Alien Conquest

by Tracy St. John

  “I don’t want to slow you up. Can I stay here? I’d like to sleep.”

  The Imdiko stood and gazed at her with con­cern. “You are all right? I don’t like to leave you alone af­ter re­cov­er­ing those mem­o­ries.”

  “I’m fine.” She smiled to show him how fine she was. “Lock me in if it makes you feel bet­ter.”

  “I trust you, Cas­sidy. But Li­don will have my head if I don’t keep you se­cured.” De­gorsk paused by the door, his brow wrin­kling with worry. “You’re sure?”

  “Go!” She waved at him in mock im­pa­tience. “Go save an­other lady in dis­tress. It’s what you were made for.”

  That made De­gorsk chuckle, and he swept out of the sleep­ing quar­ters. Cas­sidy waited for a minute, count­ing the sec­onds down. When she felt sure enough time had elapsed for him to have left the main liv­ing area, she rose and slipped on her un­der­dress. She came close to the door, but not close enough to trig­ger it open again. Cas­sidy lis­tened for a few sec­onds. There was si­lence from the other room. She stepped for­ward and the door opened. See­ing the din­ing and sit­ting ar­eas were empty, she padded bare­foot out of the room.

  Mov­ing to the door lead­ing out to the ship’s cor­ri­dor con­firmed it was locked. Cas­sidy turned from it. Her gaze went to the com­puter sta­tion in the sit­ting area. Both the dead Earther cap­tain’s and Li­don’s units sat there. She went to the sta­tion and sat down.

  “Power up,” she com­manded. The fa­mil­iar-look­ing com­puter rec­tan­gle beeped in re­sponse, while Li­don’s flat­ter, smaller unit re­mained quiet. Over the Earther com­puter, a float­ing Eng­lish-lan­guage vid read­out ap­peared be­fore her eyes. Cas­sidy was glad Li­don hadn’t dis­con­nected it.

  “Ship’s blue­prints,” she com­manded, won­der­ing if the com­puter would obey her.

  It tried to, but Cas­sidy found it didn’t al­ways re­spond with what she asked it for. The com­mands it re­quired were quite spe­cific, and she didn’t know much about ship op­er­a­tions. It took some trial and er­ror to nav­i­gate suc­cess­fully, but she fi­nally had the in­for­ma­tion she was af­ter.

  Cas­sidy looked over the dis­played di­a­gram of the com­pli­cated ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem. The damned thing was a maze, full of twists and turns. She spent sev­eral min­utes find­ing and then mem­o­riz­ing the path she wanted to take. At last, sat­is­fied she was as pre­pared as she could be, Cas­sidy climbed onto the dinette ta­ble to reach the vent open­ing over it. The cover slid out much eas­ier than the one in her cell on Eu­ropa had.

  Cas­sidy boosted her­self into the shaft but didn’t worry about re­plac­ing the cover. If the clan came to check on her, they’d know how she’d left the room any­way.

  The dark­ness of the shaft wor­ried her a lit­tle. Cas­sidy would have to travel for the most part by touch alone, and it would be easy to get lost. But she had a mis­sion in mind, one she’d con­tem­plated since com­ing on board the Earther trans­port. The re­cov­ery of her mem­o­ries had only so­lid­i­fied her re­solve to carry it out.

  Li­don would be fu­ri­ous with her. But she calmed that lit­tle con­cern by re­mem­ber­ing she’d only promised him she wouldn’t use the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem to at­tempt es­cape. Es­cape was the far­thest thing from her mind right now.

  Cas­sidy was look­ing for con­fronta­tion.

  * * * *

  “The Earth­ers have the se­cu­rity grid back up,” Li­don re­ported. “Let’s see how fast our fleet takes it down this time.”

  Sim­dow’s re­port came right on the heels of Li­don’s. “Half our in­va­sion fleet is in the por­tal. ETA to Earth ar­rival, twelve min­utes. There are ten more de­stroy­ers on that side of the grid fly­ing into the vor­tex now.”

  “We’re in for it.” Li­don’s tone held some alarm, get­ting Tra­nis’ at­ten­tion fast. “The di­ver­sion wing is re­port­ing the Earth­ers are scan­ning for ac­tiv­ity near the por­tal.”

  “They’ve fi­nally fig­ured our plan out,” Tra­nis said. “Now the fight­ing will turn ugly.”

  “Di­ver­sion wing is de­ploy­ing to the por­tal to guard it. As soon as the grid is down again they’ll ex­pend all en­ergy to de­fend – by the an­ces­tors, what are the Earth­ers do­ing?”

  Li­don’s stunned ex­pres­sion was so un­suited to his face, it was al­most com­i­cal. Af­ter a sec­ond’s si­lence, Tra­nis prompted, “Re­port, Com­man­der.”

  “Cap­tain, sev­eral Earther bat­tle­cruis­ers are sep­a­rat­ing from the main group. Some are head­ing back to Earth at high speeds.”

  “On main vid,” Train or­dered.

  The view of the Earther force zoomed in, trans­mit­ting de­tailed in­for­ma­tion. In­deed, a large num­ber of Earther ships were peel­ing away from the main group, head­ing in two di­rec­tions. A mo­ment later, Li­don con­firmed what Tra­nis saw. “Some of the ships are also rush­ing for the por­tal.”

  Sud­denly, sev­eral ves­sels in the Earth­ers’ main de­fense opened fire. Gasps rang out on Tra­nis’ bridge.

  “Did those bat­tle­cruis­ers just fire on their own ships?” Osopa gaped at the sight.

  He was right. The main pha­lanx of Earth’s de­fend­ers was at­tack­ing the ships re­treat­ing to­wards their home planet. Stunned si­lence reigned.

  Li­don broke the quiet to re­port. “Se­cu­rity grid is back down. Mother of All. Has ev­ery last Earther gone in­sane?”

  Along with most of his crew, Tra­nis watched open­mouthed as sev­eral Earther fight­ers and half a dozen of their bat­tle­cruis­ers bolted to­wards the Kalquo­rian fleet. He winced as two fight­ers and one cruiser smashed into a Kalquo­rian de­stroyer, det­o­nat­ing a con­fla­gra­tion that pained the eyes. The Earth­ers were sui­cide at­tack­ing. The Kalquo­rian de­stroy­ers were forced to evade the huge ves­sels.

  “The Earther fleet is in ut­ter chaos, Cap­tain. Some are run­ning, some are fight­ing us, some are fight­ing each other, and some are ap­par­ently de­ter­mined to de­stroy them­selves.” Li­don stared at the main vid.

  Tra­nis shook his head in an ef­fort to break the spell of hor­ror. “They’re in com­plete panic. The mo­ment they re­al­ized we were us­ing the por­tal, the com­man­ders lost con­trol of the fleet. Thoughts, Li­don?”

  “I haven’t the slight­est idea. Surely they left some on-planet de­fenses in case we broke through?”

  “They must have, but they act as if they haven’t. What is go­ing on?”

  No one had an an­swer for him.

  * * * *

  Cas­sidy peeked in var­i­ous cab­ins as she made her tor­tur­ous way through the maze of the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem. At last she found what she wanted: a vi­cious dag­ger, care­fully placed on a ta­ble next to a mussed bed. Af­ter mak­ing sure no Kalquo­rian waited in­side those quar­ters to cap­ture her, she snuck into the room and grabbed the blade. She took a mo­ment to power up the com­puter she found in there and checked her po­si­tion.

  Good. She was on track and al­most to her goal.

  Hold­ing the ser­rated-edged dag­ger in her hand, Cas­sidy won­dered if it had ever been used to kill some­one. She thought there was no other pos­si­ble use for such a bru­tal weapon. It cer­tainly didn’t look any­thing like a kitchen knife.

  Cast­ing aside the thought, she crawled back into the vent. This time she re­placed the cover. She didn’t want some young gung-ho Nobek track­ing her down to re­claim his prop­erty.

  Five min­utes later that felt more like five years, Cas­sidy lo­cated the vent open­ing she’d been look­ing for. She crept to it as qui­etly as she could and peered out into the brightly-lit brig.

  A short cor­ri­dor ran be­tween two rows of con­tain­ment cells. Three cells were on each side, and Cas­sidy de­tected move­ment in the mid­dle one on her right. At the end of the cor­ri­dor op­po­site her po­si�
�tion, three Kalquo­ri­ans stood near a com­puter work­sta­tion. Their un­in­tel­li­gi­ble con­ver­sa­tion was quite an­i­mated, their youth­ful faces bright with ex­cite­ment. Cas­sidy swal­lowed. She hoped they were as in­ex­pe­ri­enced as they looked. Only sur­prise and her sta­tus as the cap­tain’s Matara would keep her from harm in the next few min­utes.

  She eased the vent cover off, watch­ing the three men as she did so. The cover came off silently, at­tract­ing no at­ten­tion thus far. As soon as it was free, she braced her­self.

  Cas­sidy sprang into the cor­ri­dor, fling­ing the vent cover to the side as she dropped to the floor. She landed in a crouch, get­ting the dag­ger into po­si­tion and glar­ing at the star­tled Kalquo­ri­ans.

  * * * *

  The hum of the open­ing door her­alded De­gorsk’s en­trance onto the bridge. Li­don glanced at him as the Imdiko stopped short at the sight of the dis­or­dered Earther fleet. Sev­eral of the en­emy had been re­duced to burned hulks al­ready, de­stroyed by their own kind. An­other ex­ploded as he watched.

  “I guess we aren’t do­ing too badly,” the medic whis­pered, his ex­pres­sion stricken. De­gorsk did not take mass deaths well.

  “The Earth­ers did it to them­selves,” Li­don an­swered. He made his tone as gen­tle as pos­si­ble.

  “The ones that aren’t run­ning in all di­rec­tions are us­ing them­selves as weapons against us or self-de­struc­t­ing.” Tra­nis faced De­gorsk, turn­ing his back on the vid. He looked as ill as their Imdiko.

  Li­don didn’t blame his Dramok. The sight was stom­ach churn­ing even for a war­rior of his ex­pe­ri­ence.

  De­gorsk stared at them in turn, his mouth hang­ing open. “Why?”

  Tra­nis could only shrug. He asked, “You left Cas­sidy alone?”

  “She wanted to sleep. She had a ma­jor break­through.” At their raised eye­brows, De­gorsk glanced at the rest of the crew. “We’ll dis­cuss it later.”

  Li­don hoped the news on his Matara was good. He could use some­thing pos­i­tive. His com beeped, de­mand­ing his at­ten­tion. A young man’s voice said, “Con­tain­ment to Com­man­der Li­don.”

  “Now what?” he growled. The last thing he wanted to hear was some­thing had hap­pened to Gen­eral Hamil­ton. “Go ahead.”

  The tone of one of Hamil­ton’s guards was pitched high with con­cern. “Sir, your Matara is here. She snuck in through the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem and is hold­ing us off with a blade.”

  Tra­nis and De­gorsk froze. Li­don didn’t know whether to laugh or scream at his un­der­ling. “A lit­tle Earther girl with a knife is hold­ing off three Fleet-trained Nobeks?”

  “She’s threat­en­ing to stab her­self if we don’t stay back. I think we can dis­arm her with­out let­ting her come to harm–”

  Li­don was al­ready run­ning from the bridge. “Stay away from her! I’m on my way!”

  As he raced down the cor­ri­dor, he heard Tra­nis shout, “Alert me to any changes, Sim­dow.”

  Tra­nis and De­gorsk ran past Li­don as the en­tire clan rushed to the brig. His face stretched in a snarl, the Nobek pushed his bad leg hard to get to his Matara as fast as pos­si­ble.

  * * * *

  All the Nobek guards’ ini­tial fe­roc­ity had drained from their faces the in­stant Cas­sidy pressed the point of the dag­ger to her belly. They looked very young in that mo­ment, al­most as young as Cas­sidy her­self.

  One begged, “Matara, please drop the blade.”

  Cas­sidy slowly ad­vanced. “I just want to talk to the gen­eral. Stay back and I won’t hurt my­self.”

  The three big aliens fell back. One started speak­ing ur­gently into the com de­vice on the desk.

  See­ing the men were ev­ery bit as cau­tious with her life as she’d hoped, Cas­sidy dis­missed them from her im­me­di­ate con­cerns. Keep­ing an eye on them, she made her way to the cell where her grand­fa­ther stood wait­ing. His hands crossed be­fore his naked­ness to pro­tect his mod­esty, but oth­er­wise he seemed as sneer­ingly aloof as ever. He smirked at her when she stopped be­fore the con­tain­ment field keep­ing him trapped.

  The gen­eral said, “You al­ways were too smart for your own good.”

  Cas­sidy stared at him, search­ing her­self for the old fear of the man. In­stead, she found rage, unim­peded by an or­phaned child’s ter­ror.

  She asked him, “Is that why you took me out of school, so you could stunt my in­tel­li­gence? If so, you’re more the pa­thetic worm than I gave you credit for.”

  Shock crossed his ex­pres­sion. “You can’t talk to me that way, girl.”

  “I can and I will. It’s over­due. You stole my mother from me, you heart­less bas­tard.”

  There was no sign of re­gret, no hint of con­science in the gen­eral’s ex­pres­sion. “She was a harm­ful in­flu­ence who didn’t know how to keep her place; a wan­ton, lust­ful crea­ture who threw her­self at that man–”

  “Who was ready to kill me! She gave her­self to save me even though she knew what it meant!” Cas­sidy wanted the in­vis­i­ble bar­rier be­tween them to come down, so she could bury the Kalquo­rian dag­ger in his black heart. “Then you brain­washed me into tes­ti­fy­ing against her. You made me hate her!”

  “To save you from your­self and the bad blood that runs in your veins.” Hamil­ton’s nose rose im­pe­ri­ously in the air. “I knew Jacque­lyn wasn’t good enough for my son. I knew she’d ruin my only grand­child.”

  Spit­tle flew from Cas­sidy’s mouth as she snarled, “The only ruin in my life was you. Be­cause of you, my brave, self­less mother died think­ing I de­spised her.”

  “Cas­sidy, put the blade down.” Tra­nis’ voice was soft be­hind her.

  “That mon­ster is not worth your life,” De­gorsk added.

  “No. He never was.” Cas­sidy’s stare re­mained on the gen­eral. “But he owes a life. He helped mur­der my mother through me, and I will have jus­tice.”

  De­gorsk’s hands gripped her shoul­ders. “I fear you’ll re­gret killing your last liv­ing rel­a­tive, no mat­ter how jus­ti­fied it may be. I won’t have you adding to your sense of guilt.”

  “He doesn’t de­serve to live!”

  Li­don gen­tly tugged at the dag­ger. “You are right that he should die for his crime. But you are also an­gry and not think­ing clearly right now, my love. If you still want him dead a week from now, af­ter you’ve had a chance to think it through, I will be hon­ored to carry out your wishes.”

  The need to kill the foul crea­ture be­fore her made it hard to lis­ten to their sen­si­ble ar­gu­ments. Yet Cas­sidy had al­ready mur­dered a man once for hurt­ing her mother. Killing Stan Walker hadn’t saved Jackie, and killing Patrick Hamil­ton wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t take back the tes­ti­mony Cas­sidy had given in court, nor erase the empty years since Jackie’s fi­nal tear­ful good­bye. Noth­ing Cas­sidy could do would ac­com­plish any­thing of worth. Seek­ing re­venge might very well de­stroy some­thing good in­side her. It could make her no bet­ter than the man who’d stolen ev­ery­thing.

  Cas­sidy hes­i­tantly re­lin­quished the blade to Li­don. She stepped back to be en­folded in De­gorsk’s arms and took hate­ful joy in the way Hamil­ton’s eyes widened.

  “Shame­less whore,” he whis­pered.

  “Man lover.”

  Hamil­ton blanched, stag­ger­ing back a step. Cas­sidy saw the truth of what the clan had told her in the guilty way his gaze fal­tered. “What would Earth do if they knew your per­ver­sions, Gen­eral?” she asked.

  He said noth­ing. He stared at the floor.

  Cas­sidy pressed on, tak­ing strength from her clan clus­tered about her. “For­tu­nately for you, you’ll never stand trial for your crime. The ma­ni­acs who run our world will soon be out of power. Or has the in­va­sion failed?” she asked Tra­nis.

  He
r Dramok’s voice was care­ful, and he kept his face ex­pres­sion­less. “Earth’s de­fense force is in sham­bles. Our in­va­sion party will exit the por­tal in mo­ments.”

  Hamil­ton’s head came up. His lips trem­bled and his eyes shone with sud­den tears even as he smiled with tri­umph. “‘And the dev­ils were cast into the lake of fire and brim­stone, and shall be tor­mented day and night for­ever and ever.’ Now both our species will dis­ap­pear into ex­tinc­tion. You didn’t re­ally think we’d let you take us alive?”

  Cas­sidy heard her own sud­den fear in Li­don’s voice. “What do you mean?”

  “Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial his­tory, when all Earth’s gov­ern­ments sur­ren­dered to the North Amer­i­can Bloc, the re­main­ing nu­clear war­heads were shot into space and det­o­nated.”

  Cas­sidy re­mem­bered the il­licit writ­ings in her reader. “Dis­si­dents of the time said it wasn’t true. That the war­heads were stock­piled some­where.”

  Hamil­ton nod­ded. “They were right. The weapons were placed be­low sev­eral ma­jor cities; New York, Lon­don, Mos­cow, Rome, and so many more. The places most likely to fo­ment rev­o­lu­tion. The list is long, my dear. Hun­dreds of cities sit­ting right on top of Ar­maged­don. All that de­struc­tion, just wait­ing to be trig­gered.”

  Cas­sidy went cold all over. “The Holy Leader wouldn’t dare. He couldn’t.”

  Hamil­ton’s smile was vi­cious. “When the worm­holes were dis­cov­ered, we knew an­other race might use the por­tals to sub­ju­gate us. That can’t hap­pen, not to God’s chil­dren. We’re bet­ter off dead.”

  Cas­sidy felt a fine tremor run through Tra­nis. Her Dramok said, “Who is tasked to set off the war­heads once we get through?”

  “It’s in God’s hands now. No fal­li­ble hu­mans are re­quired to fin­ish it. All Earther ships are en­coded to clear the worm­hole, but if any­thing else comes through with­out clear­ance, det­o­na­tion is au­to­matic.”

  Gen­eral Hamil­ton was not bluff­ing. Know­ing he spoke the truth, that Earth would be de­stroyed, Cas­sidy screamed in hor­ror. “Tra­nis!”