Scifi

Abducted! – Part 1

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Feeling thoroughly disoriented, I struggled up to my feet, looking around.  Good lord, I must have had more to drink at the bar than I remembered.

As I looked around, however, still rubbing at the back of my head, I started to realize that something else was very wrong.

I stood in the middle of a small room, with white walls, floor, and ceiling.  The room appeared brightly lit, although I couldn’t tell where the light actually came from.  Were the walls themselves glowing?

More importantly to me, however, was the fact that I saw no door in the walls.

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It Just Kept Spinning

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Sometimes, when something strange happens to you, it’s best to just roll with it.  Or spin with it, in this case.

In other words, I’m glad that I’ve always had the mind of an engineer.

Also, that I happened to be playing with the magnetic trick coin when it happened.

Let me set the scene.  Friday night, about seven at night.  I’m sitting at my crappy little dinner table, fiddling with the coin absent-mindedly as I’m staring at my phone, sitting on the table.

She still hasn’t texted back, of course.  Isn’t that how life always goes?  Everything was great, we were joking, laughing, tons of texts flowing back and forth.  And then, I ask her out – and suddenly nothing, silence.

Sucks, man.  I hate that feeling, especially considering how frequently it seems to be a part of my life.  Losing.  Always losing.

Just once, I thought to myself savagely as I flicked the coin across the table, I’d like a win.

I’d been spinning the coin for the last thirty minutes, convincing myself each time that, as soon as it stopped spinning on its edge, I’d get up.  Screw this girl, anyway!  I could go over to the pub next door, grab a few drinks, probably see Sean and Andy from work.  Maybe even meet a new babe over there.

Last one, I told myself for the thirtieth time, flicking the coin out across the table, watching as the fake “dollar” coin spun around in a little flashing circle of light.  After it falls, I’m getting up.

But it didn’t.

My emotions went from anger and annoyance, to feeling impressed, to a sense of confused amazement.  I lowered myself down, looking at the coin at its level, watching as it kept on spinning on the table.  What was going on?

I tried pounding a fist on the table.  The coin jumped, but kept spinning when it landed.  I fished one of the magnets off my fridge (a smiling panda, a move-in gift from my mom) and held it near the coin.  It pulled the still-spinning coin towards it, but the coin kept on twirling.

Now this, this was definitely a sign of something.  The universe definitely was trying to send some sort of message.

I just wished I knew what it was telling me.

After another minute, I shook my head, rubbed my eyes, scooped my phone up from the table.  “Whatever,” I groaned, grabbing my jacket off the back of the couch and checking the pocket for the jingle of my keys.  “I’m going to go get that beer anyway.”

Three hours later, considerably more sloshed, I stumbled back up to my apartment, opened the door – and stared.

It was still going.  Still spinning, right there in the middle of the kitchen table.  Peering closer, I noticed that it had worn a little divot in the cheap plastic surface.

If I’d been more sober, maybe I would have wondered more about what was going on, why it kept going.  But I was drunk, three sheets to a wind, and an engineer.

So, what else?  I started tinkering.

Another magnet still made the coin move, hopping out of its little depression in the plastic.  I pulled the coin first onto my hand, marveling at how warm it felt, and then deposited it onto a thick chunk of aluminum I’d stolen from one of our recent builds at work.  I’d intended to turn it in for some cash, but it would work fine as a holder for the coin.

Next, I put some wire around it, hooking it up to a spare lightbulb.  It took a couple seconds, but sure enough, the bulb flickered into life.

I grinned.  Perpetual motion! I thought drunkenly to myself.

I looked around the room.  What else could I do?  What about going the other way?  I had a crappy little weak generator now.  Could I boost the field, get more power out of it?

A few changes to the layout of the wire, and I had an induction coil, pushing more energy into the coin via its own magnetic field.  Normally, of course, this would make a spinning magnet quickly come to a stop as it absorbed its own kinetic energy.  I held my breath.

The coin didn’t stop.  Instead, it spun faster and faster, until it looked almost like a solid sphere of metal – and I realized suddenly that the aluminum block beneath the coin was starting to smoke where it sat on my counter.

Hastily, I whipped the coil off the coin.  It didn’t slow down, but at least the acceleration stopped.

Interesting.  I’d need a bigger heat sink.

It was about this time that my stomach suddenly decided to protest its beer-filled contents, and I abruptly lurched off to the bathroom.  I spent the next hour wrapped around the cool porcelain, and then dragged myself into bed.

The next morning, I opened my eyes to a soft whirring sound.  I blinked, rubbing at my head and wincing at the bright sunlight shining in through my slatted blinds.  Pulling myself out of bed, I stumbled into the kitchen.

It was still there, spinning merrily away.  I hadn’t hallucinated or dreamed the whole thing.  The coin had formed a slight little depression in the aluminum, but it otherwise looked the same.  Still spinning.

I looked at it as I poured myself a cup of coffee, made some eggs (my favorite hangover cure, especially with some Sriracha on them).  I ate slowly, watching the thing spin.

And then, afterwards, I called Sean and Andy.

It took a bit of convincing, but eventually I got them both over to my crappy little apartment.  What else were they going to do on a Saturday morning?  Neither of them had girlfriends, either.

The three of us sat around, staring at the coin.  I carefully transferred it back over to the table, lifting the aluminum block.  I noticed that the coin seemed to have a bit of gyroscopic motion to it, and liked to stay in its little divot on the aluminum even when I tilted the block.

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Sean finally pointed out.  “Conservation of energy-“

“Yeah, but it’s going!” I interrupted him.  “Maybe there’s some weird trick of the universe here, or some neutrino hit it just the right way-“

“It still wouldn’t-“

“Guys, guys,” Andy cut us both off.  “You’re looking at this wrong.”

“How’s that?” Sean asked, sounding grumpy at being told that he was wrong about anything.  Sean hated being wrong.

Andy gestured towards the coin.  “It’s going.  We see that.  But what can we do with it now?”

“We can boost it, if we need more power,” I pointed out, and explained my experiment with the induction coil last night.

Andy nodded.  “So maybe we put the thing in a water tank, rig up an induction coil, get some big-ass heat sinks-“

“Hook the tank up to a generator same idea as nuclear plants-” Sean jumped in, quickly forgetting his previous grumpiness as his engineering brain took over.  “Maybe a few banks of capacitors-“

“Hell, that sounds like free power!” I exclaimed, finishing the other two’s thoughts.  “At least, at one station.  We’ve only got one coin.”

“Yeah – about that,” Sean asked next, glancing over at me and waggling his eyebrows.

We all rushed to my laptop.  Amazon had the magic coins in stock, but it would still take a couple days for shipping.  I ordered two dozen.

My last girlfriend, before she left, told me that my brain was broken.  “Engineering – all you think about is how!” she shouted at me, as she stormed out of my apartment.  At the time, I hadn’t known what she meant.

But now, I started to see.

By that evening, my apartment looked more like an Ace Hardware, or maybe a hardware store that had just played host to a localized tornado.  Wire and chunks of metal lay scattered across the floor, and a large bank of car batteries sat balanced precariously on my living room coffee table.  We’d moved the coin to a larger piece of aluminum, enclosed on all four sides by plexiglass and balanced over a vat of water to absorb any excess heat.

We’d boosted the coin’s speed again, and figured out how to reverse the flow through the coil to drain some of the speed off if we overcharged the thing too much.  Sure enough, thanks to the coin’s magnetic nature, we soon had a charge flowing out, pumping the batteries up to their maximum charge.  Our first voltmeter blew up in a hiss of melting plastic, but we picked up a stronger one, and worked out that we had about 250 volts flowing out of the coin right now.

Each of us had our own ideas for where we should go next.  Andy was still campaigning that we hook it up to the wall outlets, try and run the whole apartment building off of it.  Sean instead felt that we should move the coin somewhere else, protect it.

And me?

I just kept thinking about that package from Amazon, on its way here.  Would the other coins behave the same way?  Was it the spinning method, the location, the nearness of my phone?  I’d done my best to keep my table, chair, and other parts of my kitchen the same, even as the piles of wire built up.

The best part?  That girl, halfway through the day, she texted me back – some insincere apology.  Something about missing my message, being busy, something like that.

I didn’t even see the text alert until two hours later, and didn’t even have enough spare brainpower to think of a reply.  I just tossed my phone aside and returned back to the spinning coin in its new chamber.

That relationship?  No future there.

But this coin, now, this had potential for a very bright future.

[Retrieval] The Vault

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You might want to read this story first.

Standing in the white corridor, Hatchet let his eyes roam around the corners, looking anywhere but at the keypad on the door at the end of the hallway.  One of the scientists bent over the keypad, typing in a complex sequence, while his companion stood by and looked back nervously at Hatchet.

The keypad wasn’t the answer.  The thing was utterly secure; no one could hack through it without leaving evidence behind.  There had to be another way in.

Not much met Hatchet’s wandering eyes, however.  The corridor was empty, the walls and ceiling covered in sheets of aluminum and painted white.  Not even security cameras broke the blank stretch of ceiling.

He’d asked about that, of course.  “We can’t use security cameras,” one of the scientists had explained quickly.  “They could be hacked, leaked.  It’s a security risk.”

The other scientist hadn’t said anything, but Hatchet saw him slide one finger into the collar of his suit’s neck, adjusting its fit slightly.  His face stayed blank, but Hatchet knew the man was sweating.

They didn’t want anyone to ever see what they were doing inside this facility.

With a beep, the keypad lit up in green, and mechanical sounds began to rumble from inside the walls.  Hatchet knew that steel bars were sliding out of the door’s frame, back into their sheaths in the walls.  The process only took a few seconds.

One of the scientists immediately ducked in through the newly opened door; the other lagged behind, waiting for Hatchet.  He didn’t look at the white-coated man as he stepped past, through the heavy door.

On the other side, the room looked like a typical research lab at first glance.  Lab benches were set up in rows, with shelves stacked with equipment along the walls.  Several large apparatuses sat around, centrifuges, incubators, and other devices too complex for Hatchet to identify.  Just like the corridor outside, almost everything was painted a clean, sterile white.

Making sure to keep his hands in his pockets, Hatchet strolled slowly into the room, never letting his eyes settle in one place.  He noted the bars over the vents, the lack of windows, the steel-plated door set into the opposite wall.

“And through there?” he asked, nodding towards it.

“Storage,” the scientist behind him answered shortly.

Hatchet stepped over to the door.  The steel door was also secured by a keypad, but on this door the steel rods were visible, standing up from the floor and emerging down from the ceiling to block the door from opening.  Reaching up, Hatchet tapped one of them.

They felt very secure.

“As you can see, completely secure,” the scientist in front of him said.

The consultant shrugged.  “Maybe.  Open it.”

The scientist in front of him glanced over his shoulder, back at his partner.  “Why do you need to open it?” the man behind him asked.

“The crystals were stored in there, yes?  So that’s where the theft happened.  I need to see the inside.”

Neither man moved.  “You can’t go in there,” the scientist behind Hatchet said.

The consultant silently counted to five in his head, and then shrugged.  “Okay then.  Thank you for your time, and I’ll have my bill sent to you within three business days.”  He turned, heading for the exit.

Inside his head, he only made it to three.  “Wait!” the rear scientist called out, his voice filled with stress.  “Okay, we’ll open it – but you have to promise not to mention it to anyone!”

Hatchet didn’t let a single hint of a smile appear on his lips as he stopped, turning back around.  He waited, and the scientists once again busied themselves keying in numbers on the access panel.

With another hiss, the inner vault door opened.  Once again, Hatchet stepped inside, sandwiched between his escorts.

The room was small, and reminded the consultant of a bank vault.  The walls were lined with locked metal doors, presumably with a space behind each for storing various items.

“Perfectly contained,” the scientist in front of Hatchet said.

Running his fingers over the steel doors, Hatchet slowly walked around the small inner room.  Three quarters of the way around, he stopped, tapping on one of the doors.

“The crystals were in here,” he said.

Both men started, jerking as their eyes went wide.  “How did you know?” asked the first scientist.

Hatchet didn’t reply.  Instead, he pulled out a small metal tool from inside his jacket and slipped it into the lock.  Both men raised their voices in a cacophony of objections, but those died away when the little metal door popped open.

“After a lock’s been picked, it’s more worn down and easier to open again,” Hatchet commented, only glancing briefly inside the open, empty container before pushing the door shut again.

“But that still doesn’t explain how the thief got in here,” the second scientist said, as his companion continued to gape at the open door.  “He couldn’t have gotten past the keypads-“

“He didn’t,” Hatchet interrupted.  Reaching down, the consultant slid his picks into another door, this one closer to the floor.  He opened it, and then stepped up on top of the door, using it as a step to allow him to reach the ceiling.

One of the aluminum panels there had a loose edge.  When he pulled down, the whole thing opened up with a clatter.  Up above, in the newly opened space, all three men could see darkness stretching away; the opening led into the crawl space above the metal ceiling of the lab.

The second scientist was the first to regain his voice.  “I don’t see how this helps you get the crystals back,” he spoke up.  He probably knew how petulant he sounded, but he didn’t let that stop him.

“It does,” Hatchet replied, crossing his arms as he looked up into the dark hole.  “Now, I know what sort of thief I’m looking for.”

“And what sort of thief is that?”

“I’ll tell you when I find him.”

First Contact

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A thousand cameras followed the alien saucer as it dropped smoothly out of the sky, down towards the front lawn in front of the White House.

Frowning, I hefted the silver flask in my hand.  I usually made more of an attempt to keep the flask hidden from Arthur, my producer standing just behind Charlie the cameraman, but I couldn’t manage to exert the effort tonight.

After all, all of us were feeling pretty distracted.

Right now, the flask was nearly empty, I noted with distaste.  Of course, maybe that distaste was from the remaining little bits of brandy washing around my mouth.  I capped the flask and stuck it back inside my suit jacket.

Across from me, Arthur was punching Charlie’s shoulder, making the cameraman frown.  “Are you getting this?  Tell me you’re getting this!” my producer shouted in that annoying squeal he used when he got too excited.

“Yuh, boss,” Charlie grunted back.  “Stop hitting, you’re making the camera bounce, yuh?”

Admittedly, this was a hell of a momentous moment.  The first ever contact with aliens was happening right now, and I was one of the reporters on ground zero.

We’d known that they were coming for a good week, now.  The alien saucer, although not big by interstellar measurements (“Practically just a planet hopping ship!” one of the so-called experts had dismissed it on a CrossFire program, as though he was some sort of authority on alien space ships), was more than big enough to show up on our high-powered radar.

Besides, they’d been thoughtful enough to broadcast a countdown clock to the time of their landing.

For the last week, the whole world had been afire with conflicting theories.  We weren’t alone in the universe!  But were these visitors going to be friendly – or hostile?  Were we about to receive incredible insights into the very fabric of the universe, or were we about to be captured, enslaved, or maybe just annihilated without a second thought?

No one knew.  And given the average level of panic in the world right now, I felt that I was owed a flask’s worth of brandy.

Little white lights around the edge of the alien flying saucer’s rim twinkled as it slowed down, gently descending down to the lawn.  If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I would have guessed that it was just CGI – and not even a good attempt at that, I thought distantly to myself.  This looked like a prop straight out of an old eighties B-movie.

As the saucer settled down onto the lawn, three landing struts sliding out to support it, Charlie panned over to capture the international delegation standing by, trying to not look like they were about to collectively shit themselves in fear.  President Trump stood out in front, his ridiculous hair whipping back and forth in the night’s breeze, sticking his chest out and looking utterly ridiculous.  Putin and a host of European leaders I didn’t recognize stood slightly behind him, each wearing his own unique expression of barely repressed panic.

Finally, the ship had landed.  The saucer had been emitting a soft ticking noise, perhaps the sound of its propulsion.  This ticking ended, and for a second, there was only the sound of the breeze in my ears.

From beneath the saucer, a ramp slid out, smoothly descending down to the ground.  As the ramp made contact with the dirt, the alien emerged.

“Wish I had some better lighting,” Charlie grunted to himself from behind the camera.

No one else spoke.  We just stared at the alien.

It was small, maybe four feet tall.  It had gray skin, an oversized head, and two large, oval-shaped black eyes.  It wore a single-piece garment made of some sort of stretchy blue fabric.

It looked like an utter joke.

“God, maybe those eighties movie makers were onto something,” I muttered to myself as we all stared.

Clearly, the President and other dignitaries had been also caught off-guard by the alien’s appearance.  Most of them just stood with their mouths hanging open, gasping and staring.

The alien peered at the leaders, and then turned and surveyed the reporters and cameramen standing another pace back.  “Hello?  Is this Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, Planet designation XF319-42-384, sub-Sol 3?” it asked.

For a moment, I nearly burst out laughing.  The thing sounded like Arthur after an extra hit of helium.

The President and other leaders still hadn’t managed to find their voices.  “Uh, we call it Earth,” some wag called out.

That voice sounded familiar.  It wasn’t until Art gasped behind me that I realized that I’d been the one to speak.

The little alien glanced over at me.  “Earth?” it repeated in that squeaky little voice.  “And are you a representative of the dominant species?”

“Uh, I guess?”  Why the hell wasn’t anyone else speaking up?  What was going on?  It was mostly the brandy keeping me upright at this point.

“Great!”  The alien turned and tottered over to me, holding something out.  “Here you are!”

The little gray creature held some sort of computer disk in its hands.  I took it, totally not knowing what was going on.  This was the momentous first exchange of technology between us and another civilized race.  This would go down in the history books.

The disk in my hands looked exactly like a three-and-a-half inch floppy.

I saw the little alien frown as I stared down dumbly at the object.  “Is this not right?  We understood that this was a compatible data format,” it stammered.  I had no experience reading emotions into a squeaky little munchkin voice, but it sounded a little nervous.

“Um, no,” I managed.  “We’ve got these.”

“Great!  Then just post it back to us within a Galactic cycle, please.”  The alien turned and began to totter back towards the ramp.

“Wait!”  The little alien glanced back, and I realized once again, a second too late, that I’d opened my damn mouth.  The words were already coming, however, and I couldn’t stop them.  “What is this?  What’s on this disk?”

“Oh.”  The alien did something that I could almost convince myself was a shrug.  “Galactic census survey.  Remember, just drop it on a rocket, and we’ll pick it up.  Have a good cycle!”

Finally, as the ramp disappeared back into the saucer, the politicians and leaders of the world found their voices, all of them shouting and rushing forward, waving their arms.  I could hear Arthur shouting something, and people looked to be rushing towards me, their eyes locked on that disk.

All I heard, however, was Charlie let out a disappointed grunt.  “Nuh, he’s gonna look totally washed out,” the cameraman commented to himself.  “Shoulda brought a better filter.”

[Elements] Be meets Al, K, and V

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For reference: https://imgur.com/gallery/OawUY

“Through here!” Alli called to me, her voice barely audible over the rumble of machinery.  “We’re close now!”

“Close to what?” I shouted back, although I knew that it wasn’t of any use.  The girl had already dashed too far ahead to hear my response, and even though she’d disappeared out of view, I saw a door fly open ahead of me.

Shaking my head, I hurried after her.  What we were even doing here, in this dangerous factory, wasn’t clear to me.  But this girl was my only contact, and I had to follow her.

On either side of the narrow walkway, massive vats of molten liquid bubbled, sending heat up in waves through the still, heavy air.  The walkway had rails on the sides to prevent anyone from tumbling in, but those still seemed like scant protection against the crushing heat.

Hurrying along the walkway before that heat could get to me, I saw the door that Alli had pulled open still standing ajar.  It looked as though she’d broken a lock that had been holding it shut, but that didn’t surprise me.  Despite looking in appearance like a normal high school girl, albeit it one with pure silver hair, Alli was much stronger than she let on.

Aluminum, I reminded myself as I ducked in through the door.  Lightweight and strong.

“Hey, guys!” I heard Alli call out in this new chamber we’d entered.  “I found a new one!”

“What!?” came an immediate reply from a male voice, delivered in sharp and disapproving tones.  “And you brought her here?  Do you know what a betrayal of trust this is-“

“Oh, can it, James,” snapped a new voice, a deeper female voice with tones of mingled annoyance and amusement.  “You react too strongly to everything.”

I stared around as I entered this new chamber.  Huge steel apparatuses sat in two lines running down the length of the chamber; they looked like molds of some sort, perhaps for the molten metals in the previous chamber.  From one far corner, I could see a purple glow rising up, stronger than the orange lights that illuminated the rest of the chamber.

Alli stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips as she glared around.  “At least come out and meet her!” she called out, directing her voice deeper into the room.

I slowly moved in closer to the other girl.  Alli at least seemed to have some idea of what was going on.  “Alli, what are we doing here?” I asked.

Before she could answer, however, the purple glow grew stronger – and I saw a man step out from behind one of the huge metal molds.  Staring at him, I felt my mouth drop open.

The man looked a bit like some sort of science geek – He wore jeans, a tight black sweater, and a pair of rectangular frameless glasses.  He didn’t have an ounce of spare fat on him, and even his face looked to be all lines and angles.  His mouth was also set in a thin line, frowning at me.

But that wasn’t why I stared.

The man held one palm out, his fingers open, and in that palm danced a guttering purple flame!  Some of the purple glow radiated out from that flame, burning on nothing, but the rest seemed to come from his very body.

He glared back at me.  “So, Aluminum, who is this and why shouldn’t I burn her to ashes?”

My eyes went wide at that threat, but Alli just grinned back at him.  “James, this is Ellen – although now maybe we’ll call her Beryllium!”

“Well, well,” called out the other voice I’d heard, the deeper, more mature female voice.  “So you found one of the Top Ten?”

I turned to this new speaker.  The blonde-haired woman who emerged from behind another mold looked to be in her thirties, but she couldn’t have stood more than five feet tall, even in the heavy steel-toed boots she wore.  The rest of her was covered up by a bulky navy-colored jumpsuit, and she held a large wrench in one hand with a casualness that suggested she often put it to use.  Now examining me, she crossed her arms and regarded me flatly.

“It doesn’t matter which element she is – she still shouldn’t have come here without us knowing-” James began again hotly, but this new blonde-haired woman turned to him and raised the wrench threateningly, and he reluctantly shut his mouth.

“Ellen, how much of this do you understand?” she asked me, turning back to me.

I threw up my hands helplessly.  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I confessed honestly.

She nodded, as if this was what she’d expected.  “Well, let’s start off with some introductions,” she said, as if this gathering in a factory was nothing new.  “You’ve met Alli, who’s got Aluminum.  James over there is Potassium, and I’m Lena, and I’m Vanadium.”

I just shook my head blankly.  “I still don’t understand,” I groaned.

Lena glanced over at Alli, raising her eyebrows slightly.  “You said she’s new; how new?” she asked the silver-haired girl.

Alli grinned.  “Brand new.”

Despite my silver-haired guide’s grin, Lena just sighed.  She turned back to me, shaking her head a little.

“Okay, Ellen, or whatever your name is, listen up,” she said, in a lecturing tone.  “Here’s the deal.  You know the periodic table of the elements, don’t you?”

Staring back at her, I nodded wordlessly.

“Well, out there in the world, there are a hundred-odd people who are a lot more connected with that table than anyone else knows.  Each of them can control a certain element – but has some effects of that element controlling them, too.”  Lena lifted the wrench.  “Take me, for example.  Vanadium – it’s used to harden steel, so I tend to be most comfortable around steel tools, in places like this.”  She slammed the wrench down on her thigh in the jumpsuit, producing no measurable effect.  “It also makes me a bit harder, too.”

“Now, take James over there,” Lena went on, nodding at the still-grimacing man with the purple flame.  “He’s got a reactive element, and he can put that reactivity to use.  But as you’ve already seen from his temper, it’s a double-edged sword.”

“So what about me?” I asked, already feeling overwhelmed.

Lena shrugged.  “You’ve got to figure out your own element,” she said shortly.  “But I’d start figuring it out soon.”

“Why’s that?”

Alli started to open her mouth, but Lena spoke first.  “Because someone out there is hunting us,” she said simply.  “We don’t know who, and we don’t know why.  But someone out there is killing off the elements.

“And you could be next.”

[The Kung War] The Diplomat at War, Part I

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If he ignored the lurking sense of uselessness that sulked constantly at the back of his mind, Nils told himself, it was a great day.

To be fair, he wasn’t wrong.  The yellow sun overhead cast down its gentle warmth on civilized Ehftia, and a gentle breeze blew across the glassy walkways.  This close to one of the warm freshwater oceans, there was always a slight little hint of moisture and freshness in the air.  The thread-thin glassine supports that held up the walkways in suspension, high above the ground, vibrated tightly as the air blew through them.  Nils was slightly shy of his fortieth birthday, but he still appreciated the mildly reduced gravity of Ehftia.

It was, Nils reminded himself, the dream appointment of any diplomat.  He ought to be thrilled at this posting.

And yet, try as he might, he couldn’t shake that little sense of useless melancholy.

Reaching his building, Nils passed through the open doorway.  The Ehft, he’d found, were not big believers in the need for solid doors.  And really, why should they bother?  Here on their home world, there were no bugs to swat away, no hazardous weather to keep out.  The most that the Ehft ever received was a light shower of rain, and they cleverly angled and curved their buildings to blow that rain right past the entrances.

Of course, bathrooms had been a rather sore spot, Nils thought to himself with a little chuckle.  Xenobiology was back in fashion as a popular field of study, but many potential xenobiologists quickly changed their tune when they realized that one of the most pressing problems was designing a multi-species bathroom.

Here in his building, fortunately enough, Nils had managed to convince the Ehft that doors were necessary.  “A long-standing custom of our species that must be respected,” he recalled telling one of the meter-tall little birdlike aliens.

“Morning, Nils!  Anything new on the docket?”  Charlie, Nils’s second in command, greeted him cheerily as he entered the office.

Nils shook his head at the younger man behind the desk.  “Afraid not, Charlie.  No update from home.  Maintain diplomatic relations, don’t promise anything.”

Charlie’s grin spread a little wider, and the young man kicked back in his seat, propping his long, lanky legs up on the desk.  “Sounds good to me, boss.  Maybe I’ll cut out early, go try and convince the birds that surfing’s a worthwhile hobby.”

The young man was truly irrepressible.  Nils had watched Charlie attempt several times to convince the Ehft that riding a long, flattened spar of wood along the gentle breakers that swept into the bay of Apteryx was fun.

The Ehft, smartly enough, had watched politely, clucking their beaks softly in respectful acknowledgement, and then kept their distance.

Stepping into his office, Nils dropped down into the chair behind his own desk, running his eyes over the mostly empty surface in front of him.  His nameplate caught his eye, and he ran a finger over it to wipe off any nonexistent dust.

“Nils Ekstrom, Displomatic Science Policy Advisor to the Ehft,” he read off aloud, unable to keep a note of sarcasm from creeping into his voice.  “Sure, Tomlinson.  Whatever you say.”

He dropped the nameplate back down with another sigh.  He could still remember, almost three years ago now, when the general himself had showed up at his office to deliver the news of his “promotion.”

At the time, of course, Nils hadn’t even hesitated in accepting the offer.  Humanity’s fledgling little empire had just made contact with the Ehft, and the whole world was abuzz with energy and excitement.  The first alien species still to be alive when discovered!  And even better, the Ehft had similar interplanetary capabilities as the humans, and appeared friendly!

When General Tomlinson came to Nils with his offer, the whole world had been gripped with Ehft fever, if there was such a thing.  Plush toys of little Ehft filled the markets, and speculation of joint ventures filled all hours of television programming.  Just imagine, pundits cried out shrilly, what could be accomplished through the combination of Terran and Ehft technology!

Now, sitting in his empty office with nothing to do, Nils couldn’t help scoffing to himself.  “Fat lot of nothing came from that,” he grumbled to himself.

It was true, unfortunately enough.  Sure, the Ehft had figured out how to do some crazy tricks with magnets, and their spacefaring ships used a different drive propulsion system than Terran explorers, but there were no great leaps in knowledge to be drawn from these differences.  Indeed, the Ehft quickly recognized that the Terran ion-acceleration drive was a superior system to their own magnetic flux drives, and began adapting their own systems to mimic the Terran model.

The commerce angle, another highly touted area of speculation by the pundits a couple of years back, had also fizzled into nothing.  Ehftia turned out to be fairly poor in rare elements, and the Ehft technology didn’t show much advantage over Terran inventions.  The Ehft also simply weren’t big consumers; instead of striving to outdo each other with bigger and more expensive gadgets and toys, they preferred to spend their free time engaged in freewheeling discussions and philosophical ponderings.

So far, Nils thought blackly to himself, even the most conniving Terran entrepreneurs hadn’t figured out how to establish a big sales base among the Ehft.

Over the last twenty-four months or so, communication and travel between the Ehft and the Terrans had largely declined.  Only a couple of supply ships still bothered to take the long detour to Ehftia, and they mostly just carried a handful of tourist sightseers.  The Terran government now seemed to be focusing on expanding in towards the galaxy’s center, moving away from the Ehft so as to best avoid any territorial disputes.

Dragging himself out of his thoughts of history, Nils forced himself to look through the light handful of documents on his desk.  One of the Ehft kitchens wanted to try setting up a food import program, exchanging some of the bland but nutritious foodstuffs produced here for some classic Terran spices.  Nils tried unsuccessfully to muster up some sort of enthusiasm for the program, but he just couldn’t quite pull it off.

His roaming eyes fell on the only decoration he’d brought to his office – an old classic Terran pistol, hanging in a wall-mounted glass case.  Before he’d left the military service to take a position in the diplomatic corps, where he was less likely to be shot at, he’d been one of the best pistol shots, winning most of his unit’s competitions.

But there was no point in getting lost in misty-eyed recollection, Nils told himself with a shake of his head.  Aside from Charlie, he was the only human in the city, quite possibly the whole planet.  And while the Ehft were always polite enough, the little bird-like aliens didn’t really understand the idea of friendly competition.

Besides, he thought to himself, allowing himself a brief grin, the Ehft didn’t really possess the necessary evolutionary appendages for shooting.  They were very dexterous with their beaks and taloned toes, but they didn’t gravitate towards the tool use like humans.

Nils looked back down at the other documents for his appraisal, but the buzz of his holocomm, the Ehft version of a telephone, came to his rescue.  “Head Terran diplomat Nils Ekstrom,” he said as he hit the button to take the call.

“Yes, Diplomat Ekstrom,” replied the Ehft voice at the other end, managing quite passable Terran English.  Nils was glad he wouldn’t have to strain his voice with the squawking Ehft tongue.  “This is Khal, flight leader at the spaceport.  I have an incoming shuttle, from the Terran freighter *Spaceman from Pluto*, requesting to speak with you.”

Nils frowned.  He wasn’t expecting any messages, and didn’t recognize the ship’s name.  “Uh, sure.  Put them through.”

A pause for a moment.  “That is, you wish for me to connect you now?” Khal asked.  Clearly, the Ehft didn’t quite understand all the subtleties of English quite yet.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant.  Connect me.”

The Ehft made the little beak-click that signaled assent, and the line crackled with static for a moment.  After a few seconds, the static shifted.  “Hello?  Is this another person?” called out a female voice at the other end.

“This is Nils Ekstrom, the Diplomatic Science Policy Advisor to the Ehft – do you have a message-“ Nils started, but the voice cut him off before he could finish.

“Are you in charge?”  Nils couldn’t be sure, given the rather rough comm connection, but he thought the woman on the other end sounded off, like something was wrong.

“Erm.”  Nils had an unfortunate streak of honesty – not the best trait in a diplomat.  “I’m in charge, but only because there’s not really anyone else here.  Just me and Charlie.”

The woman at the other end of the connection let out what sounded like a huff of exasperation.  “Ugh, listen.  I’ve got secure information, something that I can’t send over a comm connection like this.  I’m headed down to the spaceport now – can you get here by the time I land?”

The spaceport wasn’t far.  Nils glanced once more at his meager pile of diplomatic duties, and then rolled his eyes.  Who would even report him for leaving his post?  Charlie certainly wouldn’t say anything.  “Yeah, I’ll be there when you touch down,” he promised.

“Great.  Get there now.”  The woman on the other end of the line hung up.

For a moment, Nils stared down at the little black box of the holocomm.  Had he grown too used to the overly polite Ehft?  Were all humans this uncouth, and he simply hadn’t noticed before?

After a second, however, he hauled himself up from his chair and headed out of the office, towards the spaceport across the gently waving glass bridges.  He sent one last glance at the displayed pistol in his office as he headed out, but he didn’t even consider taking it, removing it from its case.  What danger could he face here in the heart of the civilized Ehft homeworld, in their capitol city?

*****

Nils had anticipated that he would beat the descending shuttle to the spaceport by several minutes, but the shuttle was already touching down as he arrived.  From the look and sound of the ship, the pilot had been in a hell of a hurry, he considered.  The whole underside of the shuttle, coated in heat shielding, glowed a dull orange with excess heat, and the engines crackled and hissed as the exhaust vents cooled.  The pilot must have been redlining the thing the whole way down, Nils thought to himself.

He hurried towards the landing pad as the shuttle’s door opened.  A blonde-haired woman poked her head out, her expression set in a frown, which only deepened as she spotted Nils.

Not waiting for the shuttle’s little ramp to extend out, she hopped down to the ground and stalked towards Nils.  “Are you that diplomat from the comm?” she demanded, not waiting for any introduction.

No, Nils thought to himself, it couldn’t be that all humans were this rude, and he’d merely grown too accustomed to the polite Ehft.  This woman just happened to be especially impolite.  “Yes, Nils Ekstrom,” he greeted her, holding out his hand.  “And you are-“

“Sarah Walker, *Spaceman from Pluto* captain,” the woman replied, giving his hand a perfunctory shake, looking as though she was fulfilling a particularly distasteful favor.  “Listen, this is important.  Can you get a line open to Earth?”

Nils blinked.  “And what,” he asked, drawing on his diplomatic stiffness, “is this regarding?”

The woman, Sarah, just stared back at him flatly.  “We’re under attack,” she responded, glaring.

Again, the diplomat had to blink as he tried to wrap his head around these words.  “Excuse me?  Under attack?  Who?  From whom?”

Sarah shook her head, muttering something under her breath.  Nils didn’t quite catch the words, but he correctly ascertained their meaning.  “I don’t know,” she admitted tersely.  “But I just came from Idris, and someone there was transmitting an emergency SOS.”

Idris.  Nils knew the name.  It was a small agricultural planet, owned by the Ehft and in their territory, but recently opened up to human settlers for expansion.  Fairly remote from Ehftia, even more distant from Earth.  “And this SOS stated something about an attack, maybe a failure of some equipment?” he asked, hoping his tone would soothe Sarah.

It didn’t seem to be doing the trick.  “Not just an equipment failure.  An attack.  An alien attack.”

”It couldn’t have been some kind of miscommunication from the Ehft-“

“It was in English – from a Terran settler.  She witnessed it firsthand.  They got her husband.”  Sarah’s eyes flashed, daring him to challenge her again.

Nils paused again – but this time, his brain was racing.

His first thought was that this sounded like it was definitely above his pay grade.

His second thought, however, was that he didn’t really have much choice but to handle it.  He could escalate the information back to Earth, of course, but it would be days before he heard a response.  At the moment, he was the highest ranked human within several light-years.

“Okay,” he said, surprising himself with the calmness of his voice.  “Can you come back to my office and give a full report?”

Sarah nodded, reaching up and brushing a few strands of her blonde hair back behind an ear.  “Yeah, sure,” she said.  “It’s not like I’m losing money sitting on a shipment.  After getting that SOS, I figured I needed to haul ass back here and pass on the message.”

“Probably smartest,” Nils agreed, gesturing to the freighter captain.  “Let’s head up to my office, and I can get all the details.”

As he led the stressed-looking woman up to his building, Nils eyed her, trying to get a good assessment of her.  She looked to be in her early to mid thirties, perhaps, he guessed, although age was difficult to even calculate for freighter merchants.  A trim figure, suggesting she kept in shape on her long flights.  That spoke to inner strength, perhaps less likely to lie.

In any case, Nils pointed out to himself, what would be a reason to lie, especially with a lie so fantastic!  He tried to wrap his head around this almost unbelievable new piece of information, assuming for the moment that this was true.

Someone had launched an attack on Idris?  Some other alien race, not only previously unknown to humans and the Ehft, but hostile?

Nils didn’t usually let his brain wander off on flights of fancy.  Even in his office, with very little to consume his time, he did his best to keep his mind on current challenges.  He knew that daydreaming could quickly mire him in deep trouble.  Fantasies didn’t belong in his mind, his job, or his life.

Now, however, an idea that, only minutes before, he might have described as fantasy was suddenly becoming very real.  He didn’t know how trustworthy Sarah Walker might be, but surely she’d had the presence of mind to bring the transmitted logs from Idris.

He’d pass this on to his superiors, Nils decided, glancing sidelong at the woman’s resolute expression.  After that, this would be out of his hands.  He’d probably have to interface with the Ehft, of course, but surely the Terran United Worlds would send someone with better skills to handle this new issue.

Nils led Sarah into his building, but as he stepped inside, the diplomat couldn’t help glancing up at the sky, his expression concerned.  Nothing looked out of place among the soft, fluffy, thin clouds, but he didn’t feel comforted.

If Sarah Walker was right, something – something dangerous – was lurking up amid the stars.

Hidden – but perhaps not for much longer.

[The Kung War] First Contact

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Frisson (n): a sudden, passing sensation of excitement; a shudder of emotion; thrill

Michael Frederick paused as he strolled along the road, his nose wrinkling slightly.  Something smelled off, he thought to himself.  He took a deep breath of air, and frowned as the word “acrid” wandered through his mind.

For a moment, he glanced down at the muddy road beneath his feet.  “Road” was an optimistic term for it, he thought to himself with a touch of wryness.  The dirt track leading back to his little town of Deven Ride was splashed with puddles and ruts from farmer’s wagons, adding to the already thick layer of dirt coating his boots.

All around him, the scene was quiet, pastoral.  The rolling hills of Idris around him undulated gently, the nearly four foot high crops swaying back and forth in the soft breeze.  If Mike ignored the second moon glowing faintly even in the brightness of the early afternoon sky, he could pretend that he still stood back in the fields of his childhood home in Iowa.

His farmer’s eyes instinctively scanned the horizon.  There!  Up ahead of him, a thin plume of smoke rose up above the crops.  The wind carried the hint of smoky ash towards him.

“Damn,” Mike cursed, quickening his pace slightly.  Deven Ride, the little village that he and Kate called home lay in that direction.  His boots splashed in the shallow puddles as he stomped along, fighting the sucking mud.

Could something have caught fire?  Usually the Ehftians were pretty good at getting any accidental fires put out pretty quickly.  A necessary skill, considering that they still built most structures out of wood.  On Idris, the trees grew quickly, and their small community needed far more material than they could fabricate with the tech they’d brought over.

At first, Mike had balked at the idea of settling on this new world.  “I’m not a settler,” he had protested, standing over the kitchen table in their cramped little apartment. “And you know how aliens make me uncomfortable.”

“But you are a farmer,” Kate had replied serenely, looking as calm and composed as she sat at the table as Mike had ever seen her.  “And I know you’re miserable here, in the city.  You miss gazing out at fields of crops.”

Mike shook his head, but they both knew that Kate was correct.  Even now, in the midst of this debate, he felt a surge of affection towards his wife.  She was the best thing to happen to him, and he still sometimes couldn’t believe that, when she took his diner order all those years ago, he’d managed to summon up the courage to ask for her number.

A farmer and a waitress, he had thought to himself, shaking his head ruefully as he settled down at the kitchen table across from his wife.  Two of the most unlikely choices for interplanetary settlers that anyone could pick.

“Okay,” he finally gave in, after a long sigh.  “Tell me about this crazy plan of yours.”

And Kate told him.

The planet was twenty-seven light years away, discovered several centuries ago and given the name Idris, after the prophet.  Humanity knew it was habitable, but Idris’s borders only recently opened up for immigration.  “The Ehft technically control the planet, but they’re opening it up to us as a sign of goodwill,” his wife read from the pamphlet she’d brought home.  “It’s a little milder climate than Earth, slightly higher gravity.  And it’s got great soil, a lot like our own planet.”

There had been more debate, of course, but Mike and Kate both already knew the final outcome.  Kate had made up her mind, and although a strong man in many respects, Mike was perenially powerless to argue against her.

Now, four years later, he looked back on that decision as one of the best in his life.

Sure, settling on Idris hadn’t been easy.  The Ehft, stocky meter-tall feathery creatures that reminded Mike of old drawings of Kiwi birds, proved to be friendly enough.  Their beaks gave their speech a curious clipped accent, but they quickly mastered Galactic English, and Mike even picked up some phrases in their curious squawking tongue.  He sometimes felt like a giant when he passed through a crowd of the short little aliens, but they were always polite and cordial in their greetings.

Mike reflected on the strange little aliens for a moment.  They weren’t what the farmer would call “his people,” that much was certain.  But they were agreeable, in their own little way.  They always inquired about Kate, and now asked about little Ethan’s health as well.  Mike always smiled when he replied.  In some way, the little birdlike Ehft reminded him of his own child.

After some thought, he and his wife chose a plot of land on the northern continent, inland but near a river.  The climate proved as mild as promised, and although fluctuating rain levels sometimes made him worry about their crops, the river’s irrigation proved a blessing.  His house sat in the little village of Deven Ride, a larger mother bird surrounded by the smaller Ehftian dome-shaped huts.

That little village was just over the next hill.  Still eyeing that plume of smoke with concern, Mike picked up his pace, cutting through the nearest field and climbing up until he could see over the waving crops.

As he crested the hill, he stopped, staring.

The village hadn’t been laid out in any real order.  The Ehft tended to add more homes as their population grew, spreading out in all directions without any true pattern.  But they had made sure to leave a central green, where the Ehft youngsters flapped and bounced off each other.  Mike and Kate imagined that Ethan would soon be running about as well, once he grew steadier on his chubby feet.  Normally, the village reminded Mike of a cluster of mushrooms.

But now, those mushrooms were smoldering and scattered.  Something must have happened, Mike thought blankly to himself as he stared down, trying to make sense of the chaos in front of him.  A meteor strike of some sort, perhaps?

Several of the Ehftian domes looked flattened, completely demolished.  Others looked shattered, burnt and blackened.  Several of the round homes still burned, sending up that plume of smoke.

Where were the Ehft? Mike thought wildly, taking another step down the hill towards the village.  Surely, they would be hurrying to extinguish those fires!

But his eyes fell on an object in the middle of the village and he stopped, staring.

A large, bulbous shape sat in the middle of the destruction, its oval shape distorted by strange blobby growths.  Several short rods protruded from some of those blisters, and with a thrill of terror, Mike realized that he was looking at some sort of armed spaceship.

The ship didn’t look like any he’d seen, either Ehftian or Terran.  But who else could it be?

Movement suddenly caught Mike’s eye.  There!  An Ehft came scurrying out of the wreckage of one of the huts, sprinting across the charred ground.

Mike started to call out, but as his mouth opened, some thrown object shot out from between the huts, and the Ehft stumbled and collapsed with a cry.  As Mike stared in confusion and horror, a new creature emerged from behind one of the huts, advancing on the injured little birdlike alien.

This new creature stood on two legs, like Mike, with a bipedal body, but that was where the similarities ended.  Instead of two arms, it had four, and it looked almost unnaturally thin.  In one of its four arms, it brandished a nasty-looking knife, which it kept pointed at the whimpering Ehft.

Invaders!  Mike’s mind still reeled, but he crouched back, down amid the cover of the plants around him.  The Ehft whimpered again, prompting the attacker to deliver a savage kick.  It made some sort of noise, a harsh scraping sound like nails on a chalkboard, and then raised the long knife in its hands.  Standing over the injured Ehft, it lifted the blade high.

Mike tore his eyes away, but he still heard the crunch and the organic sound that followed.

It still didn’t make sense!  Some sort of unknown alien race, attacking out of the blue?  And why pick their little farming community on Idris?  There was no military presence here, no valuable strategic base.

Confusion weighed heavily on Mike’s mind – but beneath it, he felt a rising tide of burning, furious anger.  The little bird couldn’t have meant any harm!  And this alien had butchered it without a thought!

He heard another squawk, and dragged his attention back down at the ruins of the village.  The six-limbed alien had advanced on one of the still-standing huts, knocking down the door.  Another Ehft scurried outside, clearly cringing away from the weapon in the attacker’s hands.

More movement danced around this Ehft’s legs, and Mike’s blood suddenly turned to ice in his veins as he squinted.  There were chicks, little Ehft youngsters, clinging to their mother’s legs!

It didn’t seem to make a difference to the attacker.  The sword’s blade flashed again, and the Ehft collapsed.  The chicks squealed in alarm and fear, trying to cluster up against their fallen parent.  The alien just grunted, bringing its blade up again for another slaughtering strike.

The boiling anger overflowed.  Without thought, Mike was on his feet, charging forward.  Aliens or not, the little chicks were helpless!  And this attacker was going to slaughter them?  Never!

The six-limbed alien glanced up at the sound of his pounding footsteps, but Mike was moving too quickly for the alien to react.  It tried to bring the blade around, but Mike tackled it, his weight bringing them both to the ground.

Those four limbs scrabbled at Mike, but his vision was edged with red, and he barely felt as slashes cut through his clothes.  He slammed an elbow down, grinning with bitter, humorless satisfaction as something crunched beneath the blow.

His questing hand closed on something hard, something of cool metal.  The blade slid into his hand awkwardly, but he brought it around, slamming it over and over into the creature beneath him until its spasms ceased.

Mike rose up uncertainly to his feet.  The Ehft youngsters had scattered, probably out into the fields.  He stared around at the burning village, suddenly feeling overwhelmed.  He glanced down at the six-limbed alien at his feet, but the creature sprawled, clearly dead.  No creature, human or alien, could survive with its chest shattered like that.

His thoughts felt like sludge, mired and lost in fog.  The blade, still clutched in his hand, felt heavy and useless.

He stood in a waking nightmare.  All around him, little Ehft lay in motionless piles of feathers, while their homes and structures burned.

And then, piercing down to his very soul, he heard the scream.

This wasn’t the squawking cry of an Ehft.  This scream was uniquely human, the shriek of a woman in mortal danger.

Kate.

His heart stopped, and all conscious thought ceased inside the Terran’s mind.

*

The two Kung cautiously entered the house.  This building seemed larger than the little huts surrounding it.  They didn’t anticipate trouble, but both clutched their scimitari in their more powerful upper hands.

Outside, their companions were probably cutting down the last of the little bird-creatures that populated this planet.  There was little honor in killing such weak and worthless opponents, but their duty was to exterminate.  And perhaps, this Kung considered hopefully, this larger building would contain a chieftain of some sort, whose death would bring them more honor.

There!  One of the Kung caught a hint of motion, and leapt forward.  His kick shattered the closed door, and the sentient on the other side let out a loud cry and shrank back.

No bird-creature, this!  Larger, the Kung observed, nearly as tall as he stood.  But flabby, with none of his deadly thinness.  Only two arms, not four.  Pale skin, clutching what looked like a smaller version of itself to its chest.  The smaller, perhaps a juvenile, stared at the Kung with large, watery eyes.

The creature let out another scream, trying to back away from the Kung.  No fighter, this one.  Not worth much honor.  But the Kung were here to purge these lesser sentients.  He raised his scimitari and advanced.

From behind, the Kung heard a pounding sound, drawing closer.  Something approaching?  His companion turned, brandishing the knife and watching the door.

Something burst in, slamming into the Kung nearer to the door with a roar of deep-throated rage.  It yelled something, but even if the Kung could have understood the language, the words blended together into a cry of raw, unhinged emotion.

“I’ll kill you I’ll kill youkillyoukillyoukillkillkill you I’ll kill you kill you I’ll kill you-“

It was another one of these flabby two-armed alien creatures!  Larger and more muscular than the cowering specimen – a male, perhaps?  But even as the Kung drew this connection, his fellow slumped back, as the screaming alien slammed a scimitari over and over into his fellow Kung’s carapace.

Grinning, the Kung turned towards this new threat, hefting his own scimitari.  This, now, this was a fight that promised honor!  He squared off, one blade forward to defend, the other drawn back and poised to strike.

This screaming, raging alien didn’t bother with any form, however.  He threw himself forward, still bellowing at the Kung.

“You hurt her I’ll kill you kill you kill kill killyoukillyou I’ll kill-“

Its first strike was sloppy, wild.  The Kung parried the attack and brought his own blade around to counter, slicing open a line along the alien’s flabby arm.

But then the Kung made his first mistake.

Another Kung, after failing on the attack, would have pulled back and recalculated, planning its second assault.  But this screaming, shouting alien didn’t pause.  Even as strangely red blood erupted from its arm, it slammed the injured limb forward, knocking the Kung off balance from sheer fury.  Its leg swept forward as well, smashing against the Kung’s own leg and upsetting his battle stance.  They both toppled backward.

On the ground, the Kung kicked back wildly against this alien on top of him.  It never entered the Kung’s mind that he might be losing this fight.  He was trained to win, to always seek victory.

Another hit scored, this time along the alien’s ribcage!  The Kung felt his knife sink in deeply, and knew that he’d won.  Victory, as he’d been trained to seek!

Yet still the alien flailed at him.  It howled in pain, but still didn’t retreat.  Did this creature not know reason?  Was it some sort of berserker?

That wondering thought was the second-last thing to pass through the Kung’s mind.

The last thing was the blade of the alien’s scimitari, stolen from his fallen companion, piercing his skull and turning the Kung’s brains to pulp.

*

The six-limbed creature slumped back, still twitching, and Mike found himself thinking again.

He stared down at the thing, below him.  His final, desperate attack, guided by unthinking rage, literally nailed the creature to the floor of the farmhouse.  His hands dripped blue gore, coated up to the elbow.

Mike raised his eyes to Kate, who still clutched little Ethan to his chest.  “Are you-“ he began, unable to even finish the sentence.

She nodded, shaking off her paralysis and rushing forward to him.  “You’re hurt, Mike!  We have to-“

He waved her off, even as the pain hit him and he doubled over, clutching at his side.  “No!” he rasped, covering the wound in his stomach, unwilling to let her see.  “You have to get Ethan out of here.  Get to safety – tell someone about this-“

“I can’t!”  Now she was sobbing as well, her hands grabbing at him, sounding almost hysterical.  “What about you-“

His teeth gritted as he fought the pain, Mike pulled himself back up to his feet.  “There could be more of these things out there,” he said, picking up the dead monster’s knife with his good hand.  “You go.  I’ll hold them off.”

Kate shook her head, but Mike leaned up against her, kissing her softly, almost tenderly, on the cheek.  “Please,” he begged her, his voice a hoarse whisper.  “I can’t – I need for you to be safe.  I need it, more than anything.”

Now, Kate was weeping as well, their tears mingling together as she embraced him.  “Oh, Mike,” she sobbed, holding him for what they both knew would be the last time.  “Mike, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Mike whispered back, meaning the words with all his heart.

After a moment, however, another spasm of pain hit his body, and he straightened back up.  “Now, go!  Away from the ship, and don’t look back.  Head for Caemlyn, over the hill – they’ll have a radio.  Keep Ethan safe.”

Kate nodded, and although her eyes shone with still more tears, she managed to straighten up, showing off the iron spine she possessed.  Mike saw that iron, knew it for the surge of love it summoned up within him.  He watched as the love of his life picked up their son, who still stared, too young to understand, and headed out the back door of their farmhouse.

As she left, Mike staggered back to the front door.  Still clutching the stolen knife from his dead foe, he stared up at the bulbous, ugly ship that stood in the middle of the destroyed village.

“Fuck you,” he growled under his breath, as he started forward.  Once again, the redness crept into the corners of his vision, letting him ignore the burning pain.

*

“Odd.”

The Kung commander narrowed his eyes as he turned to the subordinate officer who’d dared to speak aloud.  “What is it, navigator?” he growled, considering executing the impertinent officer right there for daring to speak without addressing him by his proper title.

The juvenile officer, perhaps not realizing his error, gestured down at the screen below him.  “One of our shuttles, victor.  It’s coming back up – but we received no signal before its launch.”

Now, at least, the officer used the proper term of respect.  The commander leaned over the display panel, watching as the little dot representing the landing craft rose up from the planet’s surface.  “It’s moving quite fast,” he observed.

“Yes, victor.  In fact, it should be visible on the main screen in a moment.”

They both raised their eyes up to the main display, higher than the other screens.  Sure enough, there was the flare of the approaching shuttle.  Its flight path seemed very erratic, and the engines looked out of sync, but it was definitely headed towards them – and accelerating.  Whoever sat behind the ship’s controls clearly hadn’t piloted a vessel like this before, but the ship still advanced – rapidly.

“It’s not diverting its course towards the docking bay, victor,” the navigation officer commented unnecessarily.  Everyone on the ship’s deck could see that, whatever the shuttle was doing, it wasn’t changing course.

The commander sprang into action as the shuttle continued to grow larger.  “Open a line of communication to its comm!” he demanded, waving a hand at the communications officer.

That Kung was already flying his fingers over his keyboard.  “Shuttle 23, this is the main ship,” he called into the microphone.  “To avoid a collision, cut speed and shift heading to-“

The growled, half-garbled response that came back over the channel made no sense to the Kung.  Their ship’s computers could perhaps have created some sort of translation, given enough time, but time was one advantage that they no longer possessed.

For just a moment, before the shuttle slammed into the side of the warship at full power and underwent cataclysmic meltdown of its main drive core, the Kung commander frowned at the nonsensical sounds from the shuttle.

“Fuck you!”

#

*Author’s note: Yes, this will (probably) be a series!  I really want the chance to try and develop some good characters.  Personally, it’s that defiant middle finger, fighting back against impossible odds because it’s the honorable thing to do, that gives me a sense of frisson, that chill running down my spine.  That’s what I want to capture here.

Viruses.

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Excerpt taken from a recording stored in the archives of the Maximegalon Institute, c.o./ZB.

Viruses.

Funny things, aren’t they?  Little buggers, not really alive.  Just a protein coat as a shell, wrapped around the most distilled and basic instruction of life.

Multiply.

Heck, some don’t even have a protein coat at all.  Naked DNA, floating through the void in search of a host.  Eternally patient, willing to wait forever.  And when that host comes, the virus exults in a brief flurry of wild, carefree activity, growing and spreading and conquering all in its path, before once again returning back to dormancy.

Most races try not to think about viruses much.

Oh, sure, there’s sanitary protocols.  Wash your appendages, don’t mix fecal deposits (a breeding ground for viruses, among their bacterial carriers and victims) with nutrient intake, avoid contact with those who are contaminated.  Well established protocols, all built around containment.

Why not eradication?

Well, it turns out that one of the many things viruses aren’t great at accomplishing is dying.  There are so few moving parts on a virus, you see – nothing’s there to break.

So, for most of existence, life has learned to adapt to viruses.  Contain them, avoid them, try to slow, maybe even stop their spread.

This leads to some… interesting outcomes.

Take the Wheelers, for example.  Quite a unique species – they adapted to the long, flat lava flows on their planets by developing the biological appendage for which we named them.  They quickly criss-crossed their planet, thanks to their high rate of speed.

The virus that brought down the Wheelers struck at this advantage.  A hijacked nervous system driven to crave speed, coupled with aerial dispersion through gas venting, rushed around the planet just as rapidly.  In the end, the Wheelers even bombed their own roads, trying to halt their infected kin.

We’ve had to work this all out from fossil records, of course.  Fortunately, the wheel was made from a biosilicon compound that endured for many millennia, long after the Wheelers themselves all perished.

The Spindle Kings, there’s another example.  That race seemed like one of the most likely to survive a virus – as far as we can tell, they were telepaths, and couldn’t stand crowding.  And for a Spindle King, a thousand members of their species per planet was far too overpopulated.

Naturally enough, the virus that got them traveled over those very same telepathic brain waves.  Like a meme, the message altered and shifted the underlying brain structure, reverberating and building to an overwhelming pitch inside their minds.  The Spindle Kings couldn’t help but broadcast it out.

This time, as well as fossil records, we had the actual records, left by the dying members of the Kings themselves.  Most of the records are incomprehensible gibberish, but some are still barely lucid enough for us to understand.

Perhaps the most dramatic response to a virus we’ve found have been the Kung.  “Bloodthirstiest race in the galaxy,” we call them, and they’re a staple villain of the most popular holotoons.  They conquered every other race they encountered – why not viruses?

Viruses, unfortunately, don’t form impressive lines on the battlefield.  They don’t surrender when surrounded.  They aren’t held back by blockades.

Towards the end, the Kung started slagging their own planets.  That’s the only explanation we can imagine, at least.  How else can we explain the apparently intact skeletons of their civilizations, buried under half a mile of perfectly smooth igneous rock?

How did a virus bring down the Kung?  We’re not sure, of course.  So much of history is unknown, lost to the ravages of time.  And perhaps there’s still a band of Kung out there, roaming, hoping to stay one step ahead of the virus that finally succeeded in conquering their unconquerable civilization, decimating their unstoppable army.

Viruses are a sobering realization of our own mortality.  We’ve tangled with them, of course.  Smallpox nearly wiped out our species before we even left the planet.  HIV followed us up from the surface as we spread, as did rabies.  Influenza still haunts us, and one particularly malevolent strain had us ejecting anyone who sneezed out the nearest airlock.

Even now, we can’t cure viruses.  Not quite.

But we’ve come a long way.  Antivirals block many targets of these viruses, and we can learn from weakened, attenuated strains how to combat their deadlier cousins.  Even when the ancient terror once called Dengue Fever re-emerged, threatening over a dozen star systems, we were able to synthesize enough of the receptor-blocking antidote to contain its wildfire spread.

We thought it normal, of course.  Until we met the Ehft, on the brink of collapse, and learned of humanity’s curse – and our greatest treasure.

As it turns out, we’ve been cursed by many viruses, far more than any other species.  On our ancestral world, well over a hundred thousand viruses still exist, and probably many more lay dormant and hidden.  When the Ehft learned of this fact, they considered this comparable to spending every second of life with a poisoned Sword of Damocles perched inches above one’s head.

Many viruses, all rotating through their own cycles of contagion and regression.  They ravaged our species, slaying us by the millions.

But we endured.  And in survival, we learned to fight them.

We found the Ehft ship drifting, most of its crew already victims of their Feathermoult virus.  We ascertained the totally alien structure of the viral attacker, but not before the last of the Ehft had succumbed.

They did leave us a message, however – the coordinates of their homeworld.

Another dozen solar cycles, and we would have been too late.  Over and over, scholars point to this as our greatest stroke of luck.  The first intelligence not long extinct, and we barely managed to save them!  Even as our ships touched down, the last Ehftians struggled to bury their millions of dead comrades.

It wasn’t until after we had treated them that we realized just how alien the concept of pandemic assistance truly was.

Resistance!  At first, the Ehftians didn’t understand.  And indeed, we soon found a disquieting lack of immune response within their huddled bodies.  Feathermoult didn’t need to overcome their defenses.  They had none to overcome.

When the Ehftians learned of our world, of how we fought off viral invasions almost every solar cycle, they were aghast, nearly to the point of shock.  That we survived even short visits back to our ancestral homeland, much less for long enough to evolve space travel, seemed truly impossible.

When we took to the stars, we brought our most powerful weapons, our most enduring defenses.  We imagined death rays, gamma bursts, entire star systems deployed as annihilation weapons.  Instead, we found ourselves already gifted with incredible immunity to the worst of the universe.

We imagined ourselves humbled before a tribunal of ancient and wise alien races, but we found them destroyed.  We imagined fighting for our lives, but found ourselves instead fighting to save the fragile lives of those we encountered.

Before we left our star system, we tried to build up our best physical defenses, even attempting to warp the very fabric of the universe about ourselves in stasis shields.

Who would have thought that our best defense against the horrors that utterly obliterated the other races would be a handful of specialized white blood cells?

[Retrieval] "Perfectly secure."

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“Perfectly contained.  It’s completely secure.”

The man that some called Hatchet waited, drumming his fingers on the table.  His suit was crisp and freshly ironed, and his bland features wore a look of barely contained boredom.  His fit body aside, the man looked totally unremarkable.  No one would ever pick him out of a crowd.

“We’ve set up dozens of redundant protocols,” the scientist across the table tried again.  “Forget Fort Knox.  This is definitely the most secure installation in the country.”

“It’s true,” his colleague chimed in, looking as anxious as his fellow.  “The entry procedures include a half dozen different checkpoints.  Nothing comes in without our knowledge.”

Hatchet waited another beat for the silence to build before he asked his question.  “And things going out?”

The two scientists exchanged a look.  “Out?” one of them repeated blankly.  “Nothing goes out.”
The man in the suit could have asked more questions, here.  He could have inquired about the details of their security checkpoints, about how they screened incoming cargo, physical connections to the installation site.

He didn’t, however.  Instead, he just let the silence stretch out in front of him.

The men across the table from him waited, and fidgeted.  They reminded Hatchet of young teenagers who’d managed to get their hands on a negotiation manual, he thought to himself.  They knew that silence was a tool to be used, but they weren’t yet comfortable with it.

Hatchet, on the other hand, had all day.

Finally, caving to the pressure, one of the men across the table from him opened his mouth.  “We’ve been instructed to give you all the help that we can offer,” he began, before his mouth ran out of steam.  He lapsed into silence, clearly wishing furiously that this expensive consultant across the table would start doing something.

Finally, Hatchet gave a little nod, more to himself than to his clients.  “Something got out,” he said.

Both of the men nodded.

“And I’m here,” the consultant continued, “to retrieve it for you.”

Another set of nods.

This time, Hatchet nodded back.  “Okay,” he said, settling back in his chair and reaching for the bottle of Fiji water on the table in front of him.  “Tell me about it.”

Both of the men, either from relief of concern, started babbling at the same time.  Hatchet said nothing, merely listening attentively until they both eventually ran out of comments and slipped back into uncomfortable silence.

“Four crystals,” he repeated, watching for the expected nods.  “Enclosed in glass tubes.”

The nods came, just as he’d anticipated.  “Still contained,” one of the scientists insisted.  “Totally secure.”

“Missing.”

“But still secure.”

Hatchet let this minor matter pass.  “And what happens if someone opens one of these glass tubes?” he asked.

“Um, they shouldn’t.  It’s secure-“

The consultant’s glare was enough to make the scientist’s words wither and dry up mid-sentence.  “If they open it, you probably won’t have to worry about retrieval,” he admitted, looking down at his lap.

Waiting.  It stirred tongues to looseness.

“If they somehow opened the tube,” the poor man began, looking miserable.

“-and they removed the crystal-” threw in his companion.

“Yes, and if they removed the crystal, there would be a… a significant explosion.”

Hatchet waited.  “Significant,” he prodded after a moment.

Both men nodded.  “Perhaps sixty megatons,” one of them offered.

For once, Hatchet had to struggle to keep his face blank.  A man in his line of work had to know conversions, especially regarding dangerous weapons.  “Sixty,” he repeated, before he could hold back the words.

Two more nods.  “But no one should open the glass tubes, so it should be okay,” one of the scientists interrupted quickly.

“Yes, the tubes fully prevent any unfortunate reaction.  Perfectly harmless, in the tubes.”

“Completely secure.”

[Retrieval] Meeting the Fence

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Normally, the man they called Broiler preferred to take his time.  He liked to listen to his victim’s screams, savoring how they slowly realized that they wouldn’t escape, that they’d die with him.  He’d only been a bruiser when they threw him behind bars, but he soon found his place on the inside – and he commanded far more respect here than he ever did out on the street.

Broiler liked to savor his jobs.  But today, he moved with uncharacteristic swiftness.

Freddy lay quietly in his bunk, but Broiler didn’t doubt that the little ferret of a man had his ears peeled.  He was fresh meat, after all.  He surely expected to be roughed over.  For all Broiler knew, the man might be concealing a blade or shiv under that thin blanket.

Broiler, however, had the advantage of weight – and surprise.  Before Freddy could even speak out, the electrical cord in the big man’s hands looped around his throat and drew tight.

Broiler leaned down on the body as it jerked and thrashed, sawing back and forth with his hands.  It didn’t take long before the smaller man’s movements ceased.

Still, the bigger bruiser flipped the corpse over, waiting for several minutes to ensure that no life remained.  He’d been given triple his usual rate for this job, and he wasn’t going to let anything foul it up.  Only once he was completely certain that Freddy was dead did he stand up and leave the cell.

#

Koseynko watched the car cruise slowly down the street.  His street.  The tinted windows concealed the identity of the driver, but the car itself provided plenty of information to the observing man.

Mercedes, current year, with all the luxury options.  The car’s black sheen didn’t show a single scratch.  Koseynko doubted that the vehicle had ever even touched a dealership’s parking lot.

Furthermore, the thing was armored.  Most dealers wouldn’t spot something like that, but Koseynko remembered enough from the panicked weeks before he fled his homeland, just one more refugee from the Russian unrest.  The tires looked thinner but bulkier, and the car rode a little more heavily on its shocks under the weight of the ceramic panels.  That armor, more than anything else, fed the little spark of nervousness in Koseynko’s gut.

A high-level dealer would drive a Mercedes. But only the most powerful drug lords would pay for armor – and they’d never come to his neighborhood.  Not personally.  They’d send a lieutenant.

Something about this felt very wrong.

After circling the block, the car finally pulled up outside his building.  The engine turned off, but the driver didn’t emerge immediately.  Koseynko knew that there had to be at least a hundred eyes on that car.  He hoped that none of them would be foolish enough to try anything.

Finally, the door opened.  Koseynko’s eyes immediately flashed to the driver as he emerged.  The man wore a charcoal gray suit, perfectly tailored and probably worth more than what Koseynko made in a year.  The cut of the suit helped disguise the bulge, but Koseynko knew how to spot the piece hanging in a shoulder holster.  The driver was armed.

The driver closed the door and, moving as though he wasn’t standing in the heart of the projects, he strolled around to the car’s trunk.  The latch smoothly disengaged, and he lifted a slim aluminum briefcase out from inside.

Case in hand, the driver turned towards Koseynko’s building.  He strode inside, moving with utter confidence.

Koseynko hurried back to his seat, settling his bulk into the chair as the driver entered the room.  The chair’s springs creaked slightly beneath him, and his hand dipped down briefly on the side to check that the butt of his sawed-off was still there.  Reassured by the presence of his weapon, he looked up at the newcomer.

Pale skin, pale blue eyes.  A body in excellent shape, trained, but not a professional fighter.  The man appeared capable enough, but something in how he held himself betrayed him as a leader, not a fighter.  He moved with utter confidence, as if expecting the world to bend to his will.

“Vladimir Koseynko.”  It wasn’t a question.

Koseynko nodded, forcing himself to wait.  He could make no guess about the man, his masters or why he might be here.  The man knew Koseynko, and he had the advantage.  For the moment.

Behind Koseynko’s chair, he could sense the comforting presence of his two lieutenants.  They were armed, and certainly had their guns in hand by now.  Alexei leaned forward, cradling the heavy assault rifle he insisted on toting everywhere.

“Vhat do you vant-” the burly lieutenant began, but the newcomer cut him off with a single, imperious jerk of his hand.

“Freddy Larson,” he spoke.

Ah.  So that’s what this is about.  “A bad turn of luck, that,” Koseynko said carefully, taking his time with his words.  “I heard he was killed in jail, only a day after arrival.  Very unfortunate.”

The man in the suit didn’t even blink.  He might as well have thrown a signed confession down in front of the Russian.  “He came here to sell to you.”

Again, not a question.  For a moment, Koseynko considered hedging.  The man might be confident, but he was certainly both outnumbered and outgunned here.

Yet that confidence shook the Russian.  Somehow, the man in front of him projected deadly assurance, a wolf in human skin.  His outfit and car screamed money, connections, enough power to bring down a world of pain upon Koseynko’s balding head.

“Yes, he was here,” Koseynko admitted.  “Two days ago.  Looking to score enough for a high.”

“He brought items stolen from a nearby facility.”  Again, nothing but cold facts, emotionless statements.  “You purchased them from him.”

So, the man needed information.  Koseynko eyed him, wondering if he should test the waters.  “I might be more inclined to speak,” he offered carefully, “if you did not have that gun.”

For just a second, a flash of a smile danced across the man’s face.  It was gone in an instant, and didn’t reach his eyes.  “What’s the matter, Vlad?  Afraid of one man, here in your place, with your own goons around?”

This time, Koseynko was the one to keep his face blank.  “Freddy had the items you want, and he is now dead,” he pointed out.  “Forgive me for my caution.”

A minute longer, the man stared at the Russian.  But then, he broke eye contact and nodded, and Koseynko felt his heart beat again.

“Perhaps we were a bit too hasty with Freddy,” the man allowed.  He lifted up the aluminum case and set it on the table between him and Koseynko, turning it around as he popped the latches and lifted the lid.

Koseynko forced his face to remain expressionless as he noted the sheen of gold from inside.  “I know how you Russians prefer hard metal to soft currency,” the man commented.

The allure of the gold was too much.  Koseynko leaned forward slightly, but the man closed the case before his fingers could reach.  “The goods,” he reminded Koseynko.

Even with the case closed, the Russian couldn’t get the image of that gold out of his mind.  “Yes, he brought some stolen goods,” he volunteered.  “Mostly worthless, of course.  Addicts don’t know what to grab.  But he had four crystals, each in a glass tube.  That is what you are after, yes?”

“What did you do with them?” The man gave no confirmation, but that in itself told Koseynko his guess was correct.

The dealer held up four stubby fingers.  “One to a chemist at the University, to see what they were,” he counted off.  “One to the shef, the boss.  One to a goldsmith, again for value.  And one,” he finished, forming his hand into a fist and jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “is here.”

The man nodded, maintaining his poker face.  “I would like to buy all four of them,” he said carefully.  “As soon as possible.”

Koseynko hissed a comment in Russian to one of his lieutenants, and then eyed the man in the suit cannily as the lieutenant turned and ducked deeper into the building.  “What are they?” he asked.

“Unimportant.”

“And yet,” Koseynko pressed, “you are willing, it seems, to pay very well for them to be back in your hands.”

The man shrugged.  “And you want the money.  What does it matter what the damn things are?”

It didn’t take long for the lieutenant to return, slightly out of breath as he placed the glass tube in Koseynko’s waiting hand.  The Russian held the glass tube up before his eyes.  The tube was about the size and shape of a large cigar, rounded and sealed at both ends.  Inside, a spiky crystal about the size of a marble floated, suspended in some sort of clear and viscous liquid.

“It is pretty, that much is true,” he murmured, tilting the glass back and forth, watching the crystal lazily rotate inside.  “And what would happen if this tube was to break?”

The question had been rhetorical, but Koseynko’s visitor answered.  The man across from him was leaning forward slightly, his eyes on that crystal and showing more interest than at any point earlier in the conversation.  “We would all be dead, for one thing,” he replied.  “It’s quite deadly when exposed to the air.”

The Russian’s eyes cut over sharply, leaving the shimmering crystal.  “It is poison?  A weapon?”

“It is dangerous,” the man repeated firmly.  His hands moved to the case, and once again Koseynko felt the magnetic pull of the gold ingots on his eyeballs.  “Now, pass it over.  Carefully.”

Obediently, the Russian made the trade.  But then, as the man in the suit started to rise from his chair, Koseynko coughed.

“I notice,” he commented carefully as his hand once again dropped down the side of his chair, “you did not make inquiries about purchasing the other three.”

“And that suggests to me,” he continued as he pulled the shotgun up, and Alexei lifted the barrel of his oversized assault rifle in his thick arms, “that you do not intend to purchase the other crystals from me.  I wonder, then, how you will obtain them?”

At the sound of the shotgun being drawn, the man had stopped, and he slowly turned to look back at the Russian.  He made no move for his own gun – a smart move.  Crystal or not, Koseynko wouldn’t have hesitated to blow apart the man’s chest.

“I assume that you would be smart enough to understand the terms of the deal.”  The man’s voice was flat, but there was perhaps a note of irritation hiding in its depths.  “I will return tomorrow.  Another case of gold, another crystal.  If you cannot obtain the others, I will retrieve them.”

A little voice inside Koseynko’s head cried out for him to shoot the man right then and there.  Such arrogance!  But the thought of another three cases of gold stayed his hand.  Even after the cut to his bosses, that would be such wealth!  He could expand, buy out his competition – or the assassins to accomplish the same purpose.  Such opportunity could change his entire life.

Slowly, Koseynko lowered his gun.  “Very well,” he replied, carefully watching the man.  “I shall send word immediately for the other crystals to be sent back.  Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” the man agreed, and strode out of the building.

Once he had left the room, Koseynko hurried to the window, watching.  Outside, several enterprising street rats had already moved towards the car, and one of them was even now bent over the driver’s side door, fiddling perhaps with a strip of spring steel.

As the man emerged, he calmly drew the pistol from beneath his coat.  The street urchin didn’t even have time to speak out before his head exploded in a shower of blood and brain matter.  The other teens immediately bolted, not even sparing a glance back for their dead companion.

The man in the suit didn’t bother firing after them.  He tucked the gun away, and then once again reached into his jacket.  Was he checking for the crystal?  Koseynko leaned a little closer to the window, trying to see.

No – he had withdrawn something else, something small.  A lighter, perhaps?

The man in the suit turned and glanced back up at the building, and for just an instant, Koseynko stared into his pale eyes.

The Russian fell back from the window, his arms flailing.  “The case!” he panted, spinning around and staring at the aluminum case of gold, still sitting on the table in the middle of the room.

There was no time.  Alexei’s mouth was still opening when the man outside pressed down on the button on the small remote in his hand.

Out on the street, the man didn’t even flinch as the building behind him exploded with a thunderous roar.  He climbed into his car, now covered in a layer of dust from the shattered edifice, and carefully withdrew the crystal from his inner pocket.

“Three more,” he whispered aloud, as he slid the thin glass tube into a cushioned slot in the glove compartment.

By the time the sound of sirens could be heard in the neighborhood, the armored Mercedes was long gone.