ALIEN STORY-2
Written by Juxian Tang
I sat stone still. The last movement I made was to switch the view screen off and it was minutes ago. Dark flickering stains were floating in front of my eyes. I felt the darkness inside me, too. It was flooding like magma, thick and boiling, ready to splash out.
I made a long controlled exhalation and lolled back in the seat. The only my lucid thought was that I had to think it over. Yuck! I never was farther from wish to think!
I felt the urge to take a dose instead. It was so intense that had some dizzying quality. I knew I wouldn’t do it here. Not with this entire long way before me. And still the sensation of a tiny phial with white crystals lying neatly in my chest pocket bewitched me. It could make my journey blissed out.
A little sound behind me broke the spells. I didn’t turn around. My hostage – who else could it be! He was pretty quiet until then – and I didn’t know why he chose this moment to make a noise. It was like he had something stuck in his throat and tried to cough it out. Well, if I blow his brains out right now, I thought, it will be an appropriate final trait to all the picture. To avoid doing it I slid down a bit in the seat and put my boots on the control panel.
Ooh! How stupid! I hated myself. To suck like this… And I guessed myself smart. Fuckin’ SSC! A big mistake. An extremely big mistake it was to trust them.
Too late.
Again I felt like smashing the screen in front of me with my bare hand. I would like to shatter everything, to howl and shout and kick the seats out of their places. Only I knew once I started doing it I probably wouldn’t be able to stop.
Very carefully I re-adjusted the setters of the screen to show our front way – and switched it on again. There was no reason why I couldn’t watch where we were going. The darkness in front of me was clean and quiet. There was no chase. I guessed they got shocked with the explosion and overlooked the boat – and when they recollected I was too far away to get my trace.
It didn’t contradict with the sudden start of the communicator. The sound was so strident that I winced. Scattered signal. They wanted to contact me. I knew better.
I let it work, I didn’t care. On the panel I found separate device for SuperVision. I didn’t need the screen to watch blank space any more – and I set the sensors to let me know if something bigger then stardust was approaching me.
I pressed the button and 3-D image appeared in front of me. A sleek girl with her face both solemn and fascinated was speaking swiftly:
“The operation on hostage release captured on Transtellar Company space launch “Yvonne” going from Kithera to Tangor failed. Despite the confirmations of TSC management that consensus was reached with the terrorist and he obtained the ransom, the ship with eleven passengers and four crew members exploded today at 11:20 of Interstellar Empire Time.”
“After the terrorist started from “Yvonne” on the life-boat, the launch disappeared in white flame of mini-nuke explosion,” I switched to another station. “We don’t have information if the terrorist took any hostages with him. The list of passengers and crew…”
The next station had the modeling of explosion itself. Good work, guys! It was far not so blinding as in reality – but impressive nevertheless. It almost looked like a beautiful flower blooming in the darkness.
They set me up…
I hit the switch abruptly. It was everything all the same, on every station. Well, it was my instigation – didn’t I demand the broadest interpretation of the capture? I briefly recalled the thin-hair guy from SSC who contacted me.
“It is our indispensable condition. The capture is to prove that to fly with TSC is not safe – it is our goal.”
“Your goal,” I grinned. “My goal is three thousand credit units.”
I had to get it after the affair was done.
It was my own face looking at me from the picture at the next station. Ten years younger – the way I was on Thalassa – a bright kid with a startled expression.
“Darren Grey, a.k.a. Sojourner, declaring himself anarchist-individualist, who accepted the responsibility for the explosion of power station on Aria-7 in 2098, the hijack of the ship with the members of UTI board in 2100, the demolition of the gravitation arch in 2101…”
They enumerated my credits. Not all of them were mine – some of them I merely adopted. But it was what I was paid for – my name.
My name – and what did they do to it now?!
I didn’t pay attention to time. It stunned me when I understood that I switched from station to station for almost three hours! I was fed up with everything I heard; it almost made me sick. The explosion didn’t seem anything to me any more – just a fact of beauty, a masterpiece painted by an artist in the outer space. My own name sounded like chanting in my ears.
The communicator stopped signaling – but when it happened I couldn’t say. We were already too far from the usual ways of space ships coursing in the Empire – and as we were going further the stations of SV started fading, too. Well, the set of the life-boat was not the strongest one. For some time more I could watch CNN and DagmaTime – and then they were also dead.
I felt inconvenient being in silence. It was not for long – seconds, maybe, until I started thinking about a dose again. I forgot about it watching – but the itch didn’t pass. I almost reached for my pocket. It was wrong, of course, I knew I couldn't afford doing it…
I jumped out of the seat abruptly, hitting the floor with my boots. The gun lay on the control panel in front of me, I grasped it sharply and walked to the back of the salon. If nothing else – I still had my hostage.
The guy sat still, deep in the seat, as if trying to hide himself in it – but surely it was only the way I tied him. His face was tilted away from me – it looked like he never saw anything more interesting than clear white panel on the wall.
He even didn’t turn to me when I approached him!
I pointed the gun.
“Iver Trysmen. Look at me.”
It seemed he was too tired to move. These hours since we stepped to the boat changed him drastically. His face looked haggard, with big dark shadows under his eyes. And his eyes were rimmed with red.
He looked at me without expression – almost unwillingly, I thought. Then his eyes blinked and stuck to the black hole of my gun’s point. He appeared to struggle with taking them off from it – but he managed and gazed at me again. His lids were fluttering.
“Yes, right,” I said. “At me. I just wanted to ask if you feel like thanking me for saving your life.”
It seemed his eyes lost focus. His mouth gaped a little open – and he drew a breath through it – sharp as a gasp. I pointed the gun to his face. It took several seconds before he said:
“Thank you.”
His voice was flat. He didn’t say anything else, just pressed his mouth tightly. His lips were parched; but no wonder, he had to do without water for – let me see – almost nine hours. Well, he was a man, right? And I didn’t have any water here, anyway. And even if I had, I thought, I was not sure I would care about him. Not with this his accusing stare!
Actually, I was not ready to swear that his stare was accusing. His eyes did have a little wild look – so dark and with such expanded pupils that they seemed black. But what else could it be? Only pain, and fear, and disgust.
“Was there your girl-friend on the launch?” I asked.
He kept silence for long enough to make me feel like punching him. When he shook his head no it was almost as if he didn’t know what to answer. I surprised him.
“Your sister?” I went on. “Your close friend?”
“You killed them all,” he whispered swiftly.
Maybe, when he said it he wanted to take his words back. I imagined how the butt-stock of my gun could hit his face. I restrained the wish.
“Yeah,” I giggled. “Sure! Blooey! I like to kill people,’ I added coyly.
There was suffering in his eyes. From time to time his lids sank down – but stayed like this only for a moment – and he opened them with a kind of effort. I moved the gun in front of his face.
“It’s even better if I can see their eyes, you know,” I hissed almost intimately.
His blond hair was matted on his temples – like of a little child. He lost control over the sound of his breathing – it went out in short noisy gasps. Well, I thought – he disgusted me but I could frighten him.
I set the muzzle against his cheek. A long shiver went through his body – and I saw again the flap of his long curved lashes. It was weird that he had such dark lashes and dark eyes being so fair himself, I thought.
It seemed he tried to withdrew even deeper into the seat from me. Ask me, I thought, plead me! He didn’t say a word. His stare was frozen, fixed on me, too black to read it. Cry, I made him in my mind, show me how scared you are!
Here he didn’t lose control. Was he too proud, I wondered. Or he simply loathed me too much to give in with pleading? I passed the muzzle, pressing it deep to his skin – and saw a pink wale it had left on his cheek-bone.
He didn’t stand. He closed his eyes – as if locked his face from me. His breath got somehow wet quality, like sobs, absolutely out of order. I ran the cold metallic muzzle over his emotionless face, pressed it to his lips, pressed it between them. It stopped against his teeth.
“Open it,” I said. For a moment he didn’t give a sign that he heard me. I knocked on his teeth slightly. “Open it or I’ll beat them out.”
The muzzle slid into his mouth and I moved it further, until it stuck to the back of his palate. His eyes were screwed up now – almost like he was going to cry. His face became pink because he tried to hold his breath.
I made some slow rocking motions pulling the muzzle out and pushing it in. My head was swooning. I felt hot pleasure spreading inside me – almost like as if I did take my dose.
When the communicator in the front started squealing suddenly the abruptness of it almost made me squeeze the trigger. I stopped my finger half-way and sighed out. If the guy heard it he didn’t display; he seemed to be submerged in his own torment – of what I was doing to him. I yanked the gun out of his mouth – what a lucky dear – he didn’t know how close to death he was!
I walked to the control panel swiftly. It was a diffused signal. And in this part of the space it could mean only one thing.
I opened the com and entered my coordinates. The rustle and the noise became deafening – and finally the screen in front of me lightened. I saw Neaf.
His toothless mouth foramen worked when he looked back at me – in the grimace that was adequate to a smile for darloxians.
“What, brother?’ he squeaked. “They didn’t pay?”
Behind me I heard a short moan – as if Iver Trysmen at last gave way to his emotions. I didn’t look back – I knew his eyes were locked on the screen.
“They paid all right,” I answered quickly. Probably they couldn’t see the autodoc in the salon – as I could see only vague octopus-like shadows of others behind Neaf.
He didn’t ask me what happened. He trusted my choice – and, by the way, do you think fourteen or fifteen humans meant anything for him? I knew I was the only human he cared about.
“Have a problem,” I still was unsure how to verbalize it – but it hung over me infinitely.
“A tail?” he asked.
“No!” he should knew me better.
“Then don’t worry. We’ll speak aboard.”
The screen trailed off. I checked the sensors – I didn’t know where from they would come. For long minutes the screen stayed black and dead – and then in one of the squares displaying the space around me I saw a light point approaching fast. I switched again – the point was in the center now, growing and becoming brighter – until the angular disc filled the space all over.
I directed the boat to its bottom and saw the door sliding open. It sucked us inside.
Now I could be easy.
The End of Part 2
Go to Part 3 Back to Juxian's Slash