From the Journal of Steven Keys- September 10, 2018
Weird vibe in the camp today. There are all sorts of rumors flying around about a massive offensive in the works.
Ed The Human Bummer- I’ve taken to calling him that as though it’s his full name and he gets a laugh out of it so why stop- seems to think it’s not a good idea. “Too little time to plan, too much emotion involved. Great way to get a lot of our own people killed.”
It would be nice, for once, if Ed was wrong. Oh. Here’s one of the Army guys. Hang on.
Didn’t think that would take so long. Four hours of briefing. Wow. This is going to be big. And dangerous. Really, really dangerous.
What baffles me, though, is that Ed volunteered for the mission. What’s wrong with that picture?
I asked him about it, and all he would say was that it was better to go along on this one than be left behind.
From the Journal of Steven Keys- September 11, 2018
I could spend years trying to describe what happened today and not ever do it justice. The short version: we blew up an alien battle cruiser. In orbit. Ed died saving my life.
From the Journal of Steven Keys- September 12, 2018
Okay, I’ve had a day to decompress and think about everything that happened yesterday. This is my best attempt at explaining it.
Two days ago, we were called in and informed of a plan for a massive retaliatory strike against the Omegans. The idea was reasonably simple: careful observation had discovered a pattern to their troop and supply movements, and there were a couple of ships that seemed vulnerable. We would sneak ourselves on board inside of cargo containers, and be taken to a B-class battle cruiser in orbit. There we would stealth our way around the ship until we located the engine room (the Army was pretty sure they knew where it was located) and we would hide explosives on a timer. After they were placed, we’d hurry back to the ship that brought us up, place ourselves in the cargo containers headed back down to Earth, the ship would leave on schedule, and five minutes later the battle cruiser would go sky high.
Sounds easy enough, right?
There were six of us that made our way onto the Omegan ship. Three pairs, the idea being that if a group got caught, there was still backup working to accomplish the mission. Good thing. It all started going to shit immediately.
First, one of the other guys turned out to be claustrophobic. Knowing that, I’m not sure why he volunteered- unless he wanted to make sure he died. So it was only a couple of minutes into the flight to the battle cruiser before he started hyperventilating and losing his shit. The Army guy in the crate with him had to cold-cock him to shut him up before he gave us away. Not a good omen.
We arrived, got unloaded, and then our streak of crap luck continued. The landing bay was depressurized to decontaminate the ship between flights, I’m guessing to clear out the crap it would have picked up from out still clogged atmopshere. We heard the hiss of air starting to leak out and bolted from our hiding places and headed for the door before it kicked in at maximum level. Five of us made it, including Claus (as I’ll remember him) being carried by Ed. One of the Army guys… well, I watched in horror as his body was flung into space, only a sliding door between me and him.
I’d have loved to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I was now in orbit around Earth. But at that point, I couldn’t. Right now I can a little bit. Good grief- I was in ORBIT on an ALIEN SPACESHIP. Granted, a hostile one, but still. For me, taking a plane trip where we cruised at 35,000 feet was miraculous enough. I was never an athlete. I was certainly never a candidate for NASA. I’m in decent shape for a guy my age. But I was never going to have a life where I touched the void.
Not until these alien bastards showed up and started murdering us.
We dumped Claus’ body out of sight and the four of us split up into pairs, each of us heading in the general direction of where the engine room was supposed to be. Ed and I paired off and began making our way through the ship. Now, I’m not an engineer, so my ability to talk about the Omegan tech and stuff like that is nonexistent. That was Ed’s department, and he said a LOT of shit that went way over my head as we ducked and crawled through that ship. More than once one of those big purple bastards was within arm’s reach of us and I was sure we were going to get caught.
Caught. Who am I kidding? You get caught, they were going to kill you, and probably in the most unpleasant way they could. But we had one advantage that I now realize- they had no reason to look for us. Earth hadn’t even sent a man to the moon in forty years. It took months of preparation to get a shuttle into orbit. They had to feel like there was nothing to fear up there.
They won’t make that mistake anymore.
Anyway, miracle of miracles, we managed to find our way towards what had to be the engine control room. There were a couple of Omegans inside, but also lots of places to hide. Ed and I slid into crevasses and began planting the C-4 explosives. It went quick and easy. So of course something was about to go wrong.
Just as we placed our last ones a loud noise erupted- some sort of internal alarm. From outside the room we heard what sounded like gunfire, the door opened, and two more Omegans came racing in. They had an animated conversation with the engineering crew and ran back outside. The engineers began working furiously at what I would call a keyboard, and Ed and I watched them with amazement. When they stopped there was almost a pregnant pause in the air, then a machine beeped and a screen popped up. Suddenly they turned around and were looking right at us!
“Fuck,” was all Ed could say. I couldn’t say anything at all.
We drew our guns as they drew theirs, but luckily we fired first. I emptied an entire clip into the one nearest me, and Ed did the same on his. We ran over to their bodies and grabbed their weapons and stopped for a moment- there was no sound. Whatever had happened with our counterparts was over, and as they had never arrived at the engine room, the outcome was obvious. Ed spotted a second exit on the far side of the room and we made our way to it. There was no way we were going to get out the way we came in.
Guns at the ready, we made our way out of that room and back into the hallways of the ship. We figured we didn’t have much time- someone was going to find those bodies and see the internal scan and it was likely to happen quick. Thus we needed to get off that ship as quickly as possible.
Ed the Human Bummer once again reared his ugly head. “No way we’ll be able to get on one of those cargo transports again. They’ll be scouring those things top to bottom.”
“You have a better idea?” I asked, feeling sick to my stomach.
He stared at the remote detonator. “Probably not. But if these guys are this evolved, they must have emergency exits.”
I couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. “Escape pods? Well there’s a classic sci-fi trope.”
Ed shrugged. “Best I’ve got. If there is something like that, I’d guess it’ll be near the crew quarters.”
“By the landing bay,” I said, finishing his thought. I shook my head. We were still going to have to head in the direction where everyone was going to be looking for us.
For a couple of minutes we had clear sailing and we made our way close to the Omegan “barracks”. Then all hell broke loose again. The alarm rang out and a voice began booming from some sort of internal radio. We could then hear the sound of heavy boots echoing on the floor and obviously drawing closer. Ed and I looked at each other, and in that moment, I think we both knew we were dead men. Then he smiled at me.
“I have a plan.”
His plan, frankly, was a bad one. He told me that he had dressed up as Han Solo for Halloween when he was a kid, and that he had always loved the scene where Han acted crazy and chased after a platoon of Stormtroopers, scaring them into running away from him. He took the Omegan gun that I was carrying, handed me his Glock and the detonator, and ran off toward the incoming threat, firing wildly with both laser pistols. As he did, I made my way away from the confrontation, listening carefully to what was happening in the distance, until I found the crew quarters. As the door opened I came face to face with an Omegan, and before he could react, I shot him in the face. Seeing that the room was empty excepting him, I did what I was sent there to do: I hit the remote and set off the explosives.
The sound was deafening, and the ship shuddered like it had been punched by a comet. The lights dimmed, the alarms sounded, and then new lights flicked on. They created a trail through a second room, and luck being on my side, that room was full of small doors. I stepped in front of one and it opened automatically. But before I walked in, I took out my gun, loaded a new clip, and then shot out what appeared to be the control panels for many of the rest of the doors. Seeing that the job was done as it could be, I climbed inside mine and the door shut. A screen came up showing a map of Earth and the explosions began growing louder and closer. So I tapped the map, and the “pod” released. Of course, I had meant to tap northern Arizona so I would be taken home by this little emergency evacuation system. But one last explosion jarred the pod as I hit the map, and that explains why I am where I am now.
What the hell. I’d always wanted to visit Japan anyway. Of course, I wanted to go to Tokyo and the other big cities. This island in the middle of the Pacific wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
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