The Apex Warriors

by Marc Stevens

  I stepped from the shadows. “Hello General Thorton, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Even in the dim light of the patio, it was easy to see the shock and surprise on his face.

  “Do I know you?” He stammered.

  I tried to put him at ease and reached out to shake his hand. “No sir, but Karl has told me you are an excellent Commander and someone who will listen to what I have to say.”

  My size and physique were making him nervous as he slowly reached out to accept my handshake. The look on Karl’s face was almost comical. I could practically hear him pleading with me to make it warm and cordial. He relaxed considerably when I did just that.

  The General seemed to lighten up a little as well. He took a couple of puffs on his cigar to keep it lit, then blew the smoke out the corner of his mouth as he composed himself. “Damn boy, I don’t know what they are feeding you back on the farm, but whatever it is, I want it for my troops.” I politely chuckled at the comment.

  He got right down to business. “What could be so important that you had to come here on a Friday night and interrupt my vacation.”

  His tone was hinting at skepticism once again. “Sir, I have come a very long way to speak to you about some alarming events that I have discovered in my travels.”

  The General took my statements with a straight face. He looked back and forth at me and Karl. “How did you know where to find me?”

  It was a reasonable question and Karl answered it for me. “You once told me if I ever needed anything to call. This was something well outside of my wheelhouse, and you were the highest-ranking official I knew.”

  The General squinted at Karl. “That’s not what I asked.” He said curtly. He looked me up and down again, then asked Karl in a General’s voice. “Does your friend here have a name?”

  Now Karl was really getting rattled. “Yes sir, it’s Nathan.” He said quickly.

  That made the General frown and scratch at stubble on his face. He puffed out a cloud of cigar smoke and leaned close to Karl’s face. “There was someone named Nathan that went missing from your airport around six years ago?”

  This guy was sharp as a tack and had a good memory to boot. Karl was silent but nodded in confirmation to the General.

  He turned to me. “Are you that Nathan?”

  I wasn’t going to muck up the waters by dodging the question. “Yes sir.”

  “I know your father, is he aware you are no longer deceased?” He said in a stern voice.

  That came as a surprise to me. I was having difficulty coming up with the right words and didn’t want it to land on Karl’s shoulders, that he knew what really happened to me.

  I said the first truthful thing to came to mind. “Due to the circumstances involved in my disappearance, I chose not to share that information.”

  The General bit down on his cigar and blew smoke from between his teeth. “Maybe you should explain it to me, and you better not feed me some bullshit story that you were abducted by aliens or some other nonsense!”

  I could tell the General was getting pissed. I didn’t know what his relationship with my father was but had a feeling it may have been more than a working one.

  I was going to have to start putting my cards on the table. “It was not an abduction, I was taken in because I was close to death.”

  Even in the darkness of the patio, I could see the General’s face darken. He stabbed a finger in my direction. “I am not going to stand here and listen to you or anyone else shovel shit at me. I got better things to do!”

  He turned to walk away and I guess Tria decided she had heard enough. She uncloaked between him and the door. I really wished she did not have her war mask projected onto her faceplate. Between the visage of her war mask and the almost ten-foot-tall battle armor bristling with unknown weapons, the General stumbled backward and fell to the ground.

  His cigar fell out of his mouth. “Christ almighty!” He yelled. “What the hell is that?”

  I waved my arm at her and she quickly cloaked again. Even my friend Karl was staring at me speechless. I reached down to help the General back to his feet. His mouth was agape and his eyes were the size of silver dollars. I noticed a couple of things right off, and they were not going to help matters in the least. The first was that his wayward cigar found its way into the pocket of his rather expensive-looking polo shirt. It was merrily burning its way to freedom. The second thing was arguably worse than the first. We should have let the General make his restroom stop before talking to him. His dragon decided it had waited long enough, and let loose with the contents of his bladder.

  It was a toss-up as to what to do next. Since the General wasn’t offering up a hand for help, the smell of burning polyester and human hair made me take action. I reached down and ripped the smoldering pocket, cigar and all, from his chest. To make matters worse, the security team chose that exact time to come looking for the General. They walked out the door to the patio and saw me standing over the General. There was a large hole in his shirt and he was on the ground. They both went for their pistols. I yelled for them not to point their weapons at me, but it was too late. Tria uncloaked and ripped them from their hands, but not before one of them squeezed the trigger. The shot hit me in the left thigh and I grunted. My smart cloth uniform cushioned the impact and stopped the subsonic round from penetrating. The four hundred or so foot-pounds of kinetic energy were somewhat blunted but still hurt like hell. I was glad that none of them understood a word of Chaalt because my significant other was using some very caustic language. I tried to tell her I was okay, but she picked the shooter off the ground like a rag doll and smashed him into his partner. They went down in a heap and did not move.

  The gunshot was all that was needed to get the General back to his feet. I think he must have been in more than one shooting war because his voice was no longer full of stress.

  He ignored everything else and stepped to my side. “How bad are you hit?” he asked in a concerned voice.

  I tried to sound as calm as possible when I lied to him. “I am fine, he missed.”

  “Like hell boy, I heard that slug hit you square.”

  I held my hands up to him. “I am okay General, it did not penetrate my uniform. I need to check on your men to see how badly they are injured.”

  The gunshot of course caused chaos. There was a lot of yelling and screaming coming from inside the clubhouse. I told Tria to cloak in the Chaalt language.

  The General looked at me strangely. “What did you say?”

  He figured it out when Tria disappeared once more. “Boy, we got us a first-class shit storm about to come down.” He yelled.

  He was correct. The other two members of the security team came charging out onto the patio with their weapons drawn. The three members of the General’s party were right behind them and they were all yelling and cussing. It was probably not necessary, but I called out at Tria not to hurt them. The two armed guards suddenly went flying through the air and disappeared over a low wall. They landed with audible thuds somewhere in the ornate landscaping more than thirty feet away. The other military officers that were with General Thorton, slammed on the brakes and gawked in surprise at seeing the guards fly into the distance. They stood in shock with their mouths hanging open. Justice decided it was time to intervene. He locked onto me, Karl, the military officers, and the two guards lying prone on the patio. We all made a fast trip up into the hanger bay of the Legacy that was parked about fifty feet above the patio. When Justice set us down, my unexpected guests just stared at their surroundings with fear in their eyes. Karl’s Cessna 208 sitting inside, got some strange looks as well. This was not how I wanted to start a conversation, but I had no choice in the matter now. Two medevac gurneys floated swiftly down from the overhead. Justice extruded two appendages from the deck and gently picked up the security guards and put them on the gurneys. They disappeared into the overhead tunnels.

  I decided I had better break the ice that was collecting i
n my guest’s veins. “Your security team will be treated for their injuries. What happened was unfortunate, and I apologize for what happened to them. I tried to warn them not to point their weapons at me.”

  My statement had the desired effect. On General Thorton anyway. “What the hell was that thing that attacked our security detail?”

  “My eyes narrowed and I took a deep breath to calm myself. “First of all sir, your men attacked me without provocation. What happened was a misunderstanding. They obviously thought that I had assaulted you and opened fire when a member of my crew attempted to disarm them.”

  The General flinched at my statement. He pushed his hands out at me. “Look, I saw what happened and you are right. A lot was going on and my guys overreacted. I am sorry for how this went down. I am just glad that you are wearing bulletproof body armor. I do however want you to clarify something. Are you telling me that big robot-looking thing was a member of your crew?”

  “That was a member of my crew wearing battle armor.”

  The general’s eyes got a little bigger. “I hope you are going to tell me that was some kind of mask it was wearing.”

  The General was starting to push my buttons. I was beginning to think he was not the right man to be talking to. “We hide our identities so our enemies cannot determine our races. What you saw was a war mask.”

  The General flinched at my statement. My use of the word “war” in my statement was not lost on any of them. Justice pinged my implants with the identities of each of the other military officers. I could see the gears turning in all of their heads as they started exchanging nervous looks with each other. One of the Colonels in the group put his hands in the air and declared that they were all unarmed.

  One of the other Officers that Justice identified as General McNeal turned to the Colonel. “For Pete's sake Joe, put your damn hands down, I don’t think we are prisoners.”

  He looked up at me. “Are we?”

  “No General McNeal, you are not my prisoners.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage. You seem to know me, but I have no idea who you are.”

  General Thorton turned to General McNeal. “Tom, he says he is Colonel Myers boy Nathan.”

  “The one that disappeared in Alaska?” He answered.

  “Said he was.” General Thorton replied.

  General McNeal looked me in the eyes. “You look a little bit like him in the face, but you are as big as a friggin house. Billy Myers might weigh a hundred and fifty on a good day. Are you really Nathan Myers?”

  I almost smiled at the General’s little test. My dad’s name was Melvin, not Billy. I had a bad feeling that telling the truth was going to bring more heartache for my family. I had to see this through and bending the facts was not going to make it any easier to swallow.

  “Yes, Melvin Myers is my father. Is he still stationed at Diego Garcia ”

  My answer got nods of approval from all the officers. “I would like to speak with him at some point when we get the real reason I came back here straightened out.”

  General Tom McNeal made a sweeping motion with his arm. “What is all of this Nathan. I know this cannot be technology from our world.”

  I breathed a small sigh of relief. Now we were getting somewhere. “That is correct General. This is a starship from a lost super race known as the Oolaran. This ship was recovered by a race called the Grawl and used for covert insertions on protected planets.”

  The Officers were hanging on every word. General Thorton had a question. “You said you were not abducted. How is it you are here aboard this vessel?”

  “General, I will be more forthcoming on that subject at some other date. I did not travel over fifty thousand light-years to talk about me. I came here to warn you of what might happen to Earth if all the nations of this world do not unite and stand together.”

  All of their faces were taking on a rosy complexion. “Did I just hear you say you traveled fifty thousand light-years, as in, across this galaxy?” Colonel Max Chavez asked with more than a little disbelief in his voice.

  I looked down at the floor. They were missing my point. Admittedly this was a lot to digest, but the question should have been what is the threat to our world.

  “Justice, please show them some of what you are capable of.”

  Justice put up a massive screen across the hangar doors. He put a view from the gateway hub. He scaled it so we could take it all in. The Milkyway was on the right and Andromeda on the left.

  “Do you know what you are seeing? I asked.

  General McNeal stuttered. “Tha…that looks like our galaxy and unless I am mistaken, Andromeda as well.”

  “Very good General, you are correct. That is a view from between the galaxies. It is more than five hundred thousand light-years away and within reach of this vessel.”

  The other Colonel in the Group who had held up his hands was even more skeptical. Justice identified him as Joseph Goodrich. Both he and Chavez were General McNeal's aides. I guessed that having two stars on your shoulders, instead of one like General Thorton, rated you an extra golfing partner.

  “How do we know this isn’t some kind of elaborate hoax. Any number of studios can do fancy cinematics like that.” Goodrich said.

  Both Generals looked in his direction with raised eyebrows but didn’t comment. That was until Justice decided to open the hangar doors. I wondered if he was going to do a little showing off and he didn't disappoint. They were greeted by a starfield, but that was not what everyone's attention was riveted on. There was a satellite about twenty feet away from the open hangar doors.

  “Is that what I think it is?” General McNeal said in awe.

  Justice pinged my implants and gave me a heads up. He had run down Voyager Two. It was roughly eleven billion miles from Earth. Justice had already cautioned me to step away from the group. When I wanted to know why he explained because Voyager’s camera boom was going to be pointed at the group. The next picture download received by NASA was going to cause a stir.

  “Nathan, where the hell are we?” General Thorton demanded to know.

  “In interstellar space General. That is Voyager Two.”

  “Shit!” McNeal blurted. “I think the damn camera is pointed right at us.”

  “What!” General Thorton exclaimed. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Close the damn doors Myers!

  Everyone looked at General Thorton. He had a large hole ripped in his shirt with his nipple sticking out of it. It didn’t help that the front of his shorts was still soaked with urine. When the picture popped up at NASA, it was not going to be flattering.

  “This can’t be real.” Colonel Goodrich declared. “If the doors are open to space we would all be dead.”

  “Colonel, the technology on this spacecraft is so advanced it seems like it is magic. If you don’t believe me put your hand through the atmospheric retention field. I will first advise against it and caution you not to. You will be doing it at your own peril.”

  Goodrich just shook his head mumbling something about fiction and walked to the open hangar doors. He squinted at Voyager Two. “That could be a mockup of some kind. The real Voyager would have to be traveling more than thirty thousand miles an hour.”

  General McNeal had seen and heard enough. “Joe, get your ass back over here. If Myers says it's for real. I believe him”

  The Colonel stopped in his tracks and quickly made his way back to the General’s side. He was frowning. “He said he has a crew but we have yet to see them.”

  General Thorton turned to him. “I saw something or someone appear out of nowhere and it was the damn scariest thing I have ever saw.”

  General McNeal scratched at his head. “Since I have yet to see anyone with my own eyes, I would like to meet the crew, Mister Myers. Is that possible?”

  Colonel Goodrich crossed his arms with a smug look on his face. He was still ignoring the reality of what was happening. Tria, Sael, Coonts, and Klutch uncloaked right in front of them
. They were armored up and all were packing one of our exotic shotguns. As a finishing touch, they were projecting their war masks. We had their full attention now. If the group got any paler, I was going to send them to the med bay.

  “Good God in heaven.” General McNeal mumbled.

  “Gentlemen, I would like to introduce the members of my crew.”

  I walked over to Tria and stood next to her. “This is Tria Burlor of the Chaalt race. She is a warrior holding the rank of a captain.”

  Tria turned off her war Mask and retracted her helmet. The looks of horror on the group's faces promptly disappeared.

  “Hell, she doesn’t look much like an alien to me.” Goodrich declared.

  The words had barely left his lips when Tria rushed forward and lifted him off the floor by the front of his shirt. She pulled him close. “And you do not look like much of a soldier to me!”