WARNING: This chapter contains some strong language.


Chapter 3.

Charley hung up the telephone and sat back in her desk chair. Mr Galloway was an old friend from way back, and he had come to town to visit his daughter for the weekend. He hadn't wanted to impose, he said, but his truck had been making some suspicious grating noises the whole way over here, coming from somewhere beneath the hood. Naturally she had not hesitated in agreeing to take a look at it. It would be a nice way to round off her days as an Earth mechanic, after all, doing one last job for one last special customer.

He would be around by ten, which gave her an hour to put away what she was fairly sure she wouldn't need, and make sure the tools that probably would be used for the job were quickly accessible. She didn't want to keep the man from his family any longer than she had to.

Before getting up from her desk she took another glance at the wall behind it. Her calendar (Biker babes of 1996 – Vinnie's choice, not hers) was a sea of X's where she had marked off the days over the last month. It was the 30th March, which meant only four more to go until they were supposed to contact her.

Leaning over the desk, Charley lifted the page to reveal April's leather-clad beauty, and trace her fingers over the first three days of the grid below. Wednesday.

Not that she expected the guys to be on time; she knew that anything could have gone on back on Mars to delay them, and that date was only provisional and depended largely on the availability of the transport ship. There were only three spaceships available to the whole planet: the stolen stalker ship, a Plutarkian vessel that had 'crashed' on the surface last year, and - their proudest achievement yet – the nearly repaired Martian cycledrome that the three mice had ploughed into the scoreboard over four years earlier.

The last visit by Stoker and Rimfire to Earth had seen the remaining debris from that wreck taken back to Mars, and with the other spare parts the mouse population had managed to scavenge, and a little help from Charley herself to remake other missing components (which had been sent through the transporter not long after they had acquired it), the repairs had been well underway when the three mice had left.

By now it would be finished, she was certain. With her guys there to help, having learnt from the best mechanic on Earth (herself), she figured it would be up and running pretty soon.

Talking of which, her brain reminded her, she was meant to be getting the garage ready for a repair job of her own.

She smiled. Mr Galloway liked his coffee black, no sugar.


Their formidable strength was probably one of the reasons they didn't bother much with excessive means of restraint. Right now he had the bare minimum of straps keeping him on the table, and they were probably there to leave the alien's hands free to work on him. And to stop him bucking against the sharp objects poking at his body.

His own forelimbs were locked away above his head. Manual dexterity was something the alien species was quite familiar with, and thus they had encased each of his hands in a padded mitten, and then chained them together at the wrist. Their locks were nothing like he had ever encountered, however, and his even his prehensile tail was no use in trying to remove them.

Vinnie was grateful they hadn't done something drastic to that particular body part, at least not yet. They had examined it, sure, and pulled on it, poked it, bent it, lifted him by it, but they hadn't made any motions to either try to tie it down, or remove it. Thank goodness.

And he wasn't about to give them any reason to, either. They were too strong, too clever, too advanced a species to even think about messing with. He had no choice but to just do whatever they wanted, and keep on praying that things weren't going to get any worse.

But whomever he was praying to clearly wasn't in any mood to listen. It was getting too much now; he writhed around on the table, pulling against his bindings, and thinking over and over to himself how eternally grateful he was to Mother Mars that his species longevity was severely stunted by comparison to others. Humans included. This was not something he would want to spend a extended lifetime having to endure.

The band of tape around his neck was buzzing ominously now. A warning. Vinnie noticed the sound, and frantically fought against the discomfort to still himself, knowing that if he didn't then they would not hesitate to make him. He hadn't seen any kind of physical device, no controller, nor remote for the material stuck to his skin, but he was in no doubt they had control over it somehow. It was like their version of a hands-free electroshock collar, which much like the illegal ones he had seen on Earth for wayward canines, was capable of sending a disabling jolt to his nervous system. It was one of the first things they had installed upon their acquiring of him, a near impervious solution to keeping firm command of their new Martian captives.

He could just about feel the tiny hair-like prongs against the back of his neck, one on either side of his spine. These were already armed and ready to deliver their message to his struggling body, but he continued to try his hardest to relax and soon felt the tingling sensation wane in response. He had avoided having to suffer that on top of everything else, at least.

Vinnie took a few deep breaths and slowly opened his eyes. For the last few minutes he had felt a searing pain in his belly, and though it hadn't gone he had adjusted to it enough to take a peek at the cause of it. He groaned audibly at the red wash on his white fur, and stifling the urge to be sick closed his eyes once more and rested his head back on the table.

The collar-like tape buzzed again. He remembered them telling him that, like with his language decoding implant, it would take some time for the sensors buried in the device around his neck to learn how his body worked. For the mean time they advised keeping all vocalisations to a minimum, unless he wanted to be zapped just for something as simple as a loud yawn.

An hour after his brain had worked this recommendation out he did just that, and work up later aching worse than when he had contracted Martian flu.

Of course by now Vinnie was starting to suspect that they didn't want him completely mute, and in fact were eager to squeeze every last sound of discomfort out of him as they could possibly get away with. Or at least that was one explanation for their notable lack of using any form of anaesthetic whilst they worked on him. Perhaps being stunned unconscious wouldn't be such a bad thing right now after all.

Umbilicus..?

So the translator had finally come up with something for that word they kept on repeating. Just a pity he had no idea what it meant, other than they had been pointing at his naval when they said it.

He groaned again, louder this time, ignoring the resultant warning hum coming from just below his ears. They were focused on something else now anyway.

"Now open your eyes and take a look. The attachment will bed itself in over the next few hours, after which your tissues will remodel. The scarring will be minimal."

The white mouse knew better than to ignore a direct order, no matter how innocuously it had been delivered. That his ears and brain had simultaneously processed it in real time, signalling that the translator was finally catching up, went unnoticed at this point. Which was just as his gaze refocused onto his midsection.

What he wanted to say was 'Holy crap, what the fuck is that thing?!' but instead blurted out a shrill squeal of shocked distress. He secretly hoped that the noise would goad his neck-band into shocking him into oblivion, sparing him from either having to acknowledge the thing sticking out of, or rather into, his belly, or from feeling any more of the pain that installing it had caused.

Unfortunately for him, and perhaps to the satisfaction of the alien beings that stood around him, the tech in the band had also caught up with his body's workings, and had already learned the difference between speech, attempted speech, and plain old screaming. The first two of those were now completely, and permanently inhibited.

Even as they continued to explain to him what the device fixed into what was once his navel was for, and how it would be used, Vinnie continued to cry out, truly horrified by what was happening to him. Everything that came out of their mouths was being instantly processed by the thing they had jammed into his temporal lobe, and nothing he could do would block out their very thorough account of just what his purpose in life was now.


Just one more day Charlene, you excited yet?

Hell yeah.

Any moment now that communicator's going to blip, are you ready for it?

Hell yeah.

All packed up for your long trip, your last big move?

Hell yeah.

You got a back-up plan for if this all goes under?

Sadly, yes. Her garage was going one way or the other, but Charley wasn't so stupid as to assume everything else would progress so smoothly. Besides, if the mice were delayed she had to have somewhere to stay whilst she waited.

She had had a chat with Stosh, the cleaning guy from the stadium, and he was more than happy for her to make the guy's former bachelor pad her temporary residence. Or permanent one, if it came to it. Not that she would want to live there forever, not with all the memories it would drag up - not to mention the expense of heating it, and the impracticalities of running a garage from within. No, if all else failed she already had taken a look at several other potential premises around the city. Ones that wouldn't leave her an emotional wreck every time she walked through the front door, but were still within reach of her old client base. And the mice, should they eventually make it back.

The long talk she had had with Mr Galloway about her moving plans had really helped to put everything in perspective. Of course she hadn't told him just how far she was planning on going away, but she had mentioned that if it didn't work out she would come back to the city. It was heartening when he promised to keep a look out for her, just in case he was ever stuck needing a new filter, or a spur of the moment oil change. Or just a catch up over coffee.

Coffee. Yes, that's something she better not forget about. Whilst her boys hadn't taken much of a shine to the bitter drink (except to sober themselves up after a long night of goon bashing, or an excess of root beer), she wasn't too sure she could go cold turkey on her morning pick-me-up.

She would have to leave her espresso maker behind, but the filter press was firmly packed amongst other fragile items, and all she had to do was make one last outing to the superstore to pick up all the other consumables that were absent from the red planet. The guys would never forgive her if she didn't turn up with as many hot dogs and root beers as she could physically carry.