by Mark Tufo
“Next week?” someone cried out. Everyone’s attention was now rapt, Paul had set the hook, the tricky part now was reeling them in.
“How will we stop them?”
“Is this place safe?”
Sobbing could be heard throughout the throng.
“People, please, this is the safest place on the planet. Will it be safe enough? I don’t know. What will we do? We’ll fight! We’ll either win by sheer tenacity or we will die valiantly and with honor!”
There was more than one “OOOHHH RAAAAHH!!” Thank God for bravado. “This I promise you—we will not go quietly scampering into the dark, we will stand and make them pay dearly for every precious inch of our home, all of our homes, all of our kinsmen and family and loved ones who have died. They will pay for it with the blood of their countrymen and of their loved ones. They will rue the day they ever viewed our planet. These coming days will forever be immortalized in song and story and poem on both our sides. This I swear to you today as God as my witness, these aliens will leave our planet and they will leave not nearly as in good shape as they arrived. They will learn that humanity can be an unkind host!” With the end of Paul’s speech he thrust his fist into the air amidst the shouting and cheering erupting all around him. Paul walked straight out the chamber as the crowd parted clapping him on the shoulder and cheering wildly.
“Great speech, Paul,” Major Salazar said from the entryway he was leaning on.
“I think I bought us another week.” Paul replied as he walked briskly past.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Supreme Commander Kuvlar, I really think that we should wait until the battle cruiser arrives.” Tuvok said with some hesitancy. Sub-commander Tuvok had been studying the languages of Earth and right now he felt like using one of its more commonly used clichés. He felt he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It was one thing to openly disagree with your commander, even if he was only the interim commander, that could still get you killed though. But it was quite another to launch a campaign against a planet without proper provisions and lose, that could get your family killed and you imprisoned for life. Neither had its plusses.
“Sub-commander, do you really want to orbit around this swamp hole for another two years?”
“Sir, the hu-mans have proved they are not willing to just lie down and die, they are a resilient species.
“They are nothing more than high monkeys, Sub-commander. Really your cowardice is beginning to shine through.”
The sub-commander couldn’t help it, he growled a low savage warning. The commander merely laughed at his underling’s discontent.
“We have crushed their armies, reduced their societies to empty shells of what they used to be. In another two years when our reinforcements get here, there’d be nothing left for them to do. They would show up and the glory and prestige would be theirs. I will not let that happen. I will claim this victory myself.”
“Sir, we are a scout ship, it is our duty to find conquerable planets and call in the battle cruisers. That is what we do.”
“Did—that is what we did! Sub-commander, I didn’t get this job by being timid and weak.”
“You got this job because you allowed our commander to be kidnapped.”
Now it was the commander’s turn to snarl. “Be careful, Sub-commander.” He more growled than spoke. “You are walking a fine line. If I remember correctly, it was your team that scanned the Earth vessel and deemed it safe. These hu-mans are weak-minded, weak-spirited and weak-bodied, when we send our first wave of Devastator troops down they will be more than willing to lie down and die, as you say.”
The sub-commander didn’t really believe that but he wasn’t sure how far he should push his stance. “Sir, I’m not saying we can’t take this planet, but we just don’t have the troops to cover enough ground. With only ten million devastators and a couple of thousand ships operational, we won’t be able to suppress any true fighting.”
“When I succeed in taking this planet before the battle cruiser arrives I will be sure to let our emperor know of your temerity.”
“And will you also tell him of my opposition should the alternate happen?”
Had the commander been capable of expressing his anger in the rush of blood to his face he most assuredly would have been the blood red color of a sun on the eve of a great storm.
“Sub-commander, prepare the troops for the launch the day after the hu-man champion is killed. We’ll give them a little time to grieve their loss.”
The sub-commander wasn’t quite so sure of that outcome either, but he had pressed his luck far enough and he still valued his life to not go any farther.
CHAPTER EIGHT - Mike Journal Entry 3
With mortality dangling in front of your face one begins to scan over some of the lowlights and highlights of one’s life. And with my impending fight and the boredom of my enclosure I had plenty of time. At twenty, I was feeling greatly cheated, a life cut short, so many wrongs un-righted, so many deeds undone. So much life unlived. Sure I was being a little dramatic, but I figured that at this point I had earned it. One of the biggest things I couldn’t seem to hurdle was the semi-hidden hostility that my mother and I had shared. From the age of five on I had felt it, I was her burden. She no more wanted me than a dog wanted fleas, she often referred to me as her mistake, not quite Dr. Spock-ish. Her way of dealing with me was to either ground me to my room or leave me alone altogether. If I was to live longer, I was probably going to spend a lot of money on therapy. There were times that I wanted to ask her to let me be adopted by another family, I never got the nerve, now I wished I had. Beth was another matter I had hoped to resolve before my untimely demise. The way she had looked at me when we had finally made it home after our escape was an image that still haunted my dreams, when I had them. The pity, the disgust, the love—all co-mingled on her ethereal face. She had crushed my heart as effectively as if she had cut it out with a spoon and stepped on it in the dirt. I don’t know that she had loved me or ever truly would have, she was light years ahead of me in the relationship game. I was like a high school basketball player walking on to a pro court. To her I was probably just the flavor of the month; no it had to have been more than that, didn’t it? How could I possibly justify the injustices I had committed if it wasn’t for love? But did love qualify as a justifiable accounting of my crimes? There were times when the two of us had been alone that I could feel that racing of her heart, the flush of her face, the glow of her skin, the twinkle in her eyes; those were all clues to love, weren’t they? And even if it wasn’t quite love, then it most assuredly would have developed into it. But not now, not ever—she reviled me for what I had become. I was the monster in the closet, under the bed—hell I was an amalgamation of every monster from every Brothers Grimm tale to her. If I was such a monster how could I possibly feel the way I do? And then there was Debbie, a girl who had loved me with all her heart, something I was not capable of reciprocating. I knew deep down that she was dead, her ghostly appearance at the French Hospital could have only meant one thing. I would most assuredly burn in hell for my treatment of her as I would for any and all of the crimes I had committed thus far.
“I have to get out of this chamber! I’m going stir crazy. I’ll think myself to death long before Drababan seals the deal.” I had briefly pondered the thought of kicking the glass out by my feet, but I was as of yet still uncertain to the status of my broken shin or ribs, for that matter. Movement like that could cause me to blackout or worse. I placed my hands on the glass by my face to shield my consternation, after a brief pause a sharp hiss broke the silence. I thought a new ‘guest’ had arrived. It was merely the change in air pressure as the ‘glass’ dissolved underneath my touch.
Had I known it was that easy to get out I would have done it…..what days ago? Naw probably minutes ago. No, the healing capabilities this machine had were far too important to my well being to have discarded it that long ago. Self-preservation was still a far stronger drive
than pity. I cautiously began to exhume myself from the confines of the chamber and surprisingly, I was greeted with very little pain. There was some twanging in my side from the broken rib, but almost everything else was devoid of pain, even my jaw. I wasn’t sure if the chamber had been masking my more basic needs, but the moment my feet touched the floor I was famished. Broken jaw be damned, I wanted to eat. My departure from the chamber must have tripped some signal because an attendant showed up almost immediately. Sure he had two armed escorts with him, but he was an attendant none the less.
“Food,” was all I said. He didn’t look chatty anyway. He quickly turned to leave, the guards stayed a little longer, to me it seemed they were contemplating how much trouble they would get into if the captive was ‘shot trying to escape’. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I would have wanted to exact a little revenge on the person who had killed my brothers in arms. I wasn’t truly a military man, but I knew enough to know that soldiers don’t fight for their God or their country or their commander, they fight for their friends, they fight for the safety of the man beside them. Their fingers scratched on the outside of their trigger guards and for a brief moment I thought that sweet release was within my grasp, but as if by an invisible gesture they both turned and left, apparently the punishment they would receive was more unsavory than killing the man that was responsible for the deaths of their kinsmen. They knew in less than a week that Drababan would finish what they wanted to do. I nearly collapsed when they left, the tension seemed to be the only thing that was keeping me up. My heart had finally stopped hammering by the time the food arrived, I was able to brush away the anxiety like so many leaves on a long forgotten picnic table when the smell wafted up towards me.
“It’s cow,” I muttered to myself as I greedily shoveled the mystery meat into my mouth. Pondering on the meat’s origin would have most assuredly led to the decline of my salvatory moment and I was only in the mood to quell my seemingly insatiable appetite, not think.
“Ah Miiike, it is good to see you up and eating,” Drababan said with what could have only been considered a smile.
I had been so busy stuffing my face I had not heard him enter. The range of emotions he brought out in me were staggering, we were both captives in another’s game, on opposite ends of the spectrum.
“Drababan,” I said perhaps a little too excitedly. “Sit down share some of this food with me.” What was I doing? Could I have been that lonely?
What I considered to be a slight frown creased his maw. It was tough to distinguish on such an alien face, but I had been around their kind long enough to pick up on some of their more subtle facial tics. Perhaps it was their leathery skin or their need not to, that they just didn’t posses the range of expressions like humans did, but they still were there.
“Ah, Miiike, I would like to ‘break bread with you’ as your kind says, but it is my time of fasting.”
I looked up at him with what could only be considered a look of questioning. “A religious fasting, Drababan?”
“Yes, it is my people’s time of Chakaratyne. It was during this time many millennia ago that our savior Gropytheon was crucified and then reborn.”
I almost choked on what I could only describe as a hybrid between a pumpkin and a watermelon. Thank God it was soft because it would have most definitely lodged in my throat.
“It’s your Easter?” I gurgled as the soft melon type substance made its way down.
“I am somewhat familiar with your earth history and while Chakaratyne is similar it also varies greatly.”
“It sounds a lot similar to me.”
“Perhaps. But none the less, I still cannot sit down with you to enjoy your meal, it seems you have everything well in hand, anyway.”
I sheepishly looked down at the mess I had made. It looked like a kid had gotten loose in a candy store and had proceeded to ‘go to town’ as some would say.
Drababan seemed to have noticed my discomfort. “Do not be ashamed of the way you have eaten your meal, making a mess is a show of high respect for the cook who prepared it.
I laughed, thankfully I had not been chewing at the time or I would have been rewarded with nearly choking again.
“You amaze me, Drababan, you talk about how you have been persecuted for your beliefs, but yet you still practice them right under the enemies’ nose.”
“Quite.” He turned and walked out with as much warning as when he had entered. I sat and pondered the conversation for a few moments but the tug of my belly still had not been quenched, I proceeded back to the task at hand.
CHAPTER NINE
“You know that eventually we’re going to have to abandon this place,” Paul said more longingly than he probably intended. The memories he and his friends had built on ‘the hill’ a seeming lifetime ago weighed heavy on his soul.
“Paul, what are you talking about?” Frank responded, trying to lighten the somber mood radiating from Paul in all directions. “This is all we have, unless you pulled some other sort of miracle out of your hat.”
“No, there are no more miracles.” Paul looked up from his desk at the hand that held the soothing liquid in it. “Shit,” he said without much conviction, holding up his glass to catch the light. “Growing up, I hated the taste of this crap. Now it’s the only thing that gives me some semblance of peace of mind.”
Frank wanted to add that he didn’t feel Paul was grown up just yet, but even he didn’t see the humor in his thought, he doubted very much that Paul would.
“What’s got your goat, Paul? You’ve been like this for days. Sure, you’re hiding it well from the men, but I know you far too well.”
Paul stopped gazing at his drink to look over at his major. Frank did not welcome the scrutiny.
“They’ll find this place.”
Frank’s spine tingled, he knew implicitly who ‘they’ were.
“How can you be so sure? This place isn’t on any map in the world. And we have security ratcheted up so tight I don’t think a rabbit could break perimeter without half the base knowing about it.” But his words had little effect on Paul. Frank began to doubt himself even as he tried to bolster up Paul.
“After Mike’s fight, they’ll land.” Frank began to question him, but Paul merely shook his head to tell Frank that he wasn’t through yet.
“I’ve been thinking about this, Frank, just let me run with it. They first come cruising into our galaxy with their running lights off, seems to me they wanted to get a lay of the land, so to speak. See where our technology was at and if we were any serious sort of threat. When they figured they were the big kid on the block they just came on down and snagged a few thousand people, for what? Entertainment, sure, but then what? Food. They were like the old pirates landing on an island and replenishing their stores. Sure we stung them a bit when they came down, but at what cost one thousand to one? More like ten thousand to one. Then we do a last ditch effort to mess up their plans, it bought us time no doubt, but more than likely it just stirred up the nest. They worked day and night to get that ship repaired and I’m sure that they had only one purpose in mind and that was revenge. How dare we try to defy them!” As Paul slammed his drink down, Frank inadvertently jumped, he hoped Paul didn’t notice. “They plan this huge television event so that we can watch our Earth champion get crushed by their gladiatorial champion. So then when we are at our lowest, they’ll hit. You know the old adage, kick’em while they’re down. Frank, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. My guess is we’ll have ground troops here within the next two weeks. I can’t imagine they have enough troops or weaponry on board that ship to take the whole planet, so they’ll copy the Nazis.”
“Sir?” Frank asked raptly.
“They’ll turn people against people. They’ll tell some that if they pledge obedience that they won’t eat them, or something like that. People will drop their weapons and line up to be the first to save themselves. Kids will turn in parents, brothers will rat out brothers just to save their own
hide. This place will be compromised within days. To save themselves, they’ll doom us all.”
“Paul, do you really believe that will happen,” Frank said as he poured himself a stiff one.
“Who knows, I’m probably just drunk.”
But Frank didn’t believe that and neither did Paul.
CHAPTER TEN
Beth ached, mind, soul, and most assuredly body. She dared not stop to check her blistering sore feet. Taking off her shoes now would be foolhardy to say the least and more than likely she would not be able to put them back on once the swelling began. And what would be the purpose it wasn’t like she had any first aid supplies to soothe the pain. And something else was nagging her too, the roadway was eerily quiet, she had once retreated into the woods when a phantom sound pervaded her ear drums, but no one came, neither sinner nor saint, but her sub-conscious was in overdrive, she could not shake the feeling that she was being followed, she had been through too much to doubt what her consciousness was telling her. But what could she do, she had no weapons and she didn’t have the strength to out run… what? A phantom? The man from the woods? What!
“Who the fuck is out there!” she screamed. Dreading and wishing for a response at the same time. She turned back to begin her journey anew. And there it was.
“Shhhh!” Came the veiled whisper. Beth would have shot out of her shoes if it wasn’t for the fact that they were molded to her feet like sausages stuffed in casing.
“Who…who is that.” She quivered.
“Lady, shut up!” The screamed whisper came again.
“What?” She felt paralyzed, the desire to flee was there, but the body was not willing. She wanted to scream but what was the point, she was caught as effectively as a fish in a net.