“You have absolutely GOT to be shitting me!” yelled Corporal Haley McCoy. She was at least a few inches shorter than Chao, who was was herself most certainly not the tallest person around. But the corporal’s stance and obviously muscular build made it clear that she was not someone to mess with. At first, Chao had been surprised to see a woman in the midst of the testosterone-fest which made up this special-forces unit…or whatever you called them. But from what she’d seen so far, the men treated McCoy as one of them. So she’d treat McCoy as one of them as well…and that included giving all of these soldiers the best information she had.
The group huddled around her in the back of the C-130. She’d managed to get ahold of a pen and pad of paper, and now the fruits of her scribbled explanations lay strewn about.
“Like I said, it’s not for sure,” Chao bawled back. She was fast getting used to communicating on board a military aircraft in transit. “But we’ve had the smartest people I know trying to figure out a natural explanation. Personally, I think it’s real. Way too many coincidences in too short a time.”
An olive-complexioned, narrow-faced man across the circle shook his head. “Still, are we seriously talking about aliens?”
Sergeant Shaw grinned at the doubter. “Look at it this way, Martinez. If it’s nothing, then we get a free helicopter ride and a nice hike through the woods, all on Uncle Sam’s dime!”
Martinez rolled his eyes. “But what are we supposed to do if we find that it isn’t nothing?”
“That’s my job,” replied Chao with finality. “You just get me safely to that location. If it’s not nothing…well, then I get to go to work. Hopefully I can figure out a way to talk to them.”
McCoy leaned back, her blue eyes studying Chao with a newfound respect.
__________
Matt’s eyes went wide behind his own set of goggles. “What the fuck?”
The four dipshits showed up plain as day in the green-tinted vision afforded by his gear. As he’d expected, they were keeping to the trail. At first, he’d just planned to do a wee bit of reconnaissance followed up by a wee bit of citizen’s arrest. But now he saw, smashing through the underbrush towards them, two more figures. One was small…a kid? The other was huge, well over seven feet tall and built like a brick shithouse. At first he had a hazy notion that maybe these were reinforcements, meeting up with the main group of four?
But then he noticed that the big one had another, smaller set of arms set under their main ones. “No fucking way,” he whispered.
Both of the newcomers’ outlines were indistinct, as if they were clad head-to-toe in concealing clothing or armor. The smaller one strode in front, in a manner which reminded Matt of many an officer which he’d served under. Now that he looked closer, the head of that smaller one was elongated, as if it had a snout of some sort.
He sat dumbfounded for a moment as the enormity of the situation crashed in upon his mind. Aliens. These had to be aliens. From the look of it, they were just about to stroll up and say howdy to a bunch of tweeked-out criminals looking to shoot holes in something.
Matt clicked off the safety of his rifle and rose onto one knee, bracing his weapon as he took careful aim.
__________
“Hello! Friends!” called out Sadaf. In spite of her outwardly confident proclamation, she was beginning to feel uneasy. As she approached, she could see that the four humans held various implements which her suit’s virtual intelligence classified as likely weapons…but perhaps they were out hunting for local fauna? It would be unfair to judge them as violent merely for carrying weaponry. At the moment, the four humans stood in a line a few paces distant, all of them staring at the pair of them in evident shock. The four wore bulky rectangular blocks which covered their eyes; perhaps these functioned much like the sensors in her own hardsuit? It would make sense if they were hunting game at night.
None of them had pointed their weapons at them…yet.
“Captain…” Takh’s voice was no longer as confident as it had been back at the shuttle. “Maybe we should wait here. Let them approach?”
She was about to agree when the one on the far right lunged forward.
__________
Declan was just in the middle of processing that they were looking at what was either the most elaborate prank ever pulled in the history of the world…or aliens. Actual motherfucking aliens, wearing faceted chrome spacesuits with no visible visors. The pair held had their hands raised, as if to show the four of them that they held no weapons. In the case of the huge dude, that meant…two pairs of hands.
His confusion was cut short as Vincente darted forward with surprising speed, screaming all the while.
The smaller alien froze as Vincente pushed his pistol right against its chromed, featureless helmet. “I knew it Ifuckingknewit! Fucking LIZARDpeople! I kept telling you butnonobodylistensnonono now they’regonnaharvestourorgans…!”
The (much) bigger alien twitched as if getting ready to move. Vincente surprised Declan again by pointing immediately at the big guy with his free hand.
“Don’tyoumovedon’tyouFUCKINGmoveI’llkillyoualldon’tyouDAREtouchmyliver!”
Javier shook himself, as if coming out of a trance. “Hermano…” He began to raise his shotgun.
“FRIEND!” called out the smaller alien again, raising its hands higher.
“NO! I WON’T LET THEMHARVESTMYADRENOCHROME!”
__________
Sadaf looked at the exit-hole of the slug-thrower now pressed against her helmet. It was a larger hole than she would have liked to see. The human was screaming so loud and continuously that the rudimentary translator provided by Nadash simply couldn’t keep up.
“FRIEND!” she yelled again, to no effect.
Her heart sank. Even if her armor was proof against this weapon, the other humans held larger ones which might penetrate. If these humans were reflexively xenophobic, then her crew and ship were about to die; the fact that they never reported back to the CEB would mean that this planet and species would be flagged as ‘do not approach’. Still, she had to try to get through to them.
“Friend! Friend! FRIEND!” she screamed, raising her hands higher as she saw the human’s finger tighten on the weapon’s trigger…
She took in a deep breath, awaiting death…
Whack.
There was the wet, heavy sound of suddenly-displaced flesh and bone. Sadaf’s view suddenly became clouded by a spray of red blood. She stood in shock as the crack of what could only be a weapon discharge then sounded through the cold night air.
Sadaf’s would-be attacker slumped into the snow, a neat hole drilled through the right side of his skull. There was one long, horrible moment as she watched the human’s lifeblood leak out onto the snow through the red haze of that same blood on her helmet.
“HIT THE DIRT!” bawled Takh. Sadaf thought that was quite a capital idea and flung herself down just as the largest human yelled out as well. Fortunately, this one was talking slowly enough for the content to get through the primitive translator.
“THERE!” The big man pointed off to her right.
The remaining three humans spun and began firing wildly in that direction. Sadaf did her best to dig herself into the snow cover, feeling small metal casings ping off of her suit’s armor as the three remaining humans screamed and kept firing.
Whack. Whack. The human with the smaller long weapon jerked and fell over, two neat holes drilled through his torso. The biggest human roared and stomped forward, his weapon keeping up a constant deafening chatter as he kept firing at a distant rise.
Whack. Whack. Whack. Two through the torso, one through the throat. The big human toppled forward, planting face-forward into the snow.
The remaining human pointed its bigger-barreled weapon at Takh, screaming. In Sadaf’s ear the screaming translated into “No move! I KILL THIS ONE…!”
Whack. Whack. The human tottered at the sudden addition of two grievous wounds in his upper body, and then jerked around with a hideous effort of will to point his weapon at Sadaf...
Whack.
A neat hole appeared in the final human’s forehead, accompanied by an impressive gout of blood and bone out of the back. He flopped backwards into the snow.
Stillness crept back into the night as Sadaf remembered to breathe again. “Takh?”
Her XO’s voice was a welcome relief. “Still clicking along, Cap. Stay down.” She caught a glimpse of him raising his head ever-so-slightly. “It’s another human. Walking this way, slowly.”
“Let’s stand up.”
“What? Cap, no way. This one just killed four of his own in less than seven seconds!”
“He saved me, Takh. We need to show trust.”
The XO muttered something about foolish headstrong auhn, but he slowly rose to his feet while Sadaf did the same. They walked out into the middle of the trail, facing the newcomer. She could see him bright as day, both in boosted light and in infrared. The human’s long weapon was now slung over one shoulder, but her hardsuit’s virtual intelligence highlighted another smaller weapon hung at the human’s hip.
The human came close enough that she could see him in ‘normal’ vision; they wore an all-over garment clearly intended to blend in with the snow around them. A similarly-colored mask covered most of their face, leaving only their dark eyes exposed.
She stepped forward, raising her hands again to show no weapons. “Friend?”
“Friend,” replied the human, mirroring her posture. “Can approach?”
Sadaf stepped back and gestured both hands downward, hoping that translated as assent.
The human carefully walked to within a few yards of her, sneaking glances of clear worry at the large form of Takh behind her. Then the sapient stopped and surveyed the carnage he’d wrought.
__________
Matt pulled his mask down, letting the two aliens get a good look at his face. Then he looked again, making sure there was no movement among the four oxygen thieves he had just perforated. A long moment of silence followed. The aliens were clearly waiting for him to initiate further contact…right in the middle of what was now a crime scene. He pinched the bridge of his nose to forestall the oncoming irritation-induced headache.
“Well, shit,” he said to the cold night air.
The smaller alien couldn’t have been taller than four feet. Their faceted, chrome-faced helmet tilted in puzzlement. “Shit?”
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“Shit,” added the huge one. The latter stood behind the small alien while exuding a very clear ‘I am a Mama Bear, do not DARE mess with my Smol’ energy, which was fine by Matt. He wasn’t about to go and get humanity involved in an interstellar war. The big one emitted a few clicking noises from behind its featureless chrome helmet. “Shit…frinx?”
“Frinx!” said the small one happily, bouncing on feet which bent more like a dog’s than a human’s. But maybe that was a feature of the armor? The little guy gestured around themselves at the four rapidly-cooling bodies. “Frinx! TOTAL frinx! Yes?”
Matt chuckled. “Oh yeah, you got that right.” He paused, measuring his next words carefully. “Why you here?”
“Accident,” replied the small alien. “No mean harm, just look at you all. Say big hello later. Big…big bad thing, enemy-of-all, break ship. We stuck here.”
The big alien let out a few more clicks; maybe that was their equivalent of throat-clearing. “Need talk. Explain. Make sure humans know we not bad.”
Matt figured he was about the last person anyone would choose as an ambassador. Not to mention he had no fucking clue what to do about the bodies. There was also a shitload of brass dumped in this area thanks to his opponents’ over-enthusiastic firing; somebody was going to find this whole mess before long.
Oh well, maybe if he added ‘prevented an alien war’ to the plus column he could get a few years knocked off of his sentence. He nodded at both of them. “Okay. Where talk?”
__________
They trudged through the brush, with the big guy leading the way and the small one following behind him. Matt didn’t underestimate the little guy, though. He was impressed at how fast the smaller alien had hit the dirt after things kicked off. Maybe they had improved reflexes compared to humans?
The big guy, on the other hand, shoved his way through the brush and brambles as if they weren’t even there. He paused at one point to toss a big log out of the way as if it weighed nothing. Matt now put the big guy in the ‘shoot at a distance, do not engage in close quarters,’ category. Purely as a theoretical exercise, of course.
The trio arrived at a large clearing…and in the midst of it sat what could only be an alien spacecraft. In the light of the half-moon, it appeared almost as an oval-shaped hole in the world. Its surface was vanta-black, with only a few glimmers here and there to show that it was a real object and not some sort of optical illusion.
Matt wanted to don his goggles again to see if he could get any further details, but he didn’t want to offend his ‘hosts’. As they approached, a three-sided seam of light appeared on the side of the craft closest to them. That light rapidly expanded, forming into a door which hinged down to form both a rectangle of light and a ramp leading up to it.
The big guy glanced back at Matt as he strode up the ramp, as if wondering if the human would follow him up. Matt did pause for a bit, then took a deep breath and walked on up…then stopped dead at the top.
At the top of the ramp, the lit interior revealed a profusion of alien shapes, all clad in similar all-over armor. A sea of chromed, faceted helmets stared at him as the small alien strode past Matt and made a gesture that could only be interpreted as ‘come on in’.
Matt figured that his weaponry wasn’t all that useful for the moment. Moving with exaggerated care, he unslung his rifle and then unclipped his holster, then placed both inside the ship beside the entrance. He looked around the interior with some confusion. It looked clean and sterile, with a profusion of what could only be storage lockers lining its sides. The lighting came from above, but there was no source that he could determine. Very futuristic, but it was also way too small given how many aliens were inside it. Surely this small craft wasn’t their entire ship?
The small alien, who based on his demeanor Matt had dubbed ‘the Captain’, turned to Matt, spreading wide his arms.
“Welcome!”
Any reply from Matt was cut short as one of the aliens, a small one shaped just like the Captain, gave out a cry and darted forward. The newcomer began to scrub ineffectually with one armored hand at the ugly smear of blood across the Captain’s helmet.
It was at that moment that Matt felt his guts un-clench. These aliens might look weird, but if they could show compassion like this then maybe, just maybe, everything might work out after all.
__________
When they’d arrived at Pedersen, Chao was given some cold-weather garments and a pair of boots and told to go change; both fit well, so well that it made her suspicious. Just how had General De Vries gotten her measurements?
At the present, Sergeant Shaw finished fastening the straps around the way-too-heavy vest which now hung off of Chou’s petite figure. “This is a Class-Four vest, ma’am,” he said in a far too cheerful voice. He tapped the section covering her chest, resulting in a few soft and impervious thonks. “Ceramic plate, it’ll stop even a rifle bullet!” He grinned. “Owe my life to wearing one of these babies.”
They stood in a side-hangar of the base; nobody was visible except for ‘her’ group of soldiers, plus a giant and very evil-looking black helicopter. The latter craft had some weird facets on it which reminded Chao of some pictures she’d seen of stealth fighters. The soldiers were still fiddling with their equipment, as if they hadn’t checked it ten times already. Chao realized that, somehow, she’d wound up as one of the fabled Men In Black. Or at least she was now an honorary member.
Corporal McCoy sidled up next to the pair bearing a headset which looked to be barely there. She touched Chao’s shoulder to get her attention, then proceeded to fasten the rig over her head. One side of the headset went into her ear, with a microphone set in front of her mouth.
“Check check,” said McCoy, her voice sounding out both in the air and in Chao’s ear. “Can you hear me?”
Chao nodded, which she instantly regretted as McCoy then slapped a very weighty helmet onto her head. She puttered around Chao as she checked the helmet’s fit. Apparently satisfied, she then fastened the chin strap under Chao’s chin. She smiled up at Chao’s anxious expression.
“We all got your back, Chao. You just do what you gotta do.”
“I will,” said Chao, feeling a bit of determination return to her composure. Sure, she couldn’t parachute out of a plane or shoot a gun like these people, but she did have a job to perform.
She just hoped that, after doing that job, her entire planet wasn’t on fire.
Two people entered the hangar from the far side. Both wore nondescript fatigues, with only a few patches and nameplates to distinguish them. The sizable figure of Sergeant Shaw stood while his tanned, red-bearded face split in a big grin. “Hey, Stuka! Chum!”
The smaller of the newcomers, a blonde woman, smiled back. “Good to see ya, Mack.” Chao blinked in surprise as the two embraced; Kim almost vanished within Shaw’s substantial embrace. Somehow she knew this was comradely affection, not romantic. He released her and gave the other newcomer an equally enveloping hug.
He gave an imperious twirling gesture with one hand. “Right people, gather ‘round. This here’s Warrant Officers Kim ‘Stuka’ Foisy and David ‘Chum’ Cham. They’ve pulled my ass out of the fire more times than you’ve had hot dinners. We’re in good hands.” He turned and fixed Chao with an intense green-eyed look. “Ms. Chao, in light of our mission I do believe it’s best if we give our pilots the entire mission brief.”
Chao sighed. She’d signed a boatload of paperwork after being read into GIDEON SUNSHINE, paperwork which threatened all sorts of horribleness and fines and jail time and annoying ear-flicks upon her person if she so much as breathed a word of what she knew. But she had to admit, Mack had a point. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
She looked around. “Um, does someone have those notes I made?”
__________
Somewhere the aliens had procured what looked to be a standard antiseptic wipe, and now the Captain’s helmet was pristine once more. The small one who’d wiped it off promptly walked away and opened one of the ship’s side-cabinets, revealing a complex-looking bit of equipment that then received the bloodstained cloth. At the moment, that same small alien was in the midst of feeding a bunch of sealed containers into that equipment while studying its display with ferocious intensity.
Matt himself was in the middle of one of the most boring things he’d ever expected to encounter during a meeting with actual goddamn aliens. He’d been handed off to a member of the crew who was the third one of the small aliens…well, small unless you counted the little snake-guys. There were two of the latter, who’d come up and given him bows of their armored heads before slithering off to the rear of the ship. The Captain was talking to the rest of the crew, gesturing at a display which had appeared out of nowhere. Matt recognized a mission debrief when he saw one.
Two of the aliens were also a little too spider-like for his comfort; he’d suffered a mild case of arachnophobia ever since encountering a camel spider waaaaaay too close to him for comfort.
“Boat?” asked the little alien, pointing to a display hovering between them. Matt refocused, hoping that this tedious exercise was just so that they could improve the translation between their various languages. The display showed a sailboat floating in a calm azure sea near a tropical reef.
Matt nodded. “Boat.”
The display then shifted, showing a battleship at the dock. “Boat?”
He shook his head. “Not boat. Ship.”
“Sheeep. Sheip. Ship.” The alien cocked its head. “Why not boat?”
Matt held his hands close together. “Boat.” He then spread his arms wide, his hands far apart. “Ship.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the alien in evident pleasure. “Understand. Size difference, yes?”
“Yes.” He paused and looked around their surroundings. “This not ship, yes?”
“No, indeedy no! This boat!” The armored alien pointed at the ceiling. “Ship up there!”
Matt pursed his lips as he thought carefully through his next words. “Captain said bad thing broke ship. What is bad thing?”
The alien replied with a very human-looking shrug. “Bad thing gone. Not threat now. We had to fight, too big a chance bad thing would find you. All of you, understand?”
He’d faced down his own death with nary a care, but now Matt felt a prickle of cold fear begin to run down his back. “All? You mean, all humans?”
The alien nodded far too enthusiastically. “Yes! All humans! Could have called in Those-Who-Stop-The-Light.”
Well that sure as shit sounded ominous. “What are Those-Who-Stop-The-Light?”
The alien performed another bit of very human-looking emotion as it smacked its head with one hand. “Apologies. Used term applied to enemy-of-all by xyrax.” She motioned towards one of the spider-like aliens, who was still engrossed in the debrief taking place in the rear of the landing boat. “Human term…hmmm…trying to figure out best, most efficient term.”
The alien paused for a long moment, long enough for Matt to wonder if they’d simply shut down. But then they stirred.
“Ah, yes! Found most appropriate human term for enemy-of-all. Breaker.”
__________
McCoy checked that Chao was properly seated, then clipped a safety line to Chao’s vest. “Don’t worry! This thing will hold up an elephant!”
Chao gave the corporal a brave smile that she did not feel, accompanied by a thumbs-up. McCoy gave her shoulder a hearty slap of appreciation and moved on. Fortunately, her brand new comms gear meant that she and the others didn’t have to yell at each other to make themselves heard.
“Comms check,” said Sergeant Shaw in her ear. She’d been told that she was number ten, and so waited as the rest of the team counted along.
“Ten,” she managed to get out without a squeak in her voice, right when it was her turn.
“All set, Stuka,” said Shaw.
“Roger that.” Kim Foisy’s voice was as dry as flint, despite having been told less than an hour before that they might be hunting actual aliens on Earth’s soil. The eerily subdued engine noises around them increased, and Chao felt her world lurch. She glanced out the still-open side door and saw the ground fall away with a rapidity that she did not care for.
Chao patted one of her pant pockets and felt the reassuring lump of a folded-up barf bag. It was good to know it was there. Just in case.
The distant ground outside banked as the helicopter slewed around, heading for the pine-covered mountains which grew ever closer.
__________
“So you didn’t encounter the Breaker here? I mean, near Earth?” Matt was grateful that the aliens’ translation software was ever-improving; he no longer had to talk like Tarzan. It also meant that he’d gotten a better handle on the crews’ names as well as their roles.
Captain Sadaf shook her head. “No. It was here.” She gestured, and a complex starmap appeared. “This star. Red dwarf, light takes six years to get there from here and vice versa.” She gave another gesture, and the map expanded to show just the red dwarf’s system. Sadaf pointed at one of a few small blue points spread throughout the system. “We transitioned in here. Breaker was here.” Her armored finger now indicated another blue point half-way around the system. “Transition point to your system. Damaged Breaker there, very dangerous still. Tried to destroy it. We succeeded, but…” She waggled her hand in a manner which indicated mixed results. “It hurt our ship as it died.”
“How’d you make it here, then?” he asked. Had they spent well over six years travelling here after getting so badly damaged?
She pointed again at the same blue dot. “Transition point. Area of same-space-curvature-and-thermonuclear-flux. Can…hop? Jump? Yes, jump from one system to another while in transition point. We jumped just in time. Still got damaged.”
Matt sighed and ran his fingers through his short brown hair. “Okay, I think I understood some of that.” He was now much more appreciative of this crew; hell, they might have saved his entire goddamn planet. He rubbed his forehead as he wondered just what the hell he was supposed to do now. He had a few contacts he could ping in the wild and wooly world of Special Operations, and might be able to leap-frog the chain of command to get ahold of someone with real clout. But he also had the big problem of four dead bodies and a shitload of brass casings not too far from his own house.
Then he realized he might be able to take care of both things at once. After all, if he was able to get the powers-that-be in touch with these aliens, they might just be willing to overlook the rather…final methods he’d used to save them.
A soft chime sounded throughout the boat’s interior. One of the spider-like aliens stiffened in evident alarm and scuttled towards the front. It clamped itself onto a saddle-like station and scanned various holographic displays in front of it with increasing agitation.
“Captain!” it called out in a piping voice. “We have a human aircraft inbound!”
__________
Chao kept up the death-grip upon her safety strap as the helicopter did a deep, circling bank around the big clearing. Her brain cheerfully advised her that, if the strap failed, she’d go falling right out of the helicopter’s open door and then go splat on the hard ground far below. She clenched her teeth, told her brain to shut up, and wondered if the pilots were just showing off. Really, was this necessary?
“Looks to be a parking lot for a trailhead,” said Warrant Officer “Chum” Cham in her ear. “One vehicle visible, nothing else.”
“Who the hell is parking here overnight in the middle of the goddamn winter?” growled Shaw. “All right, do another sweep and set down…over in the north-northwest corner.”
Chao swallowed hard and prayed that her long-ago lunch wouldn’t come up as the helicopter continued its completely unnecessary and totally stupid deep bank around the lot.
“Nothing else visible,” said Cham.
Shaw nodded. “Right. Stuka, set ‘er down.”
“On it.”
To Chao’s immense relief, the helicopter leveled out and began flying like normal again. But then her stomach lurched again as it jerked to a stop mid-air and with no ceremony all but jammed itself downward towards the earth.
She caught a brief glimpse outside of snow glistening under the half-moon before McCoy smacked her shoulder…much less gently, this time…and unclipped Chao’s harness.
“You’re with me, Chao!” she all but yelled. “You stay right on my ass, got it? Whatever I do, you do!”
Chao swallowed hard again and nodded, then rose to her feet to follow the diminutive corporal out the open side of the helicopter.