Conquest

by Mark Tufo

  “What’s the matter—am I drooling again?” I asked her, looking up. Somebody who had some sort of new technology to blur themselves was standing approximately by my doorway.

  “It’s Beth.”

  “Beth? I loved her once,” I said not even thinking. All I can say is I’m thankful that I used the past tense or Tracy would have dropped me where I stood, both literally and figuratively.

  “And now?” she prodded.”

  “Now what?” I asked having no clue what she was referring too.

  “What are your feelings about Beth now?”

  “Why are we talking about this now?” I asked, confused.

  “Because she’s standing at your door.”

  I tried to focus as best I could down the hallway but I could still only make out a blurred image. “You can see past her cloaking device?”

  “How drunk are you?”

  “I could probably sit in a chair without falling over for at least seven minutes.”

  “Seven whole minutes?” Tracy asked.

  “At the least.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  “What in mind? I miss my bed,” I told her.

  “Almost there. What do you want me to tell Beth?”

  “Why—does she miss my bed too?” I asked, not realizing the innuendo I had just made, but Tracy caught it.

  “I’m sure she does.”

  As we got closer, Beth began to come into focus. I was a hand span away from saying how beautiful I thought she was and I might have had she not taken my breath away. She was wearing the same dress or a reasonable facsimile of it that she had worn the first time we met.

  “Is he alright?” Beth asked, coming up to offer aid.

  “He’s fine,” Tracy said frostily. “Just drunk.”

  Beth got under my other arm and helped to keep me propped up. Tracy fished my keys out of my pocket and got my door open. The two women shuffled me to my bed and unceremoniously deposited me on the mattress. Now if I could have made the room stop spinning, this would almost have been a magical moment.

  “I’m going to miss you, Tracy,” I said as I plopped one foot onto the floor, the room came to a lurching stop as I rooted myself to something that wasn’t spinning, although it seemed to be undulating quite a bit.

  “Why?” Beth asked.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, it isn’t because he’s leaving me to be with you,” Tracy said.

  “Good one,” I mumbled from the bed.

  “What’s going on, Mike?” Beth asked, approaching the side of the bed.

  “He’s decided to kill himself,” Tracy answered.

  “That one wasn’t nearly as good,” I said.

  “Mike?” Beth asked again, trying to do an end-run past Tracy.

  “Going to space again,” I told her. “Third time’s a charm.”

  “Are you insane?” Beth nearly screamed.

  “Well, we finally agree on something,” Tracy answered.

  “You can’t be serious? And you’re letting him?” Beth turned her fury toward Tracy.

  “I don’t own him and he’s doing what he feels he must. Just because I don’t agree with it doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a valid idea.”

  “Wait—what?” I said trying to keep track of the conversation. Was Tracy now agreeing with me just to make sure she wasn’t on the same side as Beth or did she truly feel what she had spoken?

  “He could end it all,” Tracy said, sitting on the corner of the bed. “Or end it all for me,” she added much quieter.

  “Mike?” Beth asked again.

  I feigned sleep, even if my eyes were closed and I was snoring softly.

  ***

  “Tracy, I know we’re not the best of friends,” Beth started.

  “That’s an understatement,” Tracy responded. “Sorry, he’s got me pretty upset.”

  “Why would he possibly go back?” Beth said, not acknowledging the apology or the slight for that matter.

  Tracy spent the next few minutes retelling Beth the entire plan, without the slightest hint of exaggeration it sounded insane.

  “And so his egotistical self believes he is the only one capable of pulling this off?” Beth asked.

  “That’s the thing,” Tracy said. “I don’t really think he believes that, but he believes in the necessity to take the chance no matter how slight the chances of success.”

  “I won’t stand for this!” Beth chided, nearly stomping her foot in protest.

  “Come on, Ma, just a half hour more” Mike murmured in his sleep.

  “Ha,” Tracy half laughed, not meaning to. “You let me know how that goes,” she said, speaking to Beth. “I’ve yet to see the man do anything anybody has told him to.”

  “He has a problem with authority,” Beth said, looking down at Michael’s face.

  A heavy knocking came at the door, only one or now two beings possessed the strength to make the hinges bulge with each hammer blow.

  “Hello, Drababan,” Tracy said, opening the door before the brute could continue his rapping.

  “He has drunk again,” Dee said as a statement of fact. “I could smell it from the hallway. I had hoped it was someone else.”

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Tracy asked.

  Beth was trying her best to shrink into the far wall.

  “Your fear of me is unfounded,” Dee said, looking right at her. Beth looked like she wanted to cry.

  “You’re wrong. You’re kind have destroyed my planet, killed my friends, and probably my family. I think I have every right to be afraid of you. And now when I might finally have one thing left to hold onto, you threaten his life too,” Beth said defiantly.

  Dee bowed his head slightly. “Very well,” he said to Beth. “Small military woman, will you please tell Michael to come and see me in my quarters when he arises?”

  Tracy nodded. “I’d appreciate you calling me by my name or rank.”

  “Thank you,” Dee said, turning and leaving.

  “Is he always so gruff?” Beth asked.

  “To everyone but Mike,” Tracy said, holding the door open and looking at Beth. Beth understood the hint of the gesture, but took a moment longer to look down upon Mike’s sleeping countenance.

  “Would you mind if I say goodbye before he goes?” Beth asked Tracy.

  “I’d like to say no, Beth, I really would, but I will tell him you asked. If he comes to see you, then it was by his decision, not mine.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “I have no desire to be your friend, Beth, and I’d appreciate it if you would stop showing up unannounced. Good night.” Tracy shut the door before Beth could respond.

  “I thought she’d never leave,” Mike said in his sleep, rolling over onto his side.

  ***

  I woke up six hours later, not because I wanted to, but because my bladder deigned it. The room was dark and for a moment I had a start, not realizing where I was. There was a warm body next to me, the first thought that came to mind was Deb, which meant I was on the ship. The thrusting of adrenaline hammering through my system was making clear thinking difficult, my thoughts were processing the cloudiness in my head as concussion based and not alcohol related. My fight with Durgan was soon!

  “Deb, what day is it?” I think I yelled.

  A light next to my bed snapped on. Tracy was reaching for her weapon. “What’s the matter?” she said, scanning the room for the threat.

  My mind was addled, I could not piece together the juxtaposition of the woman I thought I was sharing my bed with to the one that was actually there. “Who are—” I almost completed the sentence before my mind was able to put tab ‘A’ in slot ‘B’. “Tracy… sorry. I had a bad dream,” I said, putting my hand up to my head. Normally, I’d say it was for dramatic effect but I had been ‘lost’ for nearly fifteen seconds. If that was what Alzheimer’s was like, I was hoping I died young.

  “At least you didn’t say ‘Beth’. I migh
t have had to use this,” Tracy said, flashing her 9 mm as she put it back in the holster that hung from the bed.

  I smiled weakly because she wasn’t kidding.

  “Do you need some water?” she asked, unscrewing the top and handing me a bottle.

  “Actually, the opposite. I’ll be right back,” I said going out the door to the head at the end of the hallway. I stopped to look at myself in the mirror. My eyes were red-rimmed and heavy with black underneath. I looked like I had come out of the wrong end of a fight. “You look like shit,” I told my reflection.”

  “Yeah, you don’t look so good either,” I replied.

  “Touché. I’ll be back in a sec, I gotta take care of some business.” I headed to one of the stalls. Some of you women may or may not know this and your man may or may not admit to it, but if a guy is tired we are not above sitting on the john to take care of our liquid disposal. I had just sat down when I heard someone else enter. Maybe more than one someones.

  “I know I saw him come in here,” one of the people said. I had never heard the man’s voice before.

  “The stall,” came another male voice.

  “Be out in a sec.” Dammit, I was breaking man-code if they knew I was in there taking a leak. I stayed in a little longer than necessary.

  “No need to hurry,” the first man said, I heard his footfalls coming closer. Something was up, I was glad I hadn’t needed to take care of a more solid problem or I would have been caught with my pants down, literally. I pulled my pants up and stood on the stall seat just as the door crashed in. The man had fully expected me to still be on the john and was surprised when his face met my foot head on.

  My foot blazed in pain as I struck his face with my heel, I wished I had remembered to put my boots on before I came. His head snapped back and he was going to be hurting, but he wasn’t out of commission. His buddy was behind him, I could hear the crackle of the stun gun in his hand.

  “Bastard kicked me,” the first man said, dressed in khaki pants and a short sleeved button down shirt, he almost looked governmental like CIA in a foreign country, his buddy by contrast looked like he just rolled in from Philly, he had a beer gut and baseball hat.

  “Move out of the way, one zap with this and he won’t be kicking anyone.”

  I was scared, what the hell was going on here? I doubted the company that held my car note had sent the goons to rough me up for lack of payment.

  I was wary, I was preparing to make the man with the stun gun pay dearly for his lack of judgment. He passed his buddy by and approached slowly. From my crouch I stood up and visibly relaxed, I may have even smiled.

  “What’s he doing?” the first man said as he rubbed his cheek.

  “They said he might be a little crazy after his time on the ship. This’ll fix him,” he said, running a blue arc across the leads.

  “You’re fucked,” I said, smiling. This was punctuated by a large ‘Ooomph’ and then clatter as skull met ceramic sink.

  “What the hell?” Philly asked as he was thrust violently off the ground. His head making bone jarring contact with the ceiling, he was out cold before his body landed.

  “I see you have made new friends,” Dee said, I think with some amusement.

  “I could have taken care of them,” I told him.

  “I see that now,” Dee said.

  “Are you smiling?”

  “Possibly—what is this about?”

  “I don’t know, I came in here and then these two followed. But they were looking for me and they’re working with someone else.”

  I started rifling through their pockets, not sure what I was going to find. Both had knives, the first guy had pepper spray and then a bunch of change. That was it.

  “Did anyone see you come in here?” I asked Dee.

  “I did not smell anyone.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  Dee pointed to his nose.

  “Were you looking for me for a reason?”

  “Your time grows short; I had wished to spend some of your last few hours here together.”

  “I understand the gesture, bad phrasing, though,” I said. Dee was looking at me quizzically. “You make it sound final.”

  “No, the phrasing was correct,” Dee said for clarification.

  The door to the bathroom opened, Tracy looked in surveying the room quickly.

  “What’s wrong with you that you can’t even go to the bathroom without causing a scene?”

  I shrugged.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Michael would not share his roll of toilet paper,” Dee said with a straight face.

  My face dropped before I started laughing, my gut hurt so bad I thought I was going to pull a muscle. Dee started a heavy snorting, I don’t think I had ever heard a Genogerian in a full out hearty laugh.

  “Great, Michael, as an emissary to the entire planet Earth you have taught our guests bathroom humor.” Tracy turned to leave. “I’ll get some guards.”

  I stopped long enough to tell her to get men she trusted.

  "Are you alright?" I asked Dee as we waited.

  "Your surgeons extracted the shrapnel with skill, it did little more than lacerate the skin."

  I figured he was lying but then it looked like even Genogerians were capable of male bravado.

  After another full five minutes of laughing and the removal of my attackers. I headed to Paul’s office where my would-be way-layers were being taken.

  “You coming?” I asked Dee.

  Dee composed himself quickly as if the matter had never happened. “Indeed.”

  The two men were sitting in front of Paul’s desk. Smelling salts had just been administered but both looked a bit groggy and blood was still flowing freely from the head of the one that had met the sink intimately.

  “Who do you two work for?” Paul asked when he was reasonably confident that they were aware enough.

  “When do we get our lawyer?” Philly, the man who had crashed into the ceiling asked.

  “No, lawyer, but I’ll promise a Priest,” Paul answered the message clearly, they talked now or they would be killed as traitors.

  “You’ve got nothing on us. We just wanted to see how tough he was. Would have kicked his ass too, if his big green friend hadn’t of interrupted.”

  “So you’re just a couple of regular guys looking to have an honest fight, with a stun gun, mace and knives against a guy in a bathroom? Seems like a little bit of overkill to me,” Paul asked.

  Philly shrugged.

  Paul pulled out his pistol and placed a round in the man’s knee. His screams far outdid the echo of the round being fired in the small room.

  “Oh shit, oh geez, oh shit!” CIA said, coming to full awakening. He was struggling against his handcuffs to get free. “You can’t do that, we have rights!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t have shit anymore” Paul said, putting his pistol back in its holster.

  The screams of the second man subsided, but he was turning a deathly pale from pain and shock.

  “Do you want medical attention?” Paul asked him calmly.

  I could tell the man wanted to pull that stoic shit and give Paul a last act of defiance, but the pain and the fear of death were too great. He nodded quickly. “Please,” he whispered.

  “Information first,” Paul said, sitting on the corner of his desk.

  “Come on, man, he said he would talk. Just get him some help,” CIA said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”

  Paul quickly pulled his pistol from his holster and leveled it on the man’s forehead. “Shut up. One more word from you and I will splatter your brains on the wall behind you.

  I moved to the side. I didn’t think the people doing laundry would be able to get brain out of my clothes.

  CIA just about swallowed his lips. Philly was close to fainting.

  “Better hurry up before you pass out,” Paul said. “You fall asleep now and there will b
e no waking up.”

  “Alright, alright,” the man said with great difficulty. “There was a man, he said he’d get us out of here and set up in a safe place if we got him the man that killed his brother.” Man two passed out.

  “Get him help,” his friend begged.

  Paul waved to one of the guards to get a doctor.

  “Where’s this man reside?” Paul asked the first man, who was still too busy looking at his friend, looking for signs of life. Paul pressed the warm barrel of the pistol against this forehead. That got his attention quick.

  “Hous-housing quarters 17, section 11 room 14.”

  “Take a couple more men with you,” Paul told the remaining guard.

  I did an involuntary shudder, I killed at least a dozen or so men—any one of them could have had a brother, but odds were on one and one alone.

  “Mike?” Paul asked with concern, looking over at me.

  “It can’t be, I mean the odds would be astronomical, but I can feel it. I know it, it has to be Durgan’s brother.”

  “Fates are funny this way, Michael. They have a tendency to throw related events together no matter how improbable,” Dee said.

  “He’s a philosopher,” I told Paul. “I feel it and yet I still doubt it. To think that Durgan's brother was even in the same city as me seems absurd, much less that he is here now in this secured location. It can’t be but it is, there’s something way more insidious going on here.”

  “No, hold on, Mike. It’s not really as far-fetched as you might be thinking,” Paul said, thankfully reaching for reason. “So Durgan is at that concert, odds are he was from Colorado.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, seeing his thread.

  “So if he lived there, then there’s no reason to think that his family didn’t also.”

  “Except he was an asshole and I’d think they’d want to get as far away from him as possible.”

  “Can I finish?” Paul asked.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. I had made a valid point, however.

  “We were not covert in our recruiting. There’s a good chance his brother wanted answers as bad as any one of us.”