14

There was something so mind-boggling about eating dinner at the edge of space. Our food consisted of what I’ve raided from that 7-eleven in Wyoming, but eating instant chicken-flavored ramen, salted cashews, and almonds, and drinking a bottle of Coke while watching Earth below you was life-changing. If I had died right here, I would have been happy. No complaints!

It was our second night on Station One, and we’d gone to a habit of eating in Dock Two and stargazing into the void. The star-fighters were parked just near us. The stars were a lot clearer when you were seven thousand miles above the atmosphere (that’s more than twice the length of the continental United States). Prime was still working on completing the cell towers so that we could contact our families below.

Earth was still reeling from the alien’s presence, but the quartz had not attacked the planet for the past two days. My not-so-subtle Churchill stunt was all the rave on the surface. The news cycle kept repeating it 24/7, putting more theories and opinions to the market, and even talks of war were at an all-time high. At least they got what I was going for. The question on everyone’s mind was: Are the pryramidians (that’s what folks called me because of the tetrahedron shapes of my space stations) friendly? I hoped it would help with my military recruitment in the future by gaining their trust. When that happened, I’m sure it would still be complicated.

You can trust me. I wanted to say. Then again, that’s another way for a politician to ensnare you into a trap, and maybe I should tell them the truth: I needed soldiers. You might die. But at least there are health benefits. With Forerunner technology, you might not die that quickly. Oh! If you get speared at the back of the head, your country could still piece you back together with just a hefty dose of nanites and a week’s stay in the med ward!

Jason blanched when I mentioned my advertising pitch and told me he’d work on it instead. “Leave it to me, man,” he said. “I studied advertising for four-fucking-years. I’ll make you a star.”

Amelia thought I scared the quartz off or, at least, rethink their strategy. After all, I just put a wrench in whatever plans they had for the planet. They probably weren’t expecting Earth could fight back!

Well, I saw that as a fucking win. For now.

“Hey, Tony, why haven’t I seen you fly those things yet?” Ben cocked his head toward the sitting star-fighters in Dock Two. Alonso had opened up a twelve-pack of cold beer and started handing it out around the dinner table (which was just a blanket spread out like a picnic on the cold metal floor).

“I was busy,” I said, which was true. I did not find the time to do a flight test while trying to follow through with my deadlines. So far, I completed a hundred star-fighters, and the frigates were twenty-five percent done.

“Does it work?” Ben asked.

“It works,” I said. “Prime made sure of it.”

“The star-fighters are operational, Lieutenant Amendola,” Prime said. He hovered outside the picnic blanket, watching as curiously. He asked me yesterday why humans dine together, which the previous forerunner he served did not do. His passive observations (over thousands of years) merely told him it’s part of family life. Still, I told him that it was one of the ways humans could bond with one another (Thanksgiving was a different beast altogether). He seemed to accept my assessment and had watched us with interest since then. I realized this would be the first time Prime could observe humans up close.

I turned away from Prime and faced Ben. “Why’d you ask?”

Ben took a sip of his beer. “Just asking.”

But there was more to it. “You want to give it a ride?” I asked.

His expression did not change. “Are you?”

“Ohh!” Alonso jumped at the chance. “Tony, let’s see you fly on that thing! Prime must have uploaded into your brain how to do it.”

“He has, but I don’t have the muscle memory for it.”

“Consider it your first training, then.”

The others joined in, trying to convince me to fly. Morale seemed to have improved, and I wasn’t going to kill their fun because I thought it was wasting our time. Technically, the day’s work is done, I thought. My friends needed a distraction from thinking about the quartz constantly.

“Fine, fine!” I said, throwing my hands up, and cheers rippled around the dock. “But I’m not going to do it alone. Ben, you’re flying with me.”

“What? Me?” Ben asked.

“Come on. You didn’t just ask me about the star-fighters because you were curious if they work. You’ve been eye-fucking those things since it got in here.”

Ben chuckled. “Do you trust me with it?”

Tom thinned his lips. “You can’t fly it down to the United States,” he said. “It’s Tony’s property. Right? Does that still apply in space?”

“Satellites are properties of whatever put them up there, so I reckoned it’s the same,” Rachel said.

“Well, I needed a professional opinion about these star-fighters, and you flew fighter jets. That’s as close as I can get to a professional,” I said.

Ben crossed his arms. “I haven’t flown through space. I’m not qualified for that yet.”

“Consider this your first time and see if you like it. And Ben, if you try to borrow it, Prime will stop the engine, and you’d be plummeting and burning down to Earth for the next five minutes. Plenty of time to rethink your life choices.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Ben gave Prime a wary look. “I am curious about how they fly—”

“Wonderful! Come on over then.”

Shaped like an H with a trapezoidal habitation pod at the center, the one hundred completed star-fighters were magnetically secured by large hydraulic arms along Dock Two’s hangar over the northern side. Each star-fighter was about thirty-seven feet long and sixteen feet tall, painted in silver with streaks of yellow and blue. Its main engines were at the aft of each wing, where a railgun capable of rotating at ninety degrees was also attached. Even the pod’s cockpit could be raised or lowered at an angle of about forty degrees maximum.

Prime prepared two star-fighters on the landing pad, and Ben and I headed toward each. The others gathered around the landing zone, a can of beer in hand, watching the holo-feed of the cockpit through their datapad (another invention I made and distributed to the rest of my friends). It was as big as a smartphone but transparent, almost like plastic but as thin as glass. It was keyed to their fingerprint so no one could access it accidentally or if it fell into the wrong hands.

I ordered Prime to lower the cockpit, and a door opened to the side for the pilot to enter. The cockpit was big enough for a chair and the flight instruments, but the pilot could rotate their seat around and enter a small cabin at the back with a cramped bed, a tiny galley, and a bathroom/toilet for long-distance travel. Prime said these star-fighters could get me from a round trip between Earth and Saturn.

“Can you guys hear me?” I asked. They all replied with a yes. “Alright, Ben, are you ready?”

“As ready as I can be,” Ben said, trying to hide his excitement. “I’m just getting used to the buttons. Hold on.”

“Take your time.”

“Hey, Tony, what if the quartz suddenly appears?” Freddie asked worriedly. “None of us knows how to fly these things.”

“Prime will control the other ninety-eight star-fighters, and we will engage them,” I said. “Don’t worry, Fred. They haven’t gotten near the planet since we showed up. But keep a lookout just in case.”

“Copy that,” Freddie said.

“Are you really going to let me fall if I bring this back to the US?” Ben asked jokingly.

“Well, lieutenant, have I ever lied to you since you met me?” I had, but he didn’t know that.

A brief pause. “Point taken.”

A smile crept on my lips, and I secured my seatbelt. “Good. Buckle up.”

I made the flight controls in English, but I made a mental note to find a way where everyone could understand them. There might be a high recruitment drive from other non-English speaking countries. I was playing with the idea that the nanites could project a holographic translation of each device, including the signs around the station, so that people wouldn’t get lost.

It took a few minutes prepping the thrusters and the engines, making sure they were in working order. Prime created a Manuel booklet and put it on a little cubby by the pilot’s seat, but with my nanites swimming inside my head, the list was holographically projected from my eyes (one I could only see). All lights were green, and the engine’s gradually increasing hum reverberated through my bones.

I began to pull up, swaying a little. Easy. Easy. I tried to steer the vessel toward the docking bay doors facing Earth. A slight groan and the star-fighter lurched sideways. The left wing almost took off everyone’s heads by the landing pad. They all ducked to their bellies.

“Shit! Sorry!” I shouted.

“Jesus Christ, Tony! You almost got us!” Amelia shouted.

“Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have done this with alcohol.” I only had half a can of beer, but still.

Ben made it look smooth and easy, lifting off and then hovering fifty feet above the landing pad, and I barely could lift it past twenty. “Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yep. I’m fine.” On the console, my elevation increased every five feet until I was at his level. “Now, I’m good.”

“We can always back out—”

“No, let’s do this.”

I slowly pushed the yoke forward, and the star-fighter slid through the bay’s barrier and into the vacuum of space. A shuddering sway from the lack of gravity was noticeable, but I quickly compensated by gaining speed, slipping away from Station One’s subtle gravitational pull. Ben followed by flying beside me.

“What now?” He asked.

I looked over my right; his head was just a small basketball-sized dot on the star-fighter window.

“Uh, five rounds around the planet?” I asked.

I could hear him grin from the comms. “Ha! Good enough. Let’s make this a race?”

“What’s the prize?” I asked. “And don’t say the star-fighter.”

“I’ll think about it. How about a favor?”

“A limited favor?”

“Sure. That works.”

“Okay. Let’s race.”

It took some getting used to. The controls were wonky and got difficult if I went fast, but I made sure Prime recorded everything for future reference once I started improving them for my pilots. And for me. By the third lap, I was getting the hang of it.

As for flying it, well, I had a fucking fantastic time. It was exhilarating! Like a roller coaster going for thousands of miles, and you never wanted it to end. That big drop at the pit of your gut sends your soul into heaven. We went faster than a fighter jet would; the inertial dampeners built into the ship protected us from the high Gs. I twisted and rolled and did a few tricks for my friends watching from their datapads. (There were cameras built onto the wings of the star-fighters and one on the cockpit). Ben did them better. His skills as a pilot showed through, and I found him hooting and hollering as he went by.

I never beat him with the race he called. He was too fast, but I’m glad he had fun.

“How’s the ship, lieutenant?”

“I don’t want to go back, Tony,” Ben said. “Just put me in this ship and let me fly it forever. Do you want me to go to Saturn?”

“Ah. I like your enthusiasm, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “The quartz is still around, remember?” I wondered what they would think when they saw us flying around the planet. No doubt the people on Earth would be confused why two alien spacecraft just did a bunch of round-a-bouts of the planet and then flew back to the giant station.

He sighed in disappointment. “A bunch of killjoys. Why don’t we hunt them down with these things?”

“I only have a hundred star-fighters. Not enough to shore up my fleet. Maybe we can face them head-on when a couple of my frigates are finished. Last time I checked, one is hiding on the moon.”

“The moon’s next door. Want to check it out?”

“Just the two of us?”

“Yeah. Let’s do a flyby.”

It was very tempting, and I almost said yes. I was curious about what the quartz was doing on the moon. But could we react fast enough if they finally responded with a strong show of force? I doubted we could fight them off, and the forerunner hub was two hundred thousand miles away. We’d be alone for the next eighteen minutes until Prime sent reinforcements. No, it would be too risky.

“This is just a test flight, Ben. I don’t want us getting killed out there.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I was spit-balling.”

“We’ll have to cross that bridge soon enough. I don’t like how close those quartz are to us.”

“Especially the one hiding in China. You said completing the frigate would take a week, right?”

“Actually, we have less than four days,” I corrected.

“Just keep me posted. I want a kill on these bastards.”

I was surprised by Ben’s bloodlust against the quartz, though I couldn’t fault him. He lost many friends over the Battle of New York (the media had been calling it that for two days). Ben wanted retribution.

“Will do,” I said and ended the comms. I opened up a channel for Prime. “I guess the star-fighter works, Prime,” I said. “Ben liked it.”

“I’m glad it tested well,” he replied. “With Ben’s flight results, we can improve the designs in the future, forerunner.”

“Good. Save up the data.” I started heading back for Station One. “We still need a large sample size.”

“We can use the lieutenant’s men. They have several years of experience.”

I nodded. “When they wake up, we’ll ask. But don’t hold your breath.” Poaching fighter pilots from the US? What could go wrong?

“I don’t breathe, forerunner. I am not alive.”

I smiled. That’s obvious. But sometimes I forget. “Let’s count that as a success. Call it Flight Test One. Now, could you take me home, Prime? I want to finish my beer.”