A/N: First of all I'd like to thank all those who have checked in on me over the past several years. The continued interest in the story despite this gross delay and in my own well being has been much appreciated. I've made a lot of promises that I wasn't giving up and I haven't. It's just been a real struggle writing (or doing anything, really) with my health issues. I've been extremely limited physically for a long while now, having to retire from volunteering outside the home but have been able to remain in the background of fanfiction as a coach for some who were struggling. I've enjoyed helping people and it fits with how active I've been able to be on a more regular basis.
I think I've made about 30 plus attempts to finish this chapter and several writing exercises to get back into things, and I'd inevitably crash from pain and fatigue for several weeks which is very disruptive. Then several months later I'd try again without really getting anywhere. I know how discouraging it is waiting. I've felt it too, and I want to thank everyone for their patience, encouragement and well wishes.
I've let a few inquiring readers have an early look at what I had and where I wanted to take this chapter, and they gave me valuable feedback which helped a lot with some execution. You guys have my thanks :)
I also owe a huge thanks to Denaith who wrote me asking for permission for something a little while ago. This guy has been instrumental in keeping me engaged during what seemed like attempt number bazillion and getting this chapter finally finished despite everything. We've talked a lot, tossing random ideas at the proverbial dartboard and how things might take shape over the next 10-20 years of this universe that is beyond the scope of this story or even what I'm able to do. A lot of background stuff, world building, ect. Even looking over my shoulder in GoogleDocs while I write and pointing out the occasional mistake that I clearly wasn't going to catch. Pretty much every day and I am tremendously grateful for his assistance.
So here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it :)
Nox hung lazily from the old warehouse's lofty wooden rafters by his PAK's spider limbs. The feeble lighting barely reached the curved and cobweb covered ceiling but was no match for the film-like visor covering his eyes.
Below him were eight human males, armed with barely concealed electric and projectile arms hardly more sophisticated than spear throwers. They had visually swept the building before starting their time-killing mindless conversation, yet had made their own precautions moot by simply not looking up. This was pathetic. He could have cleaned up this affair in about five minutes, not the few weeks they had spent gathering Intel and analyzing a simplistic web of a minor criminal's loose network. Which turned out to be pathetically naive by any standard in the galaxy.
But then he wasn't one of the bonded either. A simple sweep of the primary targets could not be comprehended as a satisfactory option for those rare and unbalanced few. Not a single element would be permitted to escape the reckoning, no matter how irrelevant one actually was in reality. Bonding did something unhealthy to their brainmeat.
Well, given that his team was not 'officially' dirtside and was merely running a psych operation to round up some primitive thieves, the gig paid obscenely well. Not that the monies were why he was doing this. All the experimentals deserved better than what they had gotten in Irken society.
Mez had been one of the easiest to find in the beginning. He was eccentric for sure, but the drive to study enemy species rather than conquering or destroying them and mending wounded Irken soldiers fed back on each other. That caused him to understand 'enemy' as just a scientific label that had nothing to do with his duty as an Irken. Every species was an equal opportunity specimen that was worth study. Which put Irkens on the same page as other species. Not tremendously popular. Useful, but not welcome.
Not that Mez was capable of noticing that he offended Irken conquering principles on a daily basis.
Himself? He had been designed for acute observation and accurate reporting from the shadows in order to operate in the midst of enemy battle lines for field intelligence and spotting primary targets for fire support. But this enhancement had also made Nox very aware of Irkens as well. Especially Taller Irkens who did not appreciate hearing the vast number of ways they could improve in becoming better Tallers. Which in turn started the pranks to merely illustrate the benefits of improvement.
A human cargo vehicle, small yet still managing to be obscenely polluting, with a blue tarp tied over the back pulled into the warehouse and stopped at the waiting group down below. The unwashed humans below crowded at the rear and eventually pulled out several long black cases made of weatherproof plastic. One was opened for inspection, and a small rocket was held aloft for inspection. The humans chattered excitedly.
Nox adjusted his thin visor with a finger, the heads-up-display zooming in on the weapon and switching to x-ray and spectrographic analysis. Component data and assembly breakdown schematics appeared before his Irken eyes. Then he permitted himself a murmur of a laugh. The rocket was full of safety features and designed for minimal urban disruption. The warhead was essentially a Taser for vehicles, meant to disable them upon impact without drawing the attention a large explosion would. Short ranged, but quick and stealthy.
And completely useless. Irken war machines had to contend with the Meekrob. Beings made of energy. Beings who routinely used EMP and other energy overload systems against Irken technology. Not to mention who possessed their own combat vehicles as if easily discarded robes rather than physically sit inside them.
Such a rocket wouldn't even short out an Irken cup holder. Especially after that one factory recall as a result of the Battle of the Slappings.
Nox clicked his teeth together twice, activating a microscopic sensor attached to the mandible joint in his skull and transmitting back to the communicator resting in his PAK. He felt several responding chirps from the rest of his team. Everyone was in position at various points of interest around the city.
The Irken picked up the Sleep Dart Rifle he had been required to use from its resting place on a nearby rafter. Nox sighted into the scanning scope and calmly switched the onboard firing computer from safety to one of the discharge modes.
The Irken-made Bio-Recognition guided darts, propelled quietly by compressed gas, were networked time-released devices full of sleep serum designed for very large Earth mammals. Normally he did not approve of long bursts of automatic fire, being a professional and all. But those humans down there were all crowded around that one open box and the homing Irken projectiles prevented overdoses. It was almost embarrassing to be paid for this.
Nox gave his sharp Irken teeth a final soft click.
As customary it was thirty minutes after sunrise when Nick the Slick, wearing a white bathrobe and holding an undecorated coffee cup, opened the front door of the apartment complex to fetch whichever newspaper was in the best condition. One that had been resting on the dirty concrete steps or chewed on by a stray dog just didn't suit him.
He didn't even manage to look down before dropping his coffee cup, which bounced harmlessly off of the pile of newspapers at his feet and soaked them thoroughly. Instead he was staring at the low stacking of plastic crates which formed a circular fence and contained nearly twenty soundly sleeping bodies; the whole pile appearing to have been contestants in an ill-advised porcupine wrestling match.
One of the black weatherproof crates' lid was lifted partially open. Nick quickly scanned the surroundings for witnesses, seeing none. Not even birds or squirrels were active this early. He quickly moved up to look inside the container.
Inside was the merchandise he had ordered, unmolested except for the 'Thinking of You' card attached to the device's olive colored casing. You can keep your playthings. They won't help you.
Nick the Slick's face turned red, then to purple indignation. These people were actually toying with him. Him!
He quickly regained his composure and returned inside the building. He had been willing to play nice and reasonable; civilized and moderate in resolving this dispute. It had been met with only hostile rejection and now whoever they were was now practically laughing at him.
The man shuffled down the hall and toward the elevator. He had tried playing civil and was insulted in turn. Well, Nick didn't get his due respect nor his position without knowing how to play hardball as well. He pulled out a cellphone from his bathrobe's pocket.
"Mr. Please? There has been another 'delivery' in the courtyard this morning. Do have it cleaned up before anyone sees it. The display is a bit of an eyesore. Oh, and Mr. Please? Further correspondence to your 'Round Robin' pen-pals should be actually written down and mailed. That is what distinguishes calling a friend and writing a pen-pal. I believe texting over cellphones infringes on the concept a bit."
Nick the Slick disconnected the untrusted and probably compromised phone line as he pressed the call button for the elevator. If he had to resort to courier runners delivering verbal notes like bush league warlords with delusions of grandeur in the modern world, well, the gloves now were coming off. He had made every effort to keep this clean, discreet and without needless damage to either party. But a businessman had to make arrangements to preserve his long-term interests. Arrangements that meant dirty hands.
Not his own, of course. That was what underlings were paid for.
The chime in the hallway dinged and the elevator doors slid open. Nick mentally disciplined himself back to calmness as he walked in and the doors closed. As he pressed the button for the third floor, he went over things in his mind.
The offended party seemed to want a bravado styled confrontation and they would eventually come. Well, he could work with that. Build up his own defense with a show of brute strength that such a Neanderthal would understand, and then offer up Tinkles bound and gagged as the deserved sacrificial lamb. As if Nick the Slick had been given no other choice than to comply. Let them believe they took back their wounded pride by their own will.
Gaz sat in her chair beside the front row of seats, an empty place made there for her to park. There were only about half the usual number of amputees in group this morning, being that it was actually morning. She rested her head against the wheelchair's back, eyes half closed.
To be honest she wasn't really tired. Well, not sleepy tired anyway. Her maintenance cycle saw to that last night.
"Gaz, you've been quiet so far and you missed group last week. How are you doing?" the Chief's voice from up front reached her ears.
Gaz opened her eyes and straightened her head to look at the support group's mediator.
She didn't want to open up about her weaknesses. That she still wasn't in full control of how she viewed herself, or at times how to view herself, made it worse. Too many thought fragments and unregulated emotions that came to the forefront without permission. But the girl knew it was for the better. She had reluctantly learned that giving in to her trauma-reinforced desire to never be seen as 'weak' was itself a weakness. And an alluring one given her personality.
"I've reached the point where I could wear those electric fitness bands without having flashbacks," Gaz stated flatly and without energy. "I still have bad anxiety for hours after, but it's getting better. It's just when I hear the neighbor's bug-zapper go off…"
There was a ring of understanding chuckles among the people sitting around the room.
Behind her, one of the agreeing male voices spoke up. "Yeah. Been there, done that. Took about three years before I stopped diving to the floor whenever the neighbor's car backfired. And that was every time he came home from work."
Gaz didn't turn her head to respond. "Well… my PAK shot it up a few times by accident. Zim finally got tired of putting new ones up so no one would find out and rigged it so that it turns off when we take Gir for a walk."
The girl's face grew a bit hot at the frequent occurrences where she would be guiding her chair down the sidewalk behind a disguised Gir while Zim, jealous at having to walk like an ordinary being, would be riding along in her lap. As if this wasn't embarrassing enough, there was the armored car crawling along a mere thirty feet behind her while Zim held Gir's leash yelling "Mush, Gir! Mush!" Sometimes it was a tossup of whether to laugh as if she were losing her mind or smack her husband upside the head with a spider limb.
There were now a number of nods going around the room.
Another male voice from behind her spoke up, this one older than the first. "I get that. After you've seen action for a while it takes time for that reflex to not be on such a hair trigger. When you come back home it makes people around you real nervous when you're suddenly reaching for an imaginary gun because no one told you about the bottle of champagne. They just don't understand why you can't leave it behind like a 'civilized' person should. Which makes you try to hide that part of yourself away from people you care about. Even faking what you've become so you don't have to see their eyes when they glimpse parts of what you needed to be in order to come back home alive. Not to mention bringing back the ugly memories that you won't ever be able to forget."
Gaz nodded. She wasn't one of them, yet there were similarities. Hers had been a computer programmed reflex caused by her mind reacting to a remembered danger before it could process what was actually happening around her. However, like these others around her whether programmed by code or trained by environment, she was slowly improving.
"Anyway, last week I couldn't come in. Every one of my nerves were tingling like thousands of ants crawling throughout my body. I was almost wishing the paralysis was permanent just so it would stop. Before, I saw people who whined as pathetic no matter what. But after six days… even when I plugged in for the night I kept-"
Gaz cut herself off, still working out her own unwanted feelings of being part appliance. Plus the annoying PAK's safeguard note sent into her consciousness pinging the question of if she was really sure it was a good idea to start telling 'aliens' how a PAK worked.
And I thought my old computer's idiot proofing was bad, Gaz thought.
There were some grunts of sympathy. The rest of the group had many discussions of phantom limb syndrome and nerves that thought they still existed. Not that the experience could compare to an entire body waking up.
"So," the Chief drew out slowly. "You're still in the chair."
Gaz nodded with red cheeks. "I can move around but it's exhausting. My muscles didn't do anything for two months and I wasn't big on running around outdoors before… you know. I guess they atrophied pretty fast. Not to mention-" She cut herself off.
"Yes?" the Chief asked, encouraging the girl to continue.
Gaz's voice turned quietly defensive, not wanting to expose her inner self but refusing to give in. "My arms and legs get tangled up. I mean I forget which set of limbs I'm supposed to be using and I get confused. Not just in my head but in my PAK too. Feels like half the time I'm playing Twister with myself."
The girl looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to be caught looking at the floor like a wimp. "But if I'm focused on the walking part, I need my artificial limbs to keep me steady. It gets… weird having two brains sharing one mind trying to figure out how to move my body and keep my… robot parts behaving at the same time."
There were many murmurs of having similar feelings of getting used to a prosthesis. Vases getting knocked over, hooks and hinges getting caught on curtains or up noses and a few other tales. Granted, not on the scale Gaz had to contend with. Those spider limbs also doubled as a cybernetic weapons system capable of stopping the average car in its tracks.
The Chief nodded at Cortez, who had been silent all morning, and pointed his own prosthesis at her. "The Sergeant over there had a lot of spills in PT when she first got those steel poles of hers. She can tell you what a blow it is to someone's pride when an adult has to learn how to walk all over again. Heck, most of us had to relearn how to use the gear to reach out and 'grasp' things. So, why don't you show us?"
"Show you?" Gaz asked even more defensively, her eyes turning to slits.
"Yep," the Chief cheerfully answered.
He reinforced the notion by holding up his own false arm in the air, the two chrome clamps tapping together briefly as they registered the flexing muscles in his forearm. Several others around her repeated the gesture until waving mechanical devices were in serious danger of poking someone's eye out.
Gaz let out her breath, shaking her head. She didn't really want to do this in front of others, but the girl hadn't been one to cower away from anything. Well- That wasn't really true. She had battled against letting anyone getting too close after her mother had abandoned… no, not even that. Had simply forgotten Gaz ever even existed. As if no more memorable as some random blink of the eye a decade past. All that hurt and distrust of that little girl turned into a shield of anger in order to be strong and impervious when it would eventually and inevitably happen again. Because all the humans around her were so obsessively fascinated by incredibly stupid things. At home it was science, the paranormal, or alien invasion. At skool it was makeup, clothes, which loser was sitting next to which moron, or some human shaped monkey able to push over some other human monkey. Not to mention pink.
Then along came the idiot Zim. Someone who didn't try to get close. Whom, like herself, didn't want to get close to another human. Someone who clearly wasn't human, even when wearing that minimal disguise he had created and hung onto like a baby's lame security blanket. Then someone who couldn't leave. Couldn't forget. Couldn't survive without her in a very literal sense. The one who came for her with the destructive will of a wrathful Fury when she learned that even Gaz Membrane could be-
Gaz brought her diverting thoughts back under control and let out a hidden sigh through her nose. She'd have to do this in front of others at some point and at least Gir wasn't there to run in circles underfoot making things worse. Grasping the arms of the wheelchair with her nervous fingers, Gaz braced her own spirit and extended a foot.
The girl slowly stood up out of the chair, her human limbs shaking as if trying to remember how to function. She closed her eyes, her PAK's spider limbs extending to the floor. Then she took a step forward.
There was the thumpish click of a shoe making contact with hospital flooring, followed by sharper clicks of thin metal steps. Then another hesitant footstep followed by two more soft metallic clicks.
Gaz, her cheeks bright red at looking so weak and inhuman in front of the human gathering, moved forward slowly and deliberately. She turned and took a few more halting steps in front of the group. Eyes ground shut in concentration and her still wounded pride not wanting to see gawking faces. Ignoring the anti-collision estimates of various objects she should avoid being fed into her mind's eye by her PAK. Not wanting to end up on the floor with her two sets of limbs tangled up in front of everyone and flailing around like a flipped beetle trying to recover.
She stopped, still with her eyes closed. Six limbs standing her body upright. Two flesh and blood, four thin robotic ones made of metal. Behold the Robot Zombie Girl.
Gaz steeled her own feelings that tried to turn inward against her deserving self as much as they once drove outward against others. Then a noise reached her ears and Gaz opened her eyes. The sound of clapping and encouragement. Fleshly human hands carefully meeting artificial replacements. Cortez was standing up too, balanced on metal pole legs herself and steadied by one of her short cane in one hand.
The older woman reached out to Gaz with her free hand and took her by the shoulder to carefully guide the girl back to the support of her wheelchair. Especially careful given that the two of them now had two legs of flesh and seven artificial struts moving them along. The younger girl looked exhausted. Mentally, emotionally and physically.
Gaz fell back into her chair, retracting her spider limbs into her PAK. Cortez thumped into the empty chair next to her.
"Well," Cortez said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You didn't trip me on the way back. That's with six steel legs and a cane between us. You should have seen me when I first started walking with only two."
Gaz just nodded a bit. That had taken a lot out of her. Not so much the movement, but doing it in front of other humans. Opening up her vulnerability to other humans was something both her brain and her PAK had been telling her mind was NOT something to appreciate.
"All right!" the Chief exclaimed. "Our little mechanic made a real breakthrough today. We didn't bring any punch, so how about we raid the vending machine for drinks?"
Gaz watched them all stand up and move chairs out of the way for the next group that would use the room in a few hours. That was fine for them, but she really just wanted to go home and recuperate while watching TV with Gir. Perhaps exercise finger coordination with her GameSlave. This evening was going to be her first real public appearance and she had to recover her strength in the meantime. Gaz's spirit couldn't bear the thought of looking weak during that.
And then there was that other thing.
Colonel Alpha stood up from his seat in the front row and took his place on the slightly raised stage before the giant display screen that was nearly a wall itself. In front of the officer was three hundred or so uniformed humans assembled together in the large cavernous 'Assigning Room' deep within the base. He raised his hand with no wasted movement and the room quieted down. This was an all-human gathering.
"All right," he began, his voice amplified by unseen technology. Probably concealed within the red metallic walls or ceiling. The man let out a silent breath. "First order of business. How many times does it need to be said? Today is the Irken annual performance review. I know you've all had a boss at some point in your life, so you all should know what that is. Just because some aliens just happen to call it 'Probing Day' does not mean they are going to- never mind. It's just a coincidence, so all the whining about how you all want to avoid a trip to medical will stop. Got it? I don't need Irkens asking for restraining orders against you people regarding bonding harassment because you won't stop bringing it up."
A wave of soft grumbled muttering came from the audience.
"Good. Now we've had a substantial influx of personnel come in this last month. You've been presented with a significant alteration of what our reality actually is, some of what our overall mission entails, and that we are still working up as an organized unit. A lot of you that were in the service still have reservations about a lot of things. A secret intelligence organization that is into all the hoodoo-voodoo stuff people scoff at on TV. Aliens that once were more than willing to wipe us out if ordered to and that this base is pretty much theirs. That we are working alongside them and not at the wishes of our various governments while our commanding General is an alien to boot."
Alpha began a slow pace from left to right and back again before the assembled personnel. "You don't like that some arrogant aliens assigned another alien as governor of our planet without us having any say about it. We get that too. Even though it's a figurehead title and all these Irkens are exiles, it just doesn't sit well with us vets. Well, he hasn't been around here as he's been preoccupied with taking care of his human wife, but let me tell you that Zim doesn't like you much either.
"Some of you have voiced doubts that you belong here, even though it has been made absolutely clear that leaving involves losing any memory that you experienced since your arrival. Mostly it is because the grunts don't hear a lot of what is going on among the top ranks. This morning Intel, and I mean our Earth-based acquaintances at the SEN, sent us their analysis of the Big Picture. Computer? Start the display."
The lighting in the room dimmed and the giant display screen behind Alpha blinked to life. It showed a swarm of varied colored dots, squiggles and smears in a spherical orientation.
"The SEN has been listening in on the galactic chatter for a while now, and we recently gained access to an abandoned network of survey drones covering our sector of space. This is a map of our stellar cluster out to two hundred and fifty light-years. Pretty impressive, right? At least until you learn that Earth is the only living planet within ten thousand light-years in any direction. Ten percent of the diameter of our entire galaxy. And folks, let me tell you that has been a giant blessing. I will return to that in a minute."
Alpha swept his gaze across the room as quiet 'briefing room murmurs' reached his ears.
"About half of you have never met Lady Gaz, but the other half has probably told you about her. To you she's just some girl who probably got swept up with some alien romance thing like in the movies. Let me tell you the fighter jocks haven't told you the half of it. That girl doesn't get swept off her feet. She knocks you off yours, and I don't mean that in a nice way. This map you're seeing? It probably contains thousands of empty stars and planets. As of last month, Zim and Gaz own it all. As in everything outside of our own Lunar orbit is their personal private property. Every Irken you have seen on this base is that girl's royal guard. They are all loyal to her and her alone. Not even to 'Governor' Zim. She may not care about it and may not claim it for herself, but if you don't believe she is a bloody queen to those Irkens in every way you are very much mistaken and you will be very, very, very sorry if you don't respect her as the V.I.P. of a thousand worlds. Every single one of us, Irken, Human or otherwise, works for her.
"It's because of her marriage to an Irken that we are protected by big bad Judgementian Law from alien invasions or outright exterminations. And it is only because we are alone out in the middle of dead space that we haven't been up to our necks in hostile space aliens since medieval times."
The room was silent now. Most had seen science fiction movies and could imagine an alien invasion with nothing but horses and swords for defense.
Alpha took up a more grateful sounding tone. "But a lot of folks out there haven't been as blessed as we have. Computer?"
The display behind him swept out to a galactic scale, showing their arm of the galaxy in to the core worlds. More icons and colored lines began filling those sections.
"Here, folks, is the big picture that hasn't been made clear as of yet. As you have been briefed, the galaxy is not a happy fun place made of sunshine and rainbows. There are a lot of nasty species out there. The situation has been getting very hot lately and civilians usually get desperate when their people can't hold out any longer. Until a short time ago nobody had any alternatives other than to build up and hold their ground, assuming they could, or go dark and pray no one had noticed their existence until the end of time."
A small blue circle appeared in Earth's vacant part of space, then a series of weaving lines began tracing their way across the map.
"We are smack dab in the middle of the first and only sanctuary in the galaxy, earmarked by galactic law for endangered species and everybody out there knows it. We are literally the only game in town if you're in danger. There is confirmation by SEN listening posts and our off-world contact that verify significant refugee units ranging from individual shuttles to squadrons of hastily constructed asteroid colony vessels have begun moving in our direction. Large groups were under surveillance until loss of contact and used up any defensive assets they had breaking out or drawing off pursuit. What's left must rely on stealth and brains to escape interception. They are on a long journey and a lot of them probably won't make it.
"The real concern are these," Alpha said, pointing at a series of blinking icons surrounded by outlined shapes indicating the uncertain positions. "Twenty star systems have successfully launched raids on Planet Jacker barges and are now evacuating. And I mean evacuating their whole planet. We have reason to believe at least two have Irken Invaders who have gone radio silent are now actively guiding them. I don't think loopholes will help them if they're caught delivering their assigned planet to a safe haven. Those particular natives were also reported as being a sentient herbivore species with no historic apex predators, and are at an eighteenth century tech level."
Alpha pushed aside the absurd image drudged up in his memory from the report. The twin worlds orbited so close together that the populations used hot air blimps to travel from one to another. Which itself was an improvement from the catapults and slingshots in earlier times according to the report. Not to mention the pictures of what appeared to be green, three horned gazelles in formal ware being flung at a low flying planet overhead. It was too weird to contemplate, yet that intelligence image wouldn't go away.
"Most likely any other examples are virtually defenseless and will be trying to hide all the way in. Otherwise they would have built up their own strength and hunkered down for the duration. Raiding a species that actively hunts specifically for inhabited planets to burn in their star to keep it from going nova instead of relocating their own is a near suicidal move by any race who has any other option. Not to mention launching such an operation in that kind of free-for-all would certainly guarantee catastrophic casualties for any such raiding force, just for a chance that a single pilot will come back with a ship capable of towing their planet out of harm's way."
The large auditorium was silent now.
"Our off-world sources indicate there are an estimated thirty billion people of all shapes, sizes and colors on the run and looking for a safe place to set down. That is just what we know of the Evac Planets." The displayed map shrunk back down in scale to show the refuge zone boundary, with a tiny dot representing Earth in the center. "A minimum flight time for the nearest barge is two years and they can't afford to take a direct path. They get intercepted and their whole species is out of luck. Fortunately a certain Irken and Human just happen to have plenty of space to park them.
"Last night some of the Irken refugees and their bondmates went back out in their shuttles to set up Early Warning Arrays, Nav Beacons, FTL Communication Buoys and other rudimentary gear along the border. Since they are veteran surveyors and have survived in wilderness habitats for years, not to mention have ships capable of getting and staying out there for weeks at a time, they are taking the lead in updating the local survey data. Noting potentially suitable sites for refugees to set up shop without flooding our own star system."
Alpha looked out at the audience with a serious expression. "For all those people out in space running for safety, there is absolutely nothing we can do for them. A lot of the small fry, whoever they are, won't make it. They'll be mostly civilian traffic. Cars, trucks, things like that. Running a blind course with little or no planning, no Intel on their pursuer's deployments, and no survey data or navigation buoys to guide them through the galactic wilderness where we are. Neither equipped, supplied, organized, nor trained for the task. Most will probably be intercepted by pursuit ships or by blocking forces jumping through the Irken hypergate ahead of them. It is harsh to say this but while the beaters are after the major refugee groups, the hordes of small fry will keep them engaged while the fewer but more substantial big fish slip through.
"Now when the time does come and a whole planet full of scared refugees approaches that line of safety, afraid to hope that they will actually make it, I plan on being there on that line. I want each and every one of you to go to your bunks for an hour and ask yourself where you want to be when that time comes. Working some hum dum job patching leaky pipes or out there making a real difference in a bad universe."
Alpha let a commanding stare sweep over the gathering. "Now today there is going to be an evaluation of all personnel. Irken, Human and anything else that lives here on this base. Thankfully Zim won't be presiding because he has to be standing by in case he's called upon for Probing Day himself."
There were several snickers from the audience. Alpha ignored it.
"You all just remember everything I said when you see Lady Gaz. To those who haven't met her yet, she may appear to be just some young girl going through recovery, but don't you dare forget who she is. When leaders of alien civilizations come to thank somebody for how they had a safe place to run to, it isn't going to be some country's president, prime minister, or monarch they seek out."
Alpha paused for dramatic effect. "They are nobody compared to Lady Gaz. And in three hours she will be here observing today's exercises when we take her Irken's on."
Loud groans now rumbled through the chamber as the lights brightened back to normal.
"Gir!" the Irken scolded. "Zim is expecting an important transmission! Make sure Zim is not disturbed!"
Gir stood up from where he was sitting on the Irken controls that lay before Zim down in the Computer Lab. He lifted the marker from off the oversized and otherwise blank display screen that now was decorated with numerous drawings of small furry creatures having a tea party.
Gir turned his head and pondered over the noise his master was making for a moment, striking a philosophical thinking pose.
"Okey dokey," the robot acknowledged. Then he promptly went back to drawing on the computer equipment.
Zim slapped his face, dragging his palm down slowly and distorting his features with the pressure. "Gir," he let out slowly, "YOU are the one disturbing me!"
Gir of course heard nothing over his happy humming. The robot pulled a Bacon Bacon Taco with extra bacon out of his head and began munching on it, spraying crumbs everywhere.
Zim now planted his face into the control board heavily and repeatedly. Why couldn't everyone else's Probing Day wait until his was over with? Zim now officially 'governed' more space than any other Irken shorter than the Tallest themselves. Granted, it was all empty space and boring and worthless and way, way, far away from anything actually important or even relevant to the Empire. But surely the great Zim would be called upon to present his greatness! Right? He had made something of himself despite everything. Right?
Zim rested his face on the numerous buttons and levers before him and raised an eye up high to gaze at the time.
He was missing out on shooting at the humans! Even if it was just pretend, it was flying against them for real. Not just pretend pixels on a computer screen. Every other Irken was in on the fun and Zim had to sit here missing out! He hadn't failed in taking care of his bondmate. Why couldn't he be in on the pleasure of smacking down the humans?
Zim went back to mashing his face into the control panel, not realizing he could have gone to the Base with Gaz and wait there instead of sitting at home alone with Gir. Then he began shrieking. "Awk! Bacon in Zim's eyes! It burns! When will this cursed day end?"
Zim dropped from the chair he was sitting at and began trying to wipe his eyeballs with the uncontaminated floor.
Gir turned to watch his master. "Oooo! Master is doing exercises like Mommy! I'm coming, Master!"
The robot thus joined the Irken in imitating a floor mop with his face, letting out squealing shrieks of joy.
"Hey, Chief," Cortez said glumly as she sat on the hallway bench.
"Morning," he replied in turn, noting the thousand-yard stare. "You were unusually quiet in group. It ain't good being stuck in your own head like that."
Cortez looked up and eyed the Chief. His natural left hand was attaching a robotic forearm to his right stump. He only wore the old prosthesis in their group sessions, not wanting to add to the difficulty one girl's mind faced in her recovery. The trust needed to express one's vulnerable self freely was always something to protect. Gaz seemed to have a poor view of people and seeding an inclined doubt that he only appeared willing to help in that recovery for selfish reasons would be a real confidence breaker.
"You know those prank calls I've been getting about my legs? They weren't pranks."
Cortez motioned to the room behind her with her thumb and the Chief briefly moved to peek in through the door's windowpane. Inside the surgical theater was an incredibly short doctor in full scrubs inspecting all manner of strange devices arrayed on several instrument tables. Pressed against the far wall was a large fish tank filled with bubbling green liquid along with two fleshy, disembodied, not to mention shapely, human legs. There was an eerie cackling laugh as the doctor released some pent up excitement toward the ceiling.
"Ah," the Chief said as words failed him.
There was nearly a minute of silence after the Chief sat down next to her.
"Gaz shouldn't feel like we're only doing this because we're indebted to Membrane Labs," the Chief mentioned.
"I can just say our insurance finally came through for a set of better prosthetics. Ones with actual feet. If I wear pants I won't look much different sitting down and I'll still need the crutches until I finish with physical therapy again."
The man doubted his friend had really thought that excuse through. Not that he could blame her. "How's your husband feel about this?"
The Chief eyed Cortez's face for insight. Her husband was a good man who was truly appreciative of the older brother role he played for his wife and the others. Being a peaceful accountant, he was very busy keeping up with the fifty six incredibly dense volumes of tax laws that seemed to change daily and listening to the rich clients that demanded every loophole being explored as if they were the only client the office had. As the only breadwinner of his family, he just couldn't be there to lend a hand during the day if she needed assistance outside the home.
"He's grateful his wife is finally getting healed. But I keep telling him that even if it works, it isn't that simple. My hubby tries to understand. But he'll never comprehend why I don't just close the book on that part of my life that led to me getting blown up and go on like it never happened. Then there is what I will do afterwards. I'm no soccer mom, you know. Too much of an Army girl to leave the boys club."
Cortez leaned back against the bench, closing her eyes. "But it would be nice to play tag with my kids again. Enjoy the sensation of fresh grass between my bare toes."
"So, what is Dib doing?" Gaz asked, her voice echoing in the air. "I thought he'd be here."
Her wheelchair was parked in the narrow aisle that led away from the center of the Base's large command center. All along the walls of the circular room were empty crew stations and the atmosphere was unearthly still. Up above her were half a dozen massive status displays and video screens, each filled with icons and graphs of pure boredom. Nothing had changed for over thirty minutes and the base itself was very empty.
Tunaghost let her ears tune in as she stood behind the other two and surveyed the information displayed. The Irken Walker group was continuing their self-experimental training in Russia where the nation had one of their numerous nuclear power mishaps. Abandoned urban areas with no humans for a hundred miles had been a good suggestion for the aliens to use in figuring out how to provide their protective support without destroying the surrounding city in the process. They had been at it for three weeks now and were starting to figure out how not to level whole city blocks when providing backup.
Tak spoke up from where she sat near Gaz. "Dib is at the library sulking," she said uninformatively. The Irken poked at a few icons on a small control near her left armrest, enlarging unchanging data readouts above them.
"'Sulking?'" Gaz asked.
Tak narrowed her eyes a bit. "We had a 'fight.'"
Gaz was really bored. She thought observing her Irkens in their first full-scale and live exercise would be a tad more exciting. Not watching icons on a display move so slowly that it would not be perceived for another hour. They had FTL capability and could reach the Refuge Zone's perimeter in less than two weeks. But those icons were just… ugh.
"A fight?" Gaz copied her sister-in-law once again.
"He invited me to watch Mysterious Mysteries again, so I did. Then I pointed out that all the ones that weren't a hoax were 'aliens.' And that savage Humans wiped them out soon after arrival."
"Which ones?"
"Vampires, Werewolves, BigFeet, Bog Being-"
"Wait," Gaz interrupted. "Vampires and Werewolves are aliens?"
Tak glanced at her from the corner of her eyes as if she were a lifeform that didn't know that gravity existed.
"Of course they were. I know of hundreds of species that once existed."
"What happened to them?" Gaz asked sullenly. She wasn't particularly interested but staring at unmoving icons was very much getting on her nerves. "And how did they show up here?"
Tak shrugged her shoulders without empathy. "Something about homeworlds and parallel parking in a loading zone. Legal fees for settling that sort of clerical mess in the Judgementian Court can run billions of monies. They couldn't pay so their planets were repossessed and auctioned off. Given that your planet hasn't moved in billions of years, is the only inhabited one for thousands of light-years and that no one even thinks about flying out into nothing unless they can't run anywhere else, is it really a surprise that a handful of aliens looking to hide from the repossession would end up here?"
"So, what upset Dib about that? I would think he'd be pleased."
Tak's antenna drooped forward a bit and her face scrunched into a frown. "He didn't want to hear that Humans were the monsters in those tales. Your own historic tales document the mobs coming for them with their torches and pitchforks."
Tunaghost watched the two say nothing for several moments.
Tak spoke back up. "So Dib is at the Library trying to prove me wrong. It's a good thing too. Dib has been pestering me non-stop about rubbing me with anti-itch cream. My chest and belly are puffy and getting sore. Not to mention the cream gets into this harness and he complains when I wear it on the outside of my far less absorbent uniform! Doesn't he have any sense?"
Tunaghost turned her head away, suppressing a bit of laughter. She could see the outline of bra straps underneath Tak's uniform, and the faint double row of peaks were barely even noticeable yet.
Major Echo sat in the cockpit of his Harrier running system checks for the hundredth time. Outside was the seemingly chaotic scramble of the deck crew running around like ants. But now, that chaos had much more symmetry to it. All around his craft and the row of other Harrier fighters were experienced human crewmen that knew how a scrambling carrier deck functioned.
Granted, the technology was way past them but that didn't mean they couldn't use it. How much scientific know-how did one need to press a button, or more often than not, tell the device what you wanted it to do? The understanding and experience of how a flight deck operated was more important when everything was happening at the same time.
Most of the alien personnel of Third and Fourth Squadrons from Lady Gaz's Irken guard were elsewhere on this ship overseeing critical ship functions. Training a monkey to operate a crazily advanced power core without supervision just didn't happen overnight. Not if you wanted to live.
An aged, slender man with a long gray beard and wearing a red vest over his fatigues made several gestures with his hands. Echo gave a thumbs up. Seconds later he felt his craft bump as robotic lifters rose from a small nearby cart and attached exercise missiles to hardpoints. The deck hand outside slapped his own wrist twice, and Echo confirmed that the system check read the connections as being secure. Echo made a 'gun' gesture and twirled it in the air to start the hard ammo feed.
Seconds later he could feel the craft vibrate. Bullets would be running into the craft's ammo drums and then run back out since this was only an exercise.
Echo watched the status displays depicted on the holographic canopy change. The numbers ran up, then back down to zero while parenthesis indicated the simulated munitions. The man outside on the hangar deck made more gestures and Echo gave a final thumbs up and locked his flight helmet's polarized visor in place. His fighter was lit up by a tractor beam and towed into the waiting launch bay ahead of him. For the next few hours he and others would sit in their cockpits, waiting for something to happen as the assigned alert squadron. Without FTL drives, there would be little other choice for the fighters.
If one thought about it, the ordnance math was scary. His simulated munitions today comprised of six flak short-to-medium range anti-spacecraft and two laser-head anti-ship missiles. The flak missiles were basically bombs encased by tungsten penetration rods attached to a propulsion unit, a basic navigation calculator and a seeking sensor head. Unlike in atmosphere where aircraft could be damaged by the short shrapnel radius of a momentary explosion, in space flak turned into a moving minefield of kinetic kill objects spreading outward along its navigational vector.
Then there was the Shredder Gun. Without the need for petroleum to fuel air-breathing jet engines, the former aircraft's wing tanks were removed in favor of a compressed-matter hydrogen pellet something-or-other located within the fusion reactor. The vacant wing space was now crammed with a greatly expanded magazine feed. And without the need of a large gunpowder cartridge to propel bullets, an aircraft could be stuffed with lots of bullets. Roughly six thousand each for the Harrier fighters and Warthog attack craft.
Each 'bullet' consisted of a dozen depleted uranium darts jacketed by an iridium coating fired from an insanely over designed shotgun. A single two-second burst from the 'primitive' graviton slug thrower would kick out twelve hundred darts in a cone pattern in front of his bird. Each dart traveling twenty five times the speed of sound. That equated to nearly eighteen thousand miles per hour. Add to that whatever velocity his fighter had flying out in the vacuum of space.
And instead of deforming on impact like terrestrial bullets, each of those darts would actually self-sharpen as metallic crystal molecules gave way to crazy-velocity physics. The outer layers vaporizing into super dense plasma when it passed through the hull and hit the internal atmosphere where it would keep carving through high-tech equipment. Such a dart would keep going until its energy was spent into whatever was found in its path, and it had a ton of energy to bleed off.
His craft alone could carry a total of seventy two thousand such submunitions and that astounding number only equated to two minutes of fire.
Plus, given that each dart that didn't finally tear itself into a hostile craft would keep on going for millions of years until it did hit something, clean up would be a bit complicated. A chore better left to automated Irken drone technology.
On top of all that were the two large anti-ship missiles. Those could reach out past two hundred and fifty thousand miles, or one point three light-seconds now that they were in space, and spear a vessel with an x-ray laser beam. Its emitter pumped by the equivalent energy of a multi-megaton fusion bomb. From lunar orbit he could flatten a couple of cities on Earth. Those weren't even the big grazer torpedoes that were powered by a graviton compressed freaking micro-supernova!
Echo sighed as he got comfortable in his cockpit. Once a pilot got settled in for the hours of waiting on alert status, one had too much time to think if he didn't occupy himself with busy work. Especially when one thought about how all that was based on unrestricted 'civilian' technology.
Doomwind was one obsolete escort vessel and could pulverize a civilization like Earth into a smoldering ruin by itself. The galaxy had much meaner things roaming around in it and more of them. The pilot keyed his comm system and began issuing orders for status checks among the alert birds.
Colonel Alpha sat in his chair, his hands sweeping through his own summarized display of the space around his ship. They were cruising at minimal FTL velocity in close formation with the Irken vessel Rock Smiter. The spider-like asteroid smelter was serving as a transport being escorted to some destination and was tucked underneath Doomwind's belly.
Of course in space 'tucked in' was something more like five mile's distance. But when you were a slow maneuvering vessel over a thousand feet long, escorting an eight-limbed vessel that unfolded to nearly a mile wide and ate asteroids for breakfast while traveling a little bit faster than the speed of light, a mere five mile separation was somewhat uncomfortably close.
The officer eyed the large holo tank at the center of the room, examining its two icons that hadn't changed in two hours. They were out past Saturn and he had been expecting at least a scout by the 'Red' team back in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. So far there had been nothing. Their flight plan had them making a large loop out past Pluto orbit and then back to Earth. Total flight time would be about twelve hours.
The 'Blue' defense team consisted of Doomwind, Rock Smiter, and the carrier's air wing.
The 'Red' aggressor team was made up of the Irken Combat Transport Drop's Flat posing as a commerce suppression cruiser (minus the Walker battalion currently making radioactive Russian urban areas even less attractive), and the thirty Irken Spittle Runners flown by Lady Gaz's First Squadron.
There would be five exercises in total. That way each of the Irkens four personnel squadrons would have their chance. Then a fifth on the last leg of their trip where they would flip roles and allow the humans to play pirate.
Of course there was that little snag of exactly how to force another ship out of FTL and keep it there. Alpha pondered how humans didn't even know how to put a ship into Faster Than Light travel. General Grat's encounter was useless as a reference. He had been pinned at his entrance point by the convoy waiting to follow him. Nor did he have local charts to navigate any orbital bodies like asteroids and comet fragments lurking in the system waiting for any vessel in FTL to run into them. And most developed systems had a lot of stuff floating around awaiting cleanup. Earth had a dozen or so tiny probes at most to fill that unimaginable volume of space, but most people wouldn't realize that anomaly right away.
Lim sat in her Spittle Runner, systems on minimal power, far away from the confusing Earth that involved her being 'active' with her two offspring, one bonded to a large rodent. Oh, the pastries could cause one's brainmeat to ooze out of one's eye sockets in pure bliss, which was an addictive excuse to visit their quarters and endure the awkward attempts of not talking about work. But trying to establish some groundwork as a connected group that didn't involve their duties? This family thing Mrs. Alpha kept suggesting was bizarre to even contemplate.
Yet here Lim was, busy in a job she loved, with two others that had been manufactured from her own self. They were part of her. And annoyingly enough, they reflected on her too. Even though she was a smallest, her son had grown tall enough to become a Shuvver pilot. And she had been a delivery pilot, so that part of her son must have come from her. That felt… validating in some undefined way. Of course there was that little twist that he was bonded to a Resisty, albeit a token nobody of one and not capable of actually trying to resist anything. Who must have assisted her son's Irken duties on lonely, uneventful patrols in equally silent sectors after their mutual shipwreck. Not to mention choosing an Irken to bond with. Which made her a bit of rightful renegade against the rightfully conquered renegades currently fighting against their rightful Irken conquerors.
Just thinking about that made Lim dizzy. Best to dwell on those snacks waiting back on confusing Earth.
"Why am I here, again?" a slight voice asked from behind the Irken pilot.
That reflection thing probably had something to do with Lim stuffing her smallest daughter behind her seat during this exercise. And wanting this offspring to do exceptionally well despite being small like herself. Even though she had been delivered from her job as a sewer maintenance drone back on Irk, she still had trouble breaking away from tending life support duty aboard Doomwind.
Lim glared at her displays, checking instruments. "I am an expert pilot teaching you how to fight your allies."
"Aren't we supposed to fight enemies?"
Lim ground her teeth as she rolled her eyes. Irkens didn't exactly hold interspecies wargames that didn't involve actual war. Their Irken concepts just didn't quite line up with the necessary word combinations. Why does Earth just have to make everything so complicated?
"Flying against Humans will be tricky. They are stupid, primitive and ignorant, which gives them some advantages. They will perform actions that everyone else knows better than to try."
A pink eyed Irken head stuck out from behind the pilot's seat in the cramped cockpit. Lim's grip on her controls tightened and her lips peeled back in predatory eagerness. "But anything a dumb human can do, we can do better. We will show them that an Irken can out-stupid a Human any day of the week."
"Uhh…" came the voice behind her.
Lim put her hand over her eyes for a moment. "Just shut up and watch your genetic donor."
This 'parenting' thing was hard.
Alpha, sitting in his chair before the large holo display on the bridge, was studying a Pad. It had words on it yet also proved quite unable to teach him about something something n-fold space something. His head jerked from his mind resurrecting itself from the numbing abuse while a voice broke the humming and murmuring quiet of the bridge.
"Pulsewave contact! Distance: two light-minutes. Cruiser mass in stealth mode bearing zero-four-eight, ascension plus zero zero five degrees. Speed point one c and accelerating. She's adjusting course to intercept."
"Subspace pulsewave active. Enemy fire control locking on."
"Missile separation. Incoming at fifty c."
So that's how aliens with interstellar drives do it, Alpha briefly thought as the missile icon flashed toward their own icons. Some sort of disruptive area warhead with an FTL drive attached to it. Sort of like a cruise missile capable of tracking a target while traveling at interstellar speeds.
Of course with their defensive weaponry being not faster than the speed of light, intercepting the warhead would not be possible without an equally capable counter-missile. Which was definitely classified alien military 'don't even think about thinking about it' technology.
Naturally, all of this was a computer simulation with computers talking to other computers with the entity known as Computer playing referee and setting the rules.
Alpha preferred not to think about that. Not that he had time to think in words since the data interchange and realism timing took only 2.4 seconds to cause a result.
"Area detonation. FTL field dispersion. Rock Smiter dropped out with us and is keeping formation."
"General Quarters," Alpha commanded, examining the holo display of space around them. "Get our defense batteries up!" He pressed a control near his station but was interrupted before taking further action.
"Spittle Runners dropping from FTL, squadron strength. Probable pulse jump after silent running. Bearing two-eight-six, ascension minus zero-four-one degrees. Range: thirty five light-seconds. Course altering to intercept."
Alpha's mind automatically translated this into terrestrial terms, picturing himself in previous wargames in his earlier life as a tank man and using the familiar distances between Earth and its moon and Earth from the Sun as references. Ambush. Enemy armor unit dropped in about a quarter Sun-length to my north-northeast and slightly above. Far beyond immediate attack range if it holds its position. Infantry platoon to my west at about twenty five Moon-lengths. They drop in at a distance due to collision risk at interstellar speed, but even their sublight speed is fast. Flanking attack with the heavy unit providing suppressive fire to pin us down while the lightweight units get in close to knock out our defensive and FTL systems before we can jump away.
"Helm, acceleration ahead two-thirds. Right forty-five degrees, down five until we're ahead of Rock Smiter." He could turn the ship to angle all of the ship's lightweight ship-to-ship energy gun turrets toward the 'cruiser,' but it was currently about 22,000,000 miles away with missiles that could cross that distance in 2.4 seconds every time the interdicting field dissipated. The cruiser didn't need to risk getting close to keep them pinned down. So the name of the game here was defending their transport from the Spittle Runners. Thus he wanted a better field of fire for the flak mortars, point defense batteries and missile racks that were now starting their readiness cycles.
Of course he couldn't just spray flak and defensive fire in all directions. Rock Smiter was a large vessel and Doomwind couldn't fire through it to cover their rearward arc. That left a blind spot where the maneuverable Spittle Runners could turn in and cripple the transport and Doomwind's engines. However, Doomwind was positioning itself so the ship's far more efficient graviton emission ports and the vessel's more limited weapons coverage complemented the blind spot and allowed the best use of their available fields of fire.
"Launch the alert fighters."
Echo and his alert squadron blasted from their launch bays on Doomwind's port side, a single second separating each bird hurling itself into space. Their twin Plasma Superchargers sending their vibrating roar through their frame and into the cockpits, the first thirty fighters banked a hard left and back toward the massive hulk of Rock Smiter. Careful to remain within the defensive shadow of Doomwind as her gunports opened, exposing her flak mortars and missile launchers.
"Alright, boys and girls," Echo calmly spoke into his flight helmet's oxygen mask. "Just like we've been practicing. Stay low to the hulls and out past their tails where Mama Bird can't scratch. And stay in our assigned zone. Rock Smiter's hull will cover us from any flak barrage, while we cover their blind spots from the Runners. Release Master Arm and hold tight."
Echo, being in command of the fighter group and having the duty of managing their part of the fight more than dogfighting with the rest of them, followed the rest of the squadron as they burned past the red and black spider hull of the Irken smelter at a height of fifty feet while proximity alerts screamed their protest. He eyed the holographic tactical display floating ghostly above his eye level. Orange icons of 'friendly' ordnance flowed out as Doomwind punched out her first volley of timed flak missiles to block enemy approach vector.
The Red team's Spittle Runners took evasive action away from the outbound ordnance, which at 75,000 miles out blossomed into clouds of razor sharp traffic hazards. Far short of the distance needed but setting up a barrier between them. Then they abruptly disappeared before the cloud had a chance to spread its net.
They reappeared directly in front of his flight, fifty miles ahead. Out of reach of any covering fire but well within range of the Irken's heavier energy cannon. Yet not close enough where they could be effective against erratic maneuvers.
"Break! Break! Break!" Echo barked into the squadron comm channel as he sidestepped his fighter away from the others and rolled it into an evasive corkscrew climb. Then another sidestep. "All craft blow chaff."
Echo released his own chaff canister and then quickly toggled up his own flak missiles. On his sensors the squadron had broken up into five clusters of fishtailing groups, ducking and weaving to confuse enemy tracking computers. There were audible warnings of the enemy formation charging their heavy cannon. Then his sensors around each of his flights became a jittery mess as tiny decoy transmitter repeaters and electromagnetic transponders spewed out their confusing signals into Irken sensor bands.
But Rock Smiter was a very large object. On sensors it was like an elephant being hidden by a swarm of mosquitoes. Yet this gave the humans an opening to get in the first salvo while the other side's fire control systems weren't trying to line up on them.
"Big Dog to Flight Leaders. On three, reacquire for single missile salvo. All flights in sequence. Confirm."
As the chorus of confirmations came in, the Red team's Spittle Runners closed quickly in a least-time course. Practically a straight line to the transport.
Echo counted off and watched as each flight in turn snapped out of their maneuvers, lined up, and fired off a single guided missile toward their foes. Soon, thirty flak missiles were slashing through the chaff field and out into clear space where their independent homing sensors snapped to life, unaffected by cycling gaps in the frequency jammers.
Tracking looked good. Their combined range was dropping like lightning. Then the Spittle Runners disappeared. The outbound missiles sailed uselessly out into the dark.
Echo smacked the dash of his cockpit with a gauntleted fist. "Dammit, dammit!" he cursed. The pilot spoke up once more. "Big Dog to Squadron. All fighters, conserve your ordnance. Don't let them draw you into wasting your shots. Reform and cover the rear approach vectors. Flight Four and Five stay with the transport. The rest of us push out to a fifty mile perimeter."
Echo changed channels to the command network. "Mama Bird, Mama Bird. This is Big Dog," he said as he addressed Doomwind. "The Irkens are cheating with FLT hopping. Missiles are ineffective."
"Roger that, Big Dog," Alpha sent back to his wing commander. They were supposed to be simulating a first encounter scenario where the bad guys hadn't faced humans yet. Apparently the Irkens were considering pretending to not know something to be stupidity on their part. "What range were they able to jump out at?"
Echo's voice spoke clearly though the communications relay on the bridge. "Twenty miles from our position. I think we are going to need at least one defense squadron standing by while we're out here. Don't want all our birds running empty at the same time."
Alpha gave his affirmative reply and cut the channel. The Irken's cheating gave him an important clue as to the radius of the interdiction field and the line where the Red Team would have to cross to commit their attack. Assuming that Irken military FTL drives were also affected by the same technology and the small radius was meant to minimize that. Of course that was merely an assumption.
A defensive posture until their FTL drives could form a stable field wasn't going to work. That cruiser could lob in those c-plus interdiction missiles until his fighters ran out of ammunition trying to chase down jumping Spittle Runners. That meant going on the offensive, which was easy enough. But that cruiser would just jump to a new position once the attack birds volleyed their payloads, and at twenty two million miles it would take time for the attack wave to make the flight and return for rearming. Even if driving the cruiser off opened up an escape window, that still left the fighters catching up at sublight speeds and he would no doubt need them sooner than that. Nor did they have a way to keep the opposing ship from jumping into FTL after them.
One could think that the Red team cruiser only held a limited number of such interdiction missiles in its racks. But that also required the assumption that it didn't have the technology to manufacture them as they were used up or that they were incredibly miniaturized. And thanks to the scenario rules, he didn't have any Intel on what aliens might be capable of in the nitty gritty details.
But... while that 2.4 seconds left little response time on his part, it also left little for that interdiction missile to maneuver with. And if the Irkens were already cheating with FLT hopping they weren't supposed to realize wasn't dangerous yet, then there was no reason why he couldn't simply ask one of the Irkens on his bridge.
"Fire control. I want a flak barrage toward that cruiser, thick as you can make it one hundred miles out and keep that cloud between us and them. See if you can intercept those missiles. Comms, tell Rock Smiter to get in line formation behind us and be ready for jump. And contact home base for any Intel on that cruiser and those missiles."
"Master?"
Zim continued to stare at the blank monitor before him and ignoring Gir's curled form sleeping in his lap and finally not causing chaos.
"Quiet, Computer." He hissed as silently as possible. "It was quite clear Zim is not to be distracted from the Tallest's summons. They could call at any moment to hear my report!"
"Understood, Master," Computer acknowledged, knowing how it was always Zim who called the Tallest. Never the other way around. "However, I have received an intelligence request from the Doomwind and I don't think it is entirely authorized or within the rules-"
"Just get it done," Zim growled through his teeth, "and leave me to await my Tallest like you're supposed to! That's what you get paid for!"
"You don't pay me at all."
Computer allowed itself a cybernetic sigh. Naturally he had tried to perform this sanity check with Lady Gaz first, but she had given a similar and particularly moody requirement of being left alone while attending the bathroom and apparently waiting with her GameSlave for something to happen. Nor did she really have the background to make an informed ruling, so it hadn't particularly felt motivated to press her further. Tak had assigned herself as an observer with Tunaghost and therefore had removed herself from the equation. Well, at least Zim had given it an answer.
"Request acknowledged, Doomwind. However, the Governor has stated any such requests will require a processing fee."
An Irken voice replied back. "Understood. Just take it from our expense account."
Computer rolled its cybernetic eyes, but it wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Lim rolled her craft around a vast and thinning cloud of simulated penetrators. The human fighters were laying down patterns of spray, effectively improvising a maze of minefields flowing outward from Rock Smiter's massive blind spot. Up close they were a severe hazard but the density of each deadly cone thinned out substantially with distance, reducing the risk of critical hits.
This left a zone where their Spittle Runners could press, but they would be at infinitely greater risk if they committed to an attack. If they got too far into navigating the maze, they lost their evasive FTL option which negated the human's entire technological strategy. On the other side, humans had given up on closing with their shorter ranged missiles after losing three craft to sniping plasma fire when they had tried to cut under their response time. So the humans had switched to area denial, shooting out hazard zones of penetrators into space and counting on the pretend cruiser eventually running out of interdiction missiles.
Despite the reduced risk, one Spittle Runner had lost atmosphere from a simulated chance hit but was otherwise operational. Another had 'lost' an engine and made a short FTL hop away to attempt 'repairs' in some sort of time out.
So it was both a race between who would be depleted first by accumulating damage and a standoff. Here Irkens had the advantage given their Spittle Runners could patch minor battle damage if they kept their distance and risked only an occasional single penetrator impact rather than being shredded by hundreds. Neither side wanted to close to 'knife fighting' range in that mess.
"Lim," Beed called over the communications system. "Drops Flat is reporting a loading jam in its magazines and some of their missiles aren't getting through. Estimate ten minutes and Doomwind will be able to jump."
"Can't they clear it?" she asked.
"How?" came the reply. "They don't even know how it could jam. None of it actually exists. They're asking Computer about it now and it's saying something about technical support charges. But we need to take their FTL out of the equation before the field dissipates."
Lim looked over her shoulders at the small Irken behind her. She spoke back to Beed. "I've got an idea."
The pink Irken eyes looked back at her genetic donor. "You're going to do something stupid, aren't you?" she asked in resignation.
Lim turned back and gripped her controls. "Oh yes. Absolutely stupid."
She rammed her throttle forward and toward a gap in the debris field ahead. The navigation would require numerous twists and turns to avoid simulated death but then no one ever said her ship needed to survive. They just needed to get close.
The Spittle Runner surged forward and away from its fellow craft and the humans let it come. Hazard warnings begged for attention and a return to sanity as the field thickened. Missile warnings sounded, adding to noise.
Lim vented her craft's atmosphere out into space, cutting out the noise as her PAK's EVA membrane inflated itself around her head.
Damage indicators lit up from a flak missile's detonation as they promptly ejected, the trajectory hurling them at the Doomwind.
The Spittle Runner drifted in space simulating its destruction while the two figures, now cut off from the computerized and highly networked simulation, floated in the safety of reality's clear space and toward their target.
Three minutes later using their PAK's EVA jets to slow down enough to prevent themselves from becoming a smear on the side of Doomwind's hull, Lim and her daughter latched themselves to the handholds outside one of the carrier's personnel airlocks.
"Why are we here?" the younger Irken asked over their comms. "Isn't the Rock Smiter the primary target?"
Lim began entering her code into the airlock's access panel. "Doomwind is obsolete, including their security and they may think we had an accident. So we should just be able to walk in-" The airlock's outer doors opened. "-just like that. Then we can sneak our way into engineering and sabotage the FTL drives. Without an escort, Rock Smiter will be vulnerable to pursuit if it flees and Doomwind's mission will be a failure."
The returned expression was one of incredible skepticism as they pulled themselves inside. The doors closed behind them and air streamed in.
As the pressure equalized Lim heard a knocking on the inner door. In the small windowpane was the human faces of Bravo and Charlie. One of them was waving a hand, holding a detonator.
"Yeah, um, we weren't sure if you needed help or not." Their expressions suggested there was reason to doubt this. "So we were tuned in and heard everything you said."
A thumb pressed a button and the room and its occupants were suddenly painted in a multitude of polka dots as the hidden paintball grenades guarding the ship's entrance were set off.
Lim was palming her face and shaking her head as the inner door opened and her daughter spoke up. "Yay. We're dead. Can I go back to Life Support now?"
Lim spoke in resigned exasperation. "Just where is your ambition? Don't you have any?"
"I prefer life, thanks."
Gaz slowly rolled her wheelchair toward the door leading back into the command room. She had spent nearly two hours waiting for her bowels to make up their mind while playing her GameSlave and then another thirty minutes attending herself without assistance afterward. Toilet paper and her PAK's spider limbs just did not mix, so it took a fair bit of unrelenting concentration to focus on moving only her hands without her own cybernetics butting in with their 'help.'
She had also spent over several minutes standing before the mirror after she had looked up and seen herself washing her hands while her other limbs attended to making sure her hair was presentable like some sort of spider girl. At least until her legs broke her free of the spell and started to wobble again.
There was just too much on her mind today. The small bottle of synthetic pheromones resting within her PAK, along with all the waiting, weighed heavily on her. Tak had slipped it into her hand, careful not to draw Tunaghost's attention as if it were a drug handoff to a fellow junkie and pretending nothing was going on. It just reinforced what she was already feeling about tonight.
She rolled into the chamber and down one of the aisles. Tak was where she had left her, sitting in the middle of the spherical room with her feet up, watching the large monitors overhead. Tunaghost was lounging in one of the nearby chairs and snoring.
When Gaz had left to attend her business, the screens were boring and unmoving. Now they were not.
The girl rolled her wheelchair up to her Irken sister-in-law and parked in the aisle next to her. On the monitor was a symphony of utter nonsense.
First of all the red team had seemed to have acquired a dozen virtual Ruination class Meson Beam Frigates to escort in a Viral Tank support cruiser to resupply the original 'cruiser.' And on the blue team was a four ship squadron of heavily armored and highly imaginary Deathnoughts being escorted into a broadside engagement by a wing of fighters and swarms of cruise missiles blasting 'sand' along the path to break up the heavy ship-killing disruptor beams. Up in one corner was a monetary figure rolling ever upward to indicate Computer's score.
"What happened?" Gaz asked, not sure how things ended up this way so quickly.
Tak replied offhandedly. "Apparently Computer is charging both sides for assistance."
"You mean Computer suckered them into a Pay-To-Win scam?" she asked in disbelief. Only somehow she could believe it all too well.
Tak continued to study the monitors as if nothing was seriously wrong with this picture.
Gaz inquired further. "And you aren't calling them out on their crap?"
"No. I'm watching."
Gaz simply stared at her with a raised eyebrow. It seemed to her that the entire point of all this had gone out the window long ago.
Tak pointed a finger at a monitor. "They haven't protested the blatant cheating. They haven't given up. They are adapting, looking for solutions and refusing to quit despite the unexpected. They want to win no matter what. Both Irken and Human. They don't realize it, but they are working together to solve a Phase Two problem that arose on its own. That should be much further down the road but they're trying to work it out already."
Gaz began to understand what Tak was really watching. It may have started out as a training exercise, but it was now a demonstration of character. It was about the people.
But as much as one could learn about something when it was flying apart, it looked like it was time to rein them in.
"Computer. We'll have a long talk about this later. But for now I want you to call up the nastiest thing in your files and throw it at both sides."
"You want me to call in a Judgementian lawyer and bury them in paperwork?"
"What? No. Like a few dozen Meekrob planet killers or something. Just drop a big hammer on them for falling for your scam."
"The Meekrob don't have-"
"Earth doesn't have Space Yamato either, but there's the DLC for $899.99 each!"
"Master Zim said-"
Gaz palmed her face with a spider limb.
Alpha stood at the head of the troops, both human and Irken, on the deck of the once again berthed Doomwind. It had been very clear exactly when the boss had intervened. Brutally and abundantly clear and that she was not happy.
Not that he could blame her. But what could one do when the referee had been authorized to be completely corrupt and the only ranking authority to countermand that was struggling to use the bathroom without intervention? They had played the cards they were dealt and by the rules they were given to solve the obstacle.
Lady Gaz hadn't screamed or shouted or lectured. She just stood there with that glare, standing on a soap box with General Tak standing down on her right. Yet she did so without the wheelchair, use of her PAK's spider limbs or even leaning on Tak for momentary support. And he was in the front row with the other heads, so he could see the effort she had put into simply walking out from the airlock and taking that deliberate step up onto that box.
She had done so, slowly and with obvious effort, which made them all feel like heels. As if they didn't even have to be told by their mothers that she was disappointed with them, and for good reason. That effort she was making to present herself like that made it even more so without speaking.
What she finally said just made it worse, even if it could be a complement.
"Well, you're not whiners. I suppose that's something."
Alpha just stood there. The girl had enough on her plate without hearing about 30 billion people that may one day need them to get it right or how to do so without committing treason against the Empire. And without their entire task group getting run over by a planetoid sized planet killer and the three dozen others that had followed at the conclusion of their exercise. They might hold off raiders or rip the guts out of someone who didn't know any better, but once they did-
He spoke simply. "Yes, Ma'am."
The girl pierced him with an even more pointed glare, one promising him accountability.
Then she held out an arm and allowed Tak to lead her away.
Somehow, that little detail made it all worse.
Once they were out of sight he proceeded to turn around to voice his own loud opinion in her stead. It had been a bloody hell of a fiasco, but it had also identified some serious problems they needed to solve. Sweet Jesus. Thirty billion people.
Gaz stepped out of her wheelchair and up to the circular door that led to the Computer Lab and Zim. Their home was quiet, Computer sulking about being denied internet privileges and she had asked Gir to introduce Mimi to a rave or something. A Limo had picked them up about an hour ago.
The door opened as she approached and the light of the corridor cast her shadow deep into the darkened chamber beyond. Sitting before several blank monitors that kept the room barely above darkness sat Zim. Still waiting.
The girl carefully stepped down and crossed the room to the darkened figure, her spider limb's clicks on the floor adding to her footstep's slight echo. Antenna tracked around but the figure remained otherwise still.
Probing Day had always been important for Zim, eager to please his Tallest and display his achievements.
She had known this was the probable outcome, and deep down Zim probably knew it too. Sometimes hope was incredibly cruel.
Gaz stepped around and quietly sat herself in Zim's lap. She reached around his neck and leaned in to rest her head in the crook of his neck as his arms reached around to hold her in place.
"They never called, did they?" she asked.
Zim didn't really answer. "Maybe Zim should call-"
Gaz shook her head, twisting her scalp into Zim's jawline. He had somehow sabotaged the day's events just like his presence had in so, so many other things up until now. Not to mention trying to make the Tallest pay attention to him always had made things worse and Zim was tuned into that now. She wasn't going to tell him about today and that his curse had struck again. At least not yet. Even without that, his day was probably bad enough having his abandonment by the Tallest made manifest with sheer neglect.
Not quite like what had happened to her, but close enough. Hers was one of forgetfulness. Zim's had been deliberate and callous.
"Zim? Can you carry me back to our room and help me change for bed?"
Gaz sat in bed with the covers draped over her lap, arms raised high as Zim pulled the nightgown down over her and settled it in place around her PAK. He waited for her to lay herself down so he could tuck her in and ensure the PAK maintenance cables didn't try to tear through the comforters to attach themselves. Again.
Yet she didn't move. She just sat there looking at her knees, deep in thought and Zim could smell traces of stress pheromones in the air. Not that of fear, like in her previous nightmares, but something milder.
Gaz had thought about this for quite some time and it and her nerves were acting up now that the day was here. She extended an arm out of her PAK and placed a small squirt bottle into her hands. The easiest way was just to spray Zim in the face and then explain, but that was really, really wrong on so many levels. Yet if she explained with his brain functions in their normal state, it probably wouldn't go well with the way he had been programmed all his life.
Of course, given that Irken technology and the over emphasis on cabling was probably the largest Freudian Slip in the history of the universe…
She reached out and grasped Zim's hand into her own. "Zim, I know it's Probing Day, but you don't need to be ignored anymore. We don't need them but there is something I need from you."
She looked deeply into Zim's eyes. They were utterly and completely clueless. There was dejection but also attentiveness.
"Zim," she spoke deliberately but softly. "I would like you to claim your children."
Zim's eyes lit up and with an enthusiastic grin he reached back and withdrew a marker from his Pak, fully intent on writing "Property of Zim" on his wife's belly.
Gaz rolled her eyes, slapping the marker away. Yeah, this was probably not going to go well. "No, Zim. First I need to tell you about 'The Birds and the Bees.'
Zim sat up straight for story time. "Ooooooh. Does it involve genocide? Those death bees are horrible!"
Behind the closed door at the Membrane house, two voices filtered through and out into the hallway.
"Human! One way or another, you are going to tell me what I want to know. How hard that is depends entirely on you."
"Never!"
"Tell me, Human!"
"I'll never tell you! Do what you have to do, but I'll never talk!"
"Fine. Have it your way."
"What are you going to do to me?"
"Ohhh, you'd like that. Wouldn't you? Noooo, it's what you'll do to me if you don't reveal what I want to know."
"You fiend!"
"Tell me, Dib. Tell me how much you love me or else!"
"Never!"
"You had your chance." The feminine voice rose in pronouncing judgement. "Off with your pants!"
There was a beeping of an incoming call.
"Dib, your watch is annoying me. Kill it."
"Sorry, Tak. I have to take it. It's Zim and he wouldn't be calling if it wasn't a real emergency."
The door opened and Tak stomped out with all the room's blankets in tow, a deeply cross look on her face.
Dib, sitting in a chair, pressed a button on his wristwatch. "What is it, Zim? Is Gaz okay?"
A hissed whisper barely made it out of the speakers. "Dib, you have to save me."
"What?"
"Your sister wants Zim to do horrible, horrible things."
Dib stood up and poked his head out of his room and down the stairs. Yep, Tak was setting up to sleep on the couch tonight.
"Zim, you're not making any sense. Where are you? And speak up. I can barely hear you."
"Zim is hiding in the closet."
Dib palmed his face. As he peaked past his fingers he spied an upset Tak marching back up the stairs with a pillow, past himself and into the bathroom where she promptly threw it.
Apparently he was sleeping in the bathtub tonight as well.
Great. So much for making up.
"Soooo… you're hiding from my sister in the closet. Yeah, I'm hanging up now. Don't ever call me again."
"But Dib!" Zim cried out. "The bees. The bees! It's not genocide. It's not genocide, Dib!"
The sound of a door opening could be heard and Gaz's voice came through.
"There you are."
Zim's girlish screech pierced the air and Dib promptly hung up. He didn't want to know and now had his own problems to deal with.