Indian Hill (40 page)

“You let him go now Talbot! Or I’ll fucken kill you.” He was shaking with rage as he spat this out.

“Uh, I’m a little busy right now Durgan, you’re just going to have to wait your turn,” I answered back. I didn’t even have to yell. The acoustics in this place were great and it was very, very quiet.

“You have no right to take this away from me Talbot. I’m moments away from my biggest glory and you’re fucking ruining it for me.”

“I’m sorry Durgan
. I know that I should have just laid down and died for you today but I wasn’t feeling very giving. Sometimes it’s just not in my nature. My mother always accused me of being a taker and not a giver.” Durgan was enraged, he started to enter into the stands but the guards weren’t letting another rogue human in. The guard closest to him stepped in his way. Durgan didn’t
hesitat
e, he punched the guard square in the solar plexus and the guard doubled over in pain. With some effort but not all, not by a long shot, Durgan grabbed him around the neck and pulled upwards, severing the guard’s spinal cord from his neck. He walked through a second guard like he was tissue paper. Thank God for Durgan, he actually took some of the heat off of me. Two of the guards now had their rifles trained right on Durgan’s head. He didn’t have a weapon or a hostage and he was in the wide open. He stopped his advance, but the rage inside him was boiling over. His face was beet red, veins
as thick as sausages
were sticking out all over the place. He was quaking like a volcano about to erupt
.

“I’m going to kill you Talbot!” And I knew he meant it. But I had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

“
Kill, kill, kill, that's all anyone wants to do around here!
Like I said Durgan, you’re going to have to wait in line just like everyone else.” He literally howled in rage and frustration. Beth in the meantime had made her way down to me. I gave her a small hug and I could feel the ever so slight stiffness when I touched her. Well that answered my question. She wasn’t going to mind if my savagery saved her but after that I didn’t think she’d want any part of me. Well, like I said before, I had bigger fish to fry at the moment, love or lack of wasn’t on the list quite yet.

I needed to act and I needed to act fast. But in what direction? I hadn’t really believed that I would get this far. If I made the Progerians clear a path that could possibly give the guards a clear shot at Beth or me. If  I left them where they were, would one of them make a move? I knew that the Progerians preferred the hands off approach but if pushed to the edge would they attack? I really didn’t know them well enough to make an informed decision. I was fairly certain though that the guards would take full advantage of any opportunity. I had sort of made up my mind. Rifle pressed firmly to the Supreme Commander’s head we moved, Beth pushed ahead with the Supreme Commander following her and me bringing up the rear. Durgan was still screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Hey Durgan!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Stephanie doesn’t say hi.” Holy cow, that shut him up. I think I could feel him boiling with rage. Apparently he never knew that she was my roommate, and I just let him ponder on what may or may not have happened between us. I d
idn
’t know why I felt the need to antagonize him, but that got him moving again. Only this time he was running across the arena floor to meet me at the other entrance.
H
e was going to foul everything up.

“Stop him now Commander, or the guards are going to have some Supreme brain to clean up later.” He may not have understood sarcasm but he understood the threat just fine. He said something in his native tongue, a blue flash passed by us no further than three feet away and that was the end of Durgan’s right leg. It just sort of disappeared; I saw white bone protruding from below his kneecap and nothing else. He fell in a heap screaming and writhing in agony. I almost felt pity for him, no actually I didn’t but I didn’t want to sound too inhumane. Well I now knew that the guards were excellent shots; I almost crawled up onto the Supreme Commander’s back. As it was there was no more than three inches from any part of my body to any part of his. I might as well have been a human fur,  the way that I was draped over him. To shoot at me the guards ran the risk of the exit discharge going into their leader and as bad as they wanted to kill me that was in direct proportion to how much they didn’t want to harm their leader. For the most part the crowd parted as my small troupe made its way through.
O
nce
though
, whether on purpose or by accident one, of the  Progos shot a foot out. I nearly stumbled, I had to grab on to the Commander’s belt to keep from toppling over. When I had regained my full balance I quickly turned the rifle and blew off that
offending
foot. Nobody else’s feet even came close after
that.

“There was no reason to blow off my Computer Engineer’s foot,” the Supreme Commander said calmly. He was a cool cookie under pressure, I’d give him that much.

“Well you see Mr. Supreme Commander, sir. I basically did it for my entertainment and enjoyment.” He stiffened much like Beth had when I first touched her. We finally reached the entrance, the two dead guards were still there but they now had fifteen or so live companions waiting right around the bend.

“Call them off, Supe. You know the drill. Hole in the head and all. Tell them to put down their weapons.” The commander hesitated. I jammed the rifle even further into his skull.

“Now!” I screamed.

He complied; they hesitantly put down their weapons.

“Now tell them to back away from the weapons and to open my cell door.”

“Oh come on hu-man, where do you really think this is going to end up, tonight I will be eating dinner in my quarters and I guarantee you will be the main course. Let me go now, we’ll fix up Durgan and you can die like a man in the arena.”

“Um let me think about that.
G
ee no, you
fuck
, now tell them to do what I asked.”

He resisted so I shot a guard square in the chest, it smelled a lot like chicken. If I ever got the chance I was going to eat one of th
o
se things, just to see if the smell resembled the taste. The guards almost advanced on me. The commander raised his hand and spoke their native tongue, they backed away from their weapons and one ran back down the corridor. Whether to get help or to open my cell I wasn’t sure.

“Beth, grab a rifle!”

“Mike, you know I hate those things.”

“Now is not the time to be a liberal, grab a fucken weapon!” She reluctantly picked one up.

“Now keep that thing aimed squarely at the Commander’s chest, anything happens to me just drill a hole in him.”

“I… I don’t think that I can do that.”

“Beth, do you know that it’s this animal that is responsible for all the carnage that has gone on here.”

“I know, but more killing is not the answer.”

“Alright Beth, then I’ll put this weapon down and we’ll negotiate. I’m sure Mr. Supreme Commander will be willing to hear me out. Right before he serves me up with a nice brandy.” After a moment’s hesitation she pointed the muzzle directly at his mid-section. Whether or not she would pull the trigger I didn’t yet know. I grabbed as many rifles as I could possibly handle and still be able to fire if the need arose.

“What’s all the commotion?” Deb and Steph rounded the corner to see our little Mexican standoff. Beth had the gun pointed at the commander, I had a handful of rifles in my hands. At least twenty guards were against the far wall, probably debating a quick rush on me and I had another ten or twelve guards behind me deciding on their own course of action. Steph saw the jam we were in and immediately grabbed a weapon for herself and Deb. A couple of the bolder girls also came and grabbed
one
.

“Now listen ladies,” I said, trying not to sound condescending. “These things have no safety and a hair trigger, do not point it at anything unless you are going to shoot.”

Stephanie yelled, “Like this?” and proceeded to blow holes in five of the guards, all their thoughts of making a charge died with the five on the floor.

“Uh yeah, something like that,” I said in shock and no little admiration. I nudged the commander in the back. “Tell the guards to lie on the ground before she takes out some more frustration.” The commander now realized that he had more to worry about than just me, and lost some of his original swagger. He spoke, they knelt. The commander, having witnessed the savagery of the ‘lesser’ sex, obviously now wished that he had also pitted them in the games, they would have made for some entertaining viewing.

“Does anyone else smell fried chicken?” Steph asked quizzically. She looked up from her still smoking barrel.

“Yeah it does smell a little like KFC,” I answered with a sick grin.

“Oh that’s so gross.” Beth was turning a little green. Apparently her jaunt on this ship hadn’t been nearly as brutal as the rest of ours. She still seemed to have some of the refinements of civilization hanging about her. The rest of us, well, the rest of us didn’t have that problem.

“You tell the guards if they so much as peek a snout around that corner we’re going to blow the rest of their friends away.”

“Friends?” the commander said. Wow, they didn’t understand friends; I guess I couldn’t play that card.

“I’ll blow the rest of their fellow soldiers away.”
That
he understood.

I wasn’t sure if they weren’t showing themselves for fear of getting their leader hurt or their compatriots, but either way, they never rounded that corner. We slowly made our way around the curvature of the ship, continually running into armed guards waiting for the chance to pounce. But we weren’t exactly defenseless and more importantly we had the king of all hostages. At least half of the women were armed and I do believe they were more likely to use them than myself.

CHAPTER 46

Outside of Venus Airspace

“Colonel, I believe the main ship is attempting to hail us!” Captain Emerick shouted from his seat
pulling his headphones off
.

“Well, what are they saying Captain?” The colonel was a little impatient, it had been a long journey and the end was in sight, literally. The mother ship could
easily
be seen from a thousand miles away.

“I’m not sure sir, it seems to be a repeating message and it was on one of our lesser used frequencies. I’m just waiting for it to restart.”

“Let me...”

“Wait, here it is….” the captain piped in the message over the intercom system.

“American Hu-mans of the Space Shuttle USS Liberation.” Well, the Colonel thought to himself, apparently they had been listening to their comms with Earth.

“We are the Progerians from the planet Aradinia. We regret that we have not yet made ourselves known to your general population. We feared that your primitive species might riot if we came unannounced. We took random crowds from across your globe to let them see us for who we are, so that these new emissaries could spread the word about us on your planet. We thought it might be easier for your primitive minds to accept an alien species if you heard it from your own kind.”

“Well at least they’re not arrogant,” the colonel snorted. He received a few laughs from his crew but the unsettling alien voice over the tinny speaker did not match the words being heard.

“We welcome you and your crew aboard our ship. We will prepare a feast in your honor. Please reply once you have received this message, and follow the grid coordinates to the proper docking location.”

“Colonel, what are we going to do, they could be leading us into a trap.”

“Captain, if they wanted us dead they could have done it the moment we left Earth. Let’s play their game for now; if we don’t like it we’ll change the dealer. Hail them back, tell them we gladly accept their invitation. And then dial up Houston for me.”

“Yes sir!” the captain said. Hope had surged a little in the captain. Perhaps they were a friendly, albeit arrogant species. Maybe they weren’t bent on global destruction like so many of his fellow countryman believed. He sincerely hoped so.

“Sir, I’ve got Houston on the line.”

“Hello Houston.”