they conquered the defenses and would they come to our rescue?

  We were marched deeper into the crater-castle. Our shadows swooped like bats along walls made spookier by the flicker of flaming wall lights. The marching ended at a row of individual cells. No innovation in alien prisons. I called upon my old avoidant personality disorder to help me avoid the obvious: things were not good. But evading the truth didn’t work. My mind fixated on all that couldn’t be circumvented. This was likely the last of a series of imprisonments I would bear in this doomed adventure. I’d either be eaten, used as fuel—a.k.a. galactic lard—or forced into cross-breeding experiments. Funny how my head was calm while my heart and lungs went spastic. And my suit tingled as it worked overtime to dry my armpits.

  A calloused six-fingered hand pushed me into a cell. A bathroom stall would have been larger. The walls and floor were like red clay, crumbling and not the least bit moist. Something about that rang a bell—the Gleezhians were after Klaqin’s water. I could see why. It hadn’t looked like anything grew on this planet. If they had any water at all for their survival it must be deep underground. And as for growing food—plants or animals—I’d seen no trace of either. Gleezhe was as dead as Mars.

  The sound of footsteps diminished and I slumped to the ground, the only place to sit. At least a flame of light glowed above so I wasn’t left to imagine ghosts and spiders and disembodied fingers.

  “Selina, can you hear me? I’m in the next cell.”

  “Alex?” An appropriate em
oji flitted through my head, a tiny stick figure behind bars.

  “I think they’re gone. I’m going to use my new boots to kick out the door. Like Coreg did on Klaqin.”

  I rose and touched my door. It felt hard and metallic and unbreakable. There were hinges though, remarkably familiar.

  “Kick at the side where the hinges are,” I hollered. Who knew how many other prisoners could hear me. A quick, coordinated escape was too good to be true. I heard the blast from Alex’s boot, but no tremble or tremor. No breaking sounds. No shout of triumph or defeat.

  “Alex? … Alex, are you hurt?”

  Another blast sounded from the other direction. And then another and another, each one softer than before as my command was followed down the row, but I heard no voices.

  “Alex!”

  Nothing. I could imagine him and the others slumped unconscious in their small enclosures, red dust in dry air suffocating them. I knew instinctively that every one of them had tried and failed. And worse: they were now unaware of the returning footsteps. My options: cowering in the corner and weeping or standing straight and ready to burst out if the door were to open. I heard the clink of metal and smelled the stale stench of Gleezhian B.O. I leaned forward a little from the corner, wet eyes closed, the better to listen for Alex’s voice.

  ***

  THE BLAST FROM Alex’s boot when he kicked the door resonated in the tight space, blew red dust into a choking flurry and knocked him on his butt. His leg bone ached so much he thought he might have fractured something. His eyes burned and his throat scratched. That was understandable, but as the red dust settled he began to sweat profusely. If that wasn’t enough, his skin itched violently beneath the uniform and chills came on in a fit that threatened to crack his teeth with the chatters.

  “Alex? … Alex, are you hurt?”

  Selina’s voice sounded farther away than the next cell. His ears, he realized, were ringing. He tried to answer, but coughed instead and shook from the chills.