Nathan Hystad - The Event

“From the sounds of it, they’ve been playing at being weak for centuries, waiting for the right moment to strike. You show your belly to a predator for enough years, they forget that you also have teeth. I’m just glad they decided to show them when humanity needed it,” Mary said.

“I wonder how many of his people are aboard that ship. And will they all help when the Kraski are down?” Magnus asked no one in particular.

“Let’s just hope they do. First things first, we have to stop them, then save our people. Then we can worry about what happens after that.” I believed the words as I said them. It was all too overwhelming if we thought too far into the future. We’d been led to believe all we had to do was shut this thing off and we would be done. After the journey halfway across the world, we had done what we’d thought was necessary. It wasn’t done. I thought about Ray, and how it was done for him. I would find his family and tell them he was a good man. That he had cared for them very deeply. I couldn’t blame him for trying what he did.

We raced through the atmosphere, and the ship jostled around a little bit. Mary kept focus, and she let out a whoop as we broke out and into the blackness of space. My jaw fell open as I saw Earth from above for the first time. It was a moment I knew I’d never forget, but I’d been having a lot of those lately. Magnus looked back at me and smiled. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day!”

We followed the smaller ship away from Earth. I had no idea what direction we were heading because to me, that all went out the window in three-dimensional mapping. They sat, and I stood in silence as Mary navigated us a safe distance behind them. I didn’t know how far out the so-called “mother ship” would be, but for some reason, I had expected it to be closer than the moon. I also had no idea how fast we were going. There was nothing for me to gauge this against, and it wasn’t like I could read the speedometer.

I took the time to look around the ship a bit as we rode through space. Carey followed behind, nose sniffing rapidly at everything. They must have had something to create artificial gravity, because I stepped along the floor with my feet firmly planted on it. It felt a little lighter than Earth, and I tested it with a small hop. I was sure I had a little longer hang time than I would on the surface at home. The ship was plain, with metal walls and floors. Nothing decorated it; everything appeared to be about function, not fashion. To the left of the cockpit there was a small room with two bunks in it. They had shiny silver bedding. I felt it between my hands and the material was softer than anything I’d touched before. They were so similar to us, yet so different.

I pictured one of the pale humanoid aliens sleeping here only a day before, and it struck me that we were about to kill a lot of them. I knew we were just defending ourselves, but the idea of genocide of that level… of any level… was going to be tough to do lightly. They were Janine’s people. Well, partly her people. She was a hybrid, after all. It was hard to feel for them, since they’d taken our entire population and we still didn’t know where they were.

Next to that room was another identical one, then what must have been a washroom, though I hadn’t the vaguest idea how anything inside it would work. Maybe it was engineering, not a bathroom.

I made my way to the front of the ship as the moon sailed by us through the viewscreen.

“That was amazing,” Mary said quietly, hands still firmly on the controls.

“How much further do you think we have to go?” I asked, hoping she had an idea.

“Let me ask,” Magnus said. “Teelon, do you know what our estimated time of arrival is? Over.”

“ We should be able to view the mother ship soon. Don’t be alarmed when you see it. We mustn’t seem out of place. When they try to communicate, signal me and I’ll reply through our connected systems. Over.”

It was only a few minutes before it came into our sight. It was tiny at first, but I had no idea how far away it was. The closer we got, the larger it started to get. Soon we spotted two ships coming toward us. My heart hammered as they approached. Mary said they couldn’t see through our viewscreen, and I hoped she was right. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? Three humans coming at them, jaws hanging to the ground.

The communicator buzzed, and we heard a strange language come through the smooth speakers. Magnus buzzed Teelon, who proceeded to reply in their language. He must have been disguising his voice as one of the sick Kraskis, because it didn’t sound much like his usual monotone self. They spun around us and flanked us on either side.

“I guess we get an escort in,” Mary said.

“Teelon was hoping most of the fleet was in the hangars on their main ship. Less to deal with afterwards,” I said, scanning the space for signs of more ships.

The massive Kraski ship grew immensely as we closed in, though I still had no idea how big it must have been. I tried to do the math, thinking about the thousands of ships that had hovered over Earth, then the huge black cubes that had lowered, taking all the humans with them. That was a lot of ships and a lot of space to hold all of those people. Where were the cubes now? A ship to house the Kraski along with their fleet would be astronomical in size. I figured we would be making it to a docking station in a few minutes, but it turned out to be closer to forty minutes. Forty minutes of us nervously talking as the unbelievably huge ship took over our viewscreen.

“ We’ll be arriving shortly. I told them we came along as an escort for the Kraski on board your ship. The device’s potency almost killed you all. I think they bought it, but they’ll be arriving on Earth soon with their backup ships. It’s only a matter of minutes before they find out the truth. If the ships beside you do anything odd, you have to make for the blinking green lights at two o’clock from here. Mary, do you understand?”

She pressed the comm-button and said she did. I really hoped it didn’t come to that. The last couple minutes went by as we sat there sweating bullets.

“Are we sure we thought this through? I mean… what if it doesn’t work?” I asked.

Magnus looked back at me, his eyes hard as steel. “It has to, my friend. It’s the only shot we have.”

Word must not have gotten back to them from back on Earth, because everything was still smooth sailing. The Kraski home ship was smooth on the outside and shaped much like a rounded rectangle. A panel slid open into a hangar; it wouldn’t even have been noticeable from a few miles away, the ship was so large compared to us. As we neared the slit to enter, the ships beside us turned and tried to get in between Teelon’s ship and the hangar. Before we knew what was going on, Teelon veered left and up, red beams firing from his ship at the guides. The first shot glanced off some sort of force field on the ship, and so did the second, but the third in quick succession made it through and the enemy exploded into a million pieces in front of us. The second ship chased after Teelon, its own red beams firing quickly.

Magnus tensed, but spoke calmly to Mary. “Honey, get inside this ship and beam me down. As fast as you can!”

The ship jerked around as she tried to slow it down and avoid any debris still floating nearby from the explosion. Red lights flashed all around us now, and a blaring alarm rang as we came up to the hangar. The door that had opened to let us in as friends only a few minutes before was now trying to close on us, to keep us out. Mary clipped the bottom of the ship on it, but we made it through, crashing into at least five of the hovering ships inside.