I lied! This won't be the last chapter! There will be an epilogue.
Good god, I stayed up way too late writing this... but sometimes the plot bunnies just force me to stay awake.
Anyways, here's the action packed, second to last chapter in my story! I hope you like it!
Chapter 10 - Sweet Charity
Chuck stood in front of the warehouse, the sun beginning to set in the distance. It was a massive and foreboding structure, a metaphorical tombstone on the horizon. It could be his tombstone if he wasn't careful. Chuck may come off to other as being an irrational, gung-ho type personality, but he didn't pass every single test NASA threw at him with balls and guts alone. Charles T. Baker was a smart man, and he was also a fool.
He charged down the path that lead to the front of the building, hoping to god his plan would work. He skidded to a sudden halt as the doors in front of him opened, revealing four guards with guns pointed directly at Chuck's chest. He stood there, both hands in the air, a sheepish grin stretched awkwardly across his face.
"You got me boys," he admitted with a small laugh. The soldiers parted to give way to another figure that stepped out into the fading sunlight.
"Professor?" Chuck asked, eyes widening in disbelief. Glackle smiled smugly.
"Mr. Baker. Come to rescue your friend I presume?" Glackle asked calmly. Chuck's brow furrowed.
"What have you done with him?" he growled, taking a threatening step forward. He heard the soldiers charge their guns, making him remain where he was.
"My, my, such passion. The way you two pine for each other… You act like lovers," Glackle sneered, eliciting several sounds of disgust and amusements from his gunmen. Chuck flushed in both anger and embarrassment.
"Don't worry, Captain," the Professor mocked, "Your little boyfriend is safe. Just follow us and we'll take you to him."
Without hesitation, Chuck took a step forward and into the facility, gunmen flanking him on both sides. He glared a hole into the back of Glackle's head as they walked, hoping to god he'd drop dead from the sheer amount of hate waves Chuck was pummeling him with. He realized halfway through walking that he should probably be paying attention to the rout they were taking. Sighing internally, he began to pick out landmarks and tried remembering left, left, right, left, right, right, straight and so on. Finally, after descending a set of moist, rock-cut stairs, they came to a halt.
"Oh Lem!" Glackle called sarcastically. "We've brought you your little human!"
Chuck peered into the dark room, seeing the vague outline of, what appeared to be, a large jail cell in the corner. Lem rushed into the small amount of light produced by an unstable overhead lamp. His eyes had dark, purple circled beneath them, but other than that he appeared to be unharmed.
"Chuck! You idiot!" Lem shouted. The gunmen laughed, pushing Chuck towards the jail cell.
"Um, glad to see you're alive?" Chuck ventured, letting out an oof as he was shoved into the cell with Lem.
"You let yourself get caught! Why? Why would you do that? You shouldn't have come after me…" Lem whined, grabbing onto his ears and pulling them downwards.
"You two can talk out your differences. I'm sure the female will be arriving soon. We'll have to make preparations to accommodate her." Glackle dismissed his gunmen and began to follow them up the stairs. He turned and paused.
"Oh, and don't get to frisky. You're on camera," he said, pointing at a small camera stationed in the opposite corner of the room that was aimed directly at the cell.
"Toddleloo!" he waved his fingers before disappearing up the stairs.
"God that guy is an ass hole!" Chuck exhaled. "Honestly I didn't see that one coming," he laughed, turning to Lem. His companion had seated himself against the back wall of the cell, slumped over on the floor.
"Hey, buddy, what's wrong? We're together now. We'll get out of here. And hey! Good news! My planet isn't going to grind you guys up anymore!" Chuck assured, moving to sit down beside Lem. He put an innocent arm around his friend's shoulder in condolence.
"You shouldn't have come…" Lem all but whispered.
"Why? You think I would just leave you here? No way…" Chuck smiled confidently, his teeth still very white in the dark.
"They're going to kill you. Then they'll kill Vera. They're going to make it look like some kind of conquest," he sighed. "So you found a solution to the whole butchering us thing, but they're still going to make you guys the enemy. Make you seem like a threat somehow… I don't know how. He didn't elaborate." Lem wiped away a tear that threatened the corner of his eye.
"Hey, come on now, you really think I'd run in here without a plan?" Chuck asked, trying not to show how unnerved the revelation had made him. Lem blinked up at him wearily.
"Yes?" he questioned. Chuck ppfted at him.
"No way! I've had a plan all along!" he exclaimed, grabbing Lem and moving him in front of Chuck before he reached down into the front of his pants.
"Um, Chuck, as romantic as all this may appear, I really don't think now's the time," Lem cut in. Chuck just rolled his eyes before pulling out a gun. Lem's eyes widened.
"Oh. I see," he said dumbly.
"First thing first, we gotta knock out that camera," Chuck explained, speaking in a low voice. Lem realized then that Chuck had moved him so he would block the camera's view of the gun. He simply nodded in affirmation.
"I tried to pay attention as much as I could when they were leading me down here, but this place is a freaking labyrinth! So I'm going to need your help trying to find our way out."
"Right!" Lem was getting excited.
"The most important thing is to get out alive at this point so… please don't judge me if I kill someone. I promise I won't aim to kill," Chuck pleaded, and Lem found it odd for some reason.
"I mean, we're in a sticky situation here. The way I see it, it's either kill or be killed," Lem offered with a shrug, which seemed to give Chuck some solace. He nodded once.
"Alright, are you ready?"
"Ready."
"Stay where you are," Chuck ordered, raising his wrist to rest on Lem's shoulder. He took aim at the camera and fired.
In the control room upstairs, one of the surveillance screens blacked out. However, it went unnoticed. The guards on duty were in the midst of a rousing game of cards; completely unaware of the captives they were supposed to be watching. A few hallways down, Glackle sat in his office, typing away on a typewriter, composing his speech for after he saved the world from the vicious aliens. Several miles out, Grawl, Vera, and an impressive number of soldiers assessed the warehouse from afar.
"What is it with unassuming warehouses and military operations?" Vera asked.
"For the last time, this isn't military," Grawl grumbled. She shrugged.
"Still, it's awfully cliché," she pointed out.
"What's the news?" Grawl asked into one of Vera's communicators that she had lent them for the mission.
"Definitely a base of some kind, Sir," came the reply from a young soldier. "There appear to be several points of entrance, but the main one is right smack dab in the front. I can only assume that is where they'll be least vulnerable. Best come in from the sides."
"Excellent work, soldier, now return to your squadron," Grawl commanded.
"Yes, Sir, over and out." The communicator beeped definitively.
"Can you use a gun?" Grawl asked. Vera just stared at him.
"I can," she admitted slowly. Without another word, he handed her a strange, metallic gun, clasping bother her hands around the handle and holding them there.
"Promise me you'll use it if you're threatened," he demanded, his eyes pleading. Vera nodded slowly.
"If I'm threatened," she repeated. The last thing Vera ever wanted to be a part of was war, of any kind. She despised killings, thinking there nothing intelligent about taking another creatures life unless one planned on eating it. Military tactics always appalled her, senseless bloodshed making her stomach turn. Yet somehow, as Grawl commanded his forces, she saw a strange sense of elegance in the way they worked together, as one. It was like a cell, groups of people doing multiple jobs at once, all working towards one cause. It was neat, efficient, and somewhat impressive. In all the chaos, Vera found it quite ironic that she had found momentary beauty in violence.
After a few tries, Chuck had blasted through their cell door, the two moving swiftly up the stairs. Lem stayed close behind, constantly circling, walking backwards, then sideways, then forwards, then sideways. It was making him dizzy, but he had to do it. He had to be able to see everywhere at once, which he knew was impossible. And yet here he was, attempting just that.
Maybe it was dumb luck, maybe it was perfect timing, or maybe Chuck really did have everything under control, but everything was going unbelievably smoothly. That is, until Chuck came to a grinding halt in a four way intersection.
"Alright, this is where things get foggy," he whispered, gun outstretched, moving his arm from one hallway to the next.
"Should we flip a coin?" Lem asked helplessly.
"Do you have a coin?"
"… "
"Then that's not going to work."
Down the hall, the sound of people approaching caused Lem's heart to jump into his throat.
"We gotta hide!" he hissed hysterically.
"Follow me," Chuck ordered, moving up against one of the wooden doors. Holding his gun at the ready, he slowly turned the knob. Rushing inside, Lem heard a surprised shout, followed by a dull thud. He rushed in, closing the door to find Chuck standing over the body of an unconscious soldier.
"Is he dead?" Lem asked.
"No, I just knocked him out, but find some rope or something. We have to tie him up." After they had secured the soldier and Lem had taken his gun, Chuck pressed his ear to the door. The small group of soldiers outside marched past the room they were occupying and down the hall. Chuck let out a shaky breath he didn't realize he was holding.
"Alright, let's get back out there and…" Chuck froze. Out of all the possible rooms, they appeared to have stumbled into a very important one. Lem was already staring at the blueprints that were spread across the large, wooden table.
"Is that…?" Chuck started.
"A missile," Lem supplied, shaking his head slowly in disbelief. Emblazoned on the side of the sketched missile were the American flag and the NASA logo.
"They're planning on using this against their own people… and blaming it on you," Lem sputtered in disbelief. He turned to Chuck, eyes wide, his innocence seeping away by the second.
"They would kill people needlessly just to prove a point?" he asked, almost hoping Chuck would tell him it wasn't true. Chuck had nothing to say. He stood there, gun hanging limply at his side, speechless.
Lem rolled up the blueprint, folding it once. He strode over to Chuck.
"Put this in your jacket," he instructed, and Chuck did so. "If we get out of here, we have the evidence to prove these guys were nuts." Chuck nodded, tucking the incriminating blueprint into the inside pocket of his blue jacket.
"Hey, what's that?" he asked, peering around Lem. Beneath the missile blueprints lay something that looked like a floor plan. The two shuffled over to the backside of the table, brushing the extra papers out of the way. Sure enough, there were the blueprints to the very building they were in. Chuck let out a gleeful laugh.
"They must have made these when they converted this place into a base!" Lem exclaimed, grinning. It only took them a minute to pinpoint their location, retracing their steps on the map.
"My god, we're so close to an exit!" Chuck exclaimed.
"Not close enough."
The two jerked to look up. Glackle had opened the door silently, three soldiers flanking him, guns aimed directly at Chuck and Lem.
"My, my, you two really are quite the duo. I must admit, I never saw this coming," Glackle sneered, maddeningly calm. Lem and Chuck remained frozen, both of their guns hidden under the table.
"Now, if you'd please take your filthy hands off of those floor plans, we'll be taking you back to your cell.
"Hmm…" Chuck seemed to contemplate, "Nah."
With one swift movement, Chuck kicked over the large table, grabbing Lem by the shirt and pulling him down behind it. Glackle shouted in surprise as gunfire began to fly over their heads.
"Stay down," Chuck whispered.
"Get them!" Glackle screeched.
Chuck took a deep breath, readying his gun before spinning to his knees with lightening speed. With practiced ease, he targeted and shot all three soldiers before they had time to figure out what the human was doing. As they each fell, the terrified look on Glackle's face gave Chuck all the confidence he needed. Rising to his feet, he aimed the gun directly at Glackle's head.
"Now it's your turn," he said, feeling like an action movie star. To his surprise, Glackle turned on his heel and bolted out the door.
"Hey!" Chuck shouted. "Coward!" He motioned for Lem to get up, the two of them taking off immediately.
"Alright, follow me!" Chuck called to Lem behind him. "Gun at the ready!"
The two ran swiftly down the corridor, moving with ease now that they had a destination. They finally made their way to a large hanger that housed a lone helicopter-type machine. Pressed against the wall, they attempted to squeeze into the shadows as a group of soldiers with guns trotted across the large expanse. Alarms were sounding off in the distance as well as the sound of gunfire and shouting. Lem turned to Chuck.
"Do you think Grawl got here?" he whispered. Chuck shrugged, eyeing the door at the opposite end of the hanger.
"Whatever it is, their attention is diverted," Chuck whispered back. "Come on, we need to move."
The two scuttled along the wall for a minute before breaking into a run across the hangar. Chuck felt hope flitter into his heart. They were so close.
A shot rang out, echoing through the hanger. Chuck and Lem froze, mere feet from the door to freedom. Another shot and Chuck cried out, falling backwards as pain ripped through his upper body.
"NO!" Lem screamed, stupidly dropping his gun to fall to his friend's side. A harried Glackle slowly crossed the hall towards them, completely alone, limping, gun raised.
"You think I'd let you get away that easily? You may have gotten the military in on this, but at least I can go away with the satisfaction of watching the both of you die!" Glackle shrieked, spittle flying from his mouth in his hysterics. "Starting with the human," he said, aiming the gun at Chuck's head. Lem sucked in a breath, looking into Chuck's eyes for the last time, drinking in their life.
Just then, the door behind them opened. Glackle quickly looked up, frozen in surprise. There stood Vera, stone-faced as ever. She looked at Glackle with his gun, down at the bleeding Chuck and terrified Lem, back up at Glackle, and promptly raised her gun and shot, all without ever batting an eye.
Glackle went down, hitting the ground with a thud, eyes still wide with shock and disbelief as his gun clattered across the floor and away from him. More of Grawl's men flooded the room, guns at the ready, Grawl himself among them, sprinting towards Chuck, Lem, and Vera.
"He's hurt," Vera said, kneeling beside Chuck, pressing a hand over his wound.
"It's not fatal, but we need to get him out of here," she ordered. Grawl motioned and several of his soldiers stepped forward to help carry Chuck out of the base. Before they began to move, Chuck reached into his jacket and pulled out the blueprint. He pressed it into Vera's hand, nodding once. She tightened her grip around the piece of paper, watching as the soldiers carried her partner out of the building, a worried Lem trailing behind them.
Grawl was looking down at Glackle.
"Poor, insane bastard," he mused, shaking his head. Vera let out a heaving sigh, letting her gun fall to the ground.
"Don't ever make me kill someone ever again." There was a pause in which the two simply stared at the dead Professor.
"I did not make you kill anyone," Grawl stated neutrally. Vera remained still for a moment before turning and walking out of the base. Grawl lingered briefly before following her.
Vera stood a few meters away, looking across the desert as the soft twilight turned the rocks and sands into hard blue and black silhouettes on the horizon.
"What you did was admirable," Grawl assured. Vera did not face him.
"Yes, I suppose it was."
"Captain Baker and Lem are safe now, the entire operation has been apprehended. We have succeeded."
"Yes, we have."
"What is wrong, then?" Grawl asked, trying his best not to sound impatient. Vera finally turned, her eyes bright even in the coming darkness.
"Nothing is wrong, and that's the problem," she sighed. Grawl took several commanding steps forward, looking Vera straight in the eyes.
"You think too much," he stated before pulling her in to a forceful kiss. Vera could do nothing but kiss back.
"He'll be okay?" Lem asked again, wringing his hands in nervous anticipation.
"Yes! For the last time, yes! He's fine! It was a minor wound!" the old doctor shouted, mumbling something about nagging as he packed up his back. "You can go see for yourself if you want," he barked. Lem didn't need to be told twice. He burst into the white, sterile room of the hospital, shuffling over to Chuck's bed, which was a tad too small for him.
"Hey," Lem said softly. Chuck's eyes opened wearily.
"Hey yourself," he retorted, cracking a smile. Lem let out a laugh that was just a little too loud, but he couldn't help it. Relief flooded his small body. He lovingly stroked Chuck's hair, cupping his neck with his other hand.
"I'm so glad you're okay," he breathed in. "You were so… totally… awesome, you know. Back there. You were just… amazing. It was cool," Lem exclaimed, feeling childish and stupid and in love.
"Ahh, you're making my ego even bigger than it already is," Chuck proclaimed, looking off to the side for a moment. He looked back into Lem's eyes and brought his hand up to cup his round, green face. They shared a comfortable silence for a long moment before Lem bent down and placed a soft kiss onto Chuck's lips. It was so gentle and innocent that Chuck felt his chest might explode. He couldn't help himself when he pulled Lem closer, to deepen everything. His head was swimming with emotion. They were alive, both of them, and it felt so wonderful.
A knock on the door made them both jerk away from one another.
"Come in," Chuck called, his voice cracking to his chagrin. The door opened slowly and Vera's head poked around the corner.
"Oh good," she exclaimed, stepping in and closing the door behind her. "I was really hoping I wouldn't walk in on you two smooching or something." She winked knowingly at Chuck while Lem flushed in embarrassment.
"Anyways, I'm here to drop off these," she held up a vase of strange, globular flowers, "and to herald some good news. The blueprints you gave me were enough to get us out of hot water and to shut down all of Glackle's facilities. Everyone involved has either been arrested or will be shortly." She grinned in satisfaction. "And it gets even better. Kennedy got the reports on the rain rocks. They're ecstatic to say the very least. They want to set up a permanent base here on P51, if we can set up an arrangement with the locals, that is, which I'm sure wouldn't be a problem. Shipments of the rocks would be sent back to Earth every two weeks." She beamed. "And here's the kicker! They need people to stay here and run the operation. Humans. Of course, I nominated the two of us. Hope you don't mind."
Lem and Chuck stared at her in silent disbelief.
"Are you saying… that we won't have to go back to Earth right away?" Chuck asked, eyes as round as saucers. Vera was practically glowing.
"That is precisely what I'm saying, Captain Baker."
Stay tuned for the final chapter! It'll be short, sweet, and completely open-ended.
I hope everyone's enjoyed my story. I'm so thankful for all of my readers. You guys are really the reason I kept going.
KEEP BEING AWESOME. 3
Gregor