Ch1. The Monster Past End

It was cold and Tierney stood all alone, she was pissed. The snow sat on the ground frozen over with a thick layer of ice. The slush from the sun had been the culprit, the proof spread all over the parking lot ground.

A car drove towards her. Tierney looked up, anger already plastered over her features. And it was about time. It had been an hour and those morons were… nevermind.

It was blue, it was a Honda. It drove past her. It failed to continue on its way as it hit the ice and slid sideways out of Tierney’s stubborn line of sight.

“Wait, mom”! A girl called and reached for the car. She failed to notice she stepped on crime scene proof and slipped. Her flailed arm landed on Tierney’s shoulder and steadied the girl with her much more responsible weight.

The car stopped when it dented itself on the curb.

“Hey Tyranny”, that same classmate greeted.

“It’s Tierney”, Tierney corrected.

“Right sorry. Sorry I’m not used to black people names”, her classmate whinged with the smile of an intimate joke.

“It’s Irish”, she soured.

“Oh, whoopsie. I guess that sounded racist didn’t it? I’m totally not racist, don’t worry. Anyway, wasn’t graduation amazing”? She prattled and batted her eyelashes as though she thought she looked like a convincing puppy. As if being cute was a bandaid for the booboo she made.

“It was… fine”, Tierney lied. The excessive speeches from the Cornel, a guest pilot from the military, the valedictorian, and the head of the Airforce Academy nearly bored her into the floor. Her last name started with a Z, so she had to watch every one of the 300 students go first. The food was all gluten free and seasoned with raisins, and the macaroni and cheese was more sandy and cheese. It was no wonder her family went to her twin sister’s graduation instead.

“You waiting for someone”? Her classmate asked, “do you want a ride”?

“No”.

“No’ on the ride or no on are you waiting for someone”?

Shouldn’t you be getting in that Honda? Tierney thought and kept the annoyance from deepening her annoyed expression. Too much of that and her face would cave in.

“All of it”, she answered.

The sound of a car pulled her attention to the public roadway. She looked up, and lazily hid her eagerness. The car passed by the driveway at the bottom of the hill and went on its merry way. She saw the bright headlights turn to red tail lights before she gave up and glared ahead of her.

“Really because it looks like you are waiting for someone”, her classmate said.

Tierney didn’t answer. All year this girl had not said a peep to her and now suddenly she was all over Tierney. There was no way she would hop into a “not racist” stranger’s car with their “didn’t teach them to be racist” parent who demonstrated they were Ill equipped for an icy parking lot drive.

“I’m not”, she insisted and hefted her bag over her shoulder. It was pregnant with her entire graduation uniform. Currently she wore her civilian aviator jacket covered in airforce patches, jeans, and a dirty t shirt. Her neat bun had fallen out and her hair curtained her from the wind. She was done with this conversation. Perhaps she could hitch hike home with someone a little less “totally not racist”.

“You sure? It’s super cold out”.

“Im Irish, the cold is comfortable to me”, she answered over her shoulder. Her pants could have melted the ice again, she would have appreciated it if the old rhyme was true.

“Leighla, help me push the car back onto the road please”, Tierney’s Ex classmate’s mother called.

Tierney didn’t say goodbye as she tromped her way to the end of the sidewalk and to the beginning of the long driveway. The section was cordoned off by several tall trees which blocked the moon from view. As she entered, the light from the university building vanished behind her.

She walked through the darkness with ease. The barely visible shape of the trees lead her along the pitch dark path. Even the snow looked like piles of soot. There were no birds, there were no bugs. The sound of either of them would have gutted the silence. The smell of wet pine needles scraped over the chill just before it turned warm in Tierney’s windpipe. The cold invaded despite her body’s and her clothing’s best efforts. Jeans were no match for winter.

The black rolled on and on until it didn’t. The sudden light attacked the world in a flash. The trees stood white and skinny in the shock of it and the snow jumped into view. Behind Tierney the sound of purring machines filled the air. It was strange, it was unlike any machine she had ever heard. It was no Honda.

She turned, her elbow caught someone in the head. The someone made a gurgle sound of surprise and stepped back.

“What the AAAH”! Her scream was that of a scared child. She found her legs caught on something and her balance compromised. She landed on her hands which seared with cold pain at the sharpness of the ice beneath her. Something wrapped around her wrist.

“Hrrrrgurrrgprrrr”, said the long trunk of a creature in front of her face. It’s eyes were black as the sky and sunken in like a corpse.

Tierney screamed. She rolled over in an attempt to get away. The trunk wrapped around her neck. But it wasn’t a trunk, it had claws.

It dragged her down and pinned her head down on the ice.

“Meee me reee me” a new and stranger creature said. They put something on her and her body went limp.

His eyes were the color of the night sky and there were four of them. They took up nearly his whole face and seamed into where his ears would be. He, like Tierney, was stuffed in a cage. However he was too tall for it so his head sat at an angle with his shoulder ish things pressed against the ceiling. He had done his hardest to give her as much room as possible. He didn’t blink.

“So what is this place”? Tierney asked.

He didn’t answer. The lack of blinking rubbed her the wrong way.

“Is this some kind of lab… are we going to get probed”? She asked. Where they would probe him, she was not sure. Maybe in the flaps in his neck which yawned in order from top to bottom and did so in a pattern. It made the glinting silver freckles all along his body shimmer on his neck.

Tierney attempted again to look past her bars. She couldn’t fit her finger through them, they were thick as ones for a dog cage. She dared not to touch them, dried goo and rust clung to them and they stunk like cheese. Outside the cage were more cramped cages full of living things.

“So is this like an alien kennel or something? You someone-er- something’s pet”?

One of his neck holes made a sharp sniff sound like a sneeze. Tierney would have loved if that was an answer, would put a lid on the simple “what the hell is going on here” question she had

“Not gunna help? Maybe I will check the neighbor. Hey neighbor, what is this place”?

The neighbor didn’t answer. He was covered in some kind of goo that wasn’t his own. His own leaked out of a crack in his back shell. He looked pretty dead.

A guard clicked by. Tierney looked up at them. It was the ones that sounded like elephants. How they told the guards apart from the ones in the cages Tierney was not sure.

“Can I come out now? I think there has been a mistake. I am not supposed to be here. Put me BACK”, she roared at it.

It ignored her and continued on its way.

Something poked the back of her neck.

“What”? She growled.

The weirdest thing about the starry guy, out of his crotch sprouted a long trunk. It was why she assumed he was male. It was long, foldy, blue and was curled into a ball. The difference between it and a penis was that this guy could move it on a whim and he really wanted to touch her with it.

“Seriously? Gross dude”, she spat and tried to push it away.

It swerved over her hand and bopped her knuckles. It was cold.

She flipped her hand over confused. If he put it in her hand she was going to put it back in his crotch with her foot.

The trunk unfurled three delicate nubs like little fingers. Out of it dropped a small black chip the size of a fingernail. The trunk retreated back to its place of origin and the thing waited expectantly.

“What’s this”? She asked the starry alien and shrugged at the device.

The device blinked when she spoke. Her voice echoed back through it.

“What’s this”? It squeaked.

“Ooookay… is it like, a recorder or something”?

The device spit out a bunch of nonsense and then repeated it back to her.

The starry alien raised his long, inflexible hands and waved them as though to shoo her off.

“So you want me to just say stuff to this thing? Is this thing recording us”.

It relayed something that sounded like a voice, but it spoke in nonsense English.

“Yes or no”? Tierney demanded.

“No”, it squeaked in a voice that wasn’t hers, “not… a… recorder”.

“So what is this then? Tv? Little phone? Translator”?

“Yes”, it said, “yes translator”.

“Is it translating you or some one else”?

“It is translating… me”, it squeaked. The starry alien raised his hand things, it waved them in greeting and scrunched his face in a friendly way.

“But you aren’t talking…” she said.

“Talking”, he said and pointed to the holes in his neck. She noticed they fluttered out of sync and made a light squeak sound.

“What the hell”, she whispered. For such a human looking alien, nothing about him was human at all.

“Ok, this is a translator. Does it learn by me talking”? She asked.

“Yes”, he answered.

“Ok, neat… hello, I’m Tierney, what is your name”, she intoned to it.

“No name”, he shrugged.

“No name? Why don’t you have a name”.

He tried to say something, but the translator didn’t know the english words for it yet. Then he pointed at himself.

“Is it just not your culture”? She asked.

“Yes”, he answered, “Not my culture”.

“What are you”? He asked. His eyes swirled as he examined her. Tierney backed up and glared warily. The crotch trunk still convinced her that he was a perv.

“I’m a human. And what are you? What is this place? Who are these guys”?

He said some things, but the translator seemed to have trouble translating them. Perhaps it learned from her speaking out loud and she had not done much with it yet.

“Talk”, he waved at the device. “Talk talk talk”.

So Tierney rambled to the device. About her planet, about her favorite food chow Mein and bean burritos which were never eaten at the same time of course. Her school, her school friends, her flight classes, the process of getting a license for commercial flight. Then she worked her way to her parents and her true feelings about them not showing up. How they preferred her sister and her shiney new medical degree.

“Oh that is awful. I feel sad for you”, the translator squeaked.

The device had stayed so quiet the entire time she had forgotten it was a translator and there was another thing in the room. She whipped her head over to Starboi.

“Say a word of that to anyone and I will shove this thing in your neck holes”.

“Why angry now? Did I do wrong”? He asked, authentically hurt.

“It just means I am serious. Very serious. No telling anyone”, she jabbed.

“Yes. No telling anyone. Can I see”? He motioned to her hand which was still pointing at him. Tierney was taken aback. She let him see her hand.

His were stiff and the fingers didn’t bend. They remained fuzed together like flippers. He examined how hers moved freely, how her fingers separated, how she could twist them only so far.

“Fascinating”, he said.

“What, you’ve never seen hands”? She snorted.

“Well, I have a hand”, he said and motioned to the trunk on his crotch. It pointed at her in a similar way to her pointing at him, two nubs down, one up. Unlike his flippers, it was flexible and dexterous. Tierney instantly felt guilty in thinking it was a penis.

“But I’ve never seen a human before. You said it was planet Earth. Where is that”?

“Um, it’s in the Milky Way Galaxy… near the Sun”.

“Is that ‘bletherub’ sector or near ‘otvemob’ star? Is it way out in the boonies”?

She wished that her kind had been more creative in coming up with a name for their star. “Sun” sounded like a dumb name now that she was talking to someone who didn’t grow up with it over his head all the time, and was using it as a map mark.

“I don’t think so”.

“What’s the closest life planet”? He asked.

“Uuuuh? Life planet? Like a planet with living beings on it”?

“Yes”, Starboi said.

“We don’t know any planets near us with life. There is no life that we know of for billions of lightyears. At least we haven’t seen any”, she shrugged.

“No space ships, no near planets? Do your telescopes suck”? He asked.

“No”, she defended, “our telescopes are great. We even used one to photograph a black hole”.

This stumped him. He examined her again, checked her up and down, took in her hands some more.

“You never answered what this place is”.

The translator didn’t know what he uttered. It was a word Tierney had not taught it yet.

“Huh? Could you repeat that”?

“Uuuuuuu… ship for taking people. Bad ship. Stole me and him and them”.

“Wait? Like a slave ship”?

“Yes!” He bounced and hit himself on the cage by accident, “a slave ship”.

Tierney sat back in shock. She looked around at the cages, at the guards, at all the aliens in cages. Her kennel guess was close, these aliens were treating the other aliens like dogs. The endless historical lessons on slavery had always pissed her off, but to become a slave herself? The idea had always filled her with rage. To say she was filled with rage was now an understatement for the real thing.

Tierney slammed her shoulder into the side of the cage. It rattled and shifted under the weight of the other cages on top of her.

“Scared sound! What are you doing”? The starry alien yelped.

“No”, she slammed against the door, “WAY”, she slammed again, “I am”, she dented the door with her shoulder, “becoming”, she kicked at the hinges, “A SLAVE”!

The door broke. A hoot like that of a trumpet rang through the hall.

She was half way out when one of the guards grabbed her jacket. A needle plunged down and broke on the thick leather. She whipped around and slammed her elbow into its face.

It stumbled back. She stood on her feet, whipped around and kicked it square in the chest. Its chest dented and it sprawled on the ground.

Now that she was out of her cage, she noticed how tall she really was compared to the guard.

“Stop you”! The translator roared in a deep gurgle.

A potmarked creature charged toward her from the hall entrance. He pulled out his long tenticles and rose up from four legs onto two.

He reached for her. But she dodged, pulled his weight with her and flipped him over into some cages.

The occupants made the translator scream “scared sounds”, “Scared Sounds”, in several unique voices.

“OUT”! She roared and tore one of the doors off its hinges.

Four fluffy aliens the size of coyotes gazed terrified at her. Some were smaller, they could have been babies. The babies in cages enraged her more.

“OUT NOW”! She bellowed at all the captured aliens.

The fluffy ones jumped out. The babies darted out of sight. The bigger ones worked keys off the large alien’s belt. He attempted to grab them and get up, but they were quick enough to move out of the way of Tierney’s shoe in his face.

Alarm bells rang. The noise reached a peak with the aliens clambered out of their cages and the guards wailed in other parts of the ship.

“Oh my stars, oh my stars”, the familiar squeak whispered out of the translator.

She looked around, her spit flying and saw Starboi. His eyes swirled. He stood nearly four feet taller than her and still had to bend his ice skater thin frame so he wouldn’t hit the ceiling.

Little aliens ran under his feet and fumbled at the keys.

“What have you done”, he whimpered at her.

“Breaking out of here”, she hissed and put her toe into the side of the big guy.

“We are in so much trouble. Slavers are dangerous people, they will kill us all for this. I am not that valuable, they will slaughter me for sure. Ooooh”!

“They can try”, she hissed.

“Don’t listen to them”, a massive alien growled and rose out of his cage. It was a massive cage with thick iron bars, “Valans live a pacifist culture. It’s such a waste”.

As soon as the alien stepped out, he slammed the edge of his fist into the exposed wall. Massive spikes on his arm left holes in the metal. He stood his full hight.

He was a heavy, armored individual with spikes that ran down his sides. Battle scarred and the color bleached out of him, he looked ancient. Though his eyes burned with young ferocity and all four of them landed on Tierney.

“For such a little thing, you pack a warrior’s spirit. They failed to understand that and it has brought us freedom. I am Frazak. What is your title?” he asked her, his tusk lined face curved in a type of grin. Nostrils on his forehead breathed hot air into her face.

She nodded and gulped. She didn’t feel like a warrior when she looked into his eyes. She felt like a puppy up against a rhinocerous. Or maybe a bezerker hippo. Bezerker Hippo felt more accurate, minus any semblance of cute of course.

He and several others like him lumbered out and held the door to the hall closed. If he was assisting their escape or keeping them locked up, she wasn’t sure until the honkers pounded against the outside wall. Farzak grinned wider as if their struggles brought him joy. The other side of the door sounded like rain while his strength dented it towards them.

Starboi tiptoed over aliens that flooded the hallway. Some fretted,some hugged loved ones, some rejoiced on their knocked out enemies backs.

“What are we going to do. We will be killed if we don’t escape”, Starboi fretted to Tierney, “this is why it is not good to act on impulse. Oh we are in a comet’s path now”!

“We will fight, obviously”, Tierney told him, “no way I am going to be a slave. Do you want to be a slave”?

“Well, no. No not at all, but me not wanting to do something should not lead to violence. There’s no point. They have guns and weapons and the entire ship. We could die in trying to win. Is getting your freedom truely worth your precious life”?

“What precious life, I’m gen Z”.

“I don’t know what that means”! He cried.

She stepped forward to the giant aliens who held the door.

“We must all fight”, she announced to them all, her rage fueled her words as she tried to instill it to the sad little aliens freed only a little bit, “no one will be anyones slave today. As long as you fight. It is our life, not theirs. No one gets to tell us how to live it”!

The crowd gave halfhearted cheer. Fear lined their expressions and the translator prattled on “scared sounds” “scared sounds”.

“Screw medical school, screw making anyone but yourself proud. Screw being in these cages! Open the doors! I will need you all”!

The giant aliens didn’t pull the door back to open it. They shoved it straight through the wall and slammed it into the guards on the other side.

And if we get back to the present we will see it in absolute chaos.

What Tiereny roars when she hits her head against the reinforced glass of the ship has been censored for the morons who are reading this to their hideous children.

“Aaah my ‘damn’ ing ‘splooorg’”, the pilot cries and clutched his back. Tierney, pictures blood spurting out of her head because of the pain. In spite of it she dives forward in a last desperate reach.

Her fingers feel the end of the gun.

Another valan, one just like Starboi who is probably crying over his enslaver’s bodies, looks down at her with his swirling eyes.

“Bring me the gun”! The pilot shouts.

The starry alien looks over at the pilot. He glares at the pilot. He punts the gun into her hand.

“NOOOO”! The pilot screeches.

The ship is struck again and they all slam into the next wall. This time Tierney’s hand catches herself before she had her back broken on the control board. The pilot, on the other lack of hands, is knocked out by the wall.

“What in guts and blood is that bumping sound”, Farzak roars from the entrance to the cockpit. He rolls his head back into the cockpit as he strangles a set of honker slavers outside. He seems perturbed by the disruption, but he is so huge the wall to his left and right keep him from tumbling around like everyone else.

“It’s some other ship. A small shiney one with a pointed nose”.

“A Infoil ship? Why would they be ramming us. Aren’t they supposed to be the space protectors”? The valan cries and hides under the dashboard.

“Maybe they are an Aquarius and it's their mooncycle, HOW WOULD I KNOW”! Tierney cries.

She falls into the pilot’s seat and takes the front wheel. Then she realizes it is not a F4. The controls are all weird and in different languages and she knows none of the glow-ey buttons.

She sees the attack ship turn around like a barracuda in the dark. It shimmers red in the starlight and rushes towards her.

With no better idea, she thrusts her full weight back from the wheel. The entire ship rattles and power spills out behind them. They tear up and around. Everyone is weightless for a solid moment. Then they crash back down as she eases off the wheel.

“Pull is up. No problem I can deal with that”, she whispers to herself.

The loopty loop did the trick. The Infoil ship shoots past them towards the red star in the distance.

It turns with sharp glitchlike movements, it takes a sharp right, then another to turn back towards them. Behind it, more of them twitch out from the rings of the rainbow planet in front of the sun. More ships are coming. More problems are coming.

“Crap… um”, she swears. She pulls on the wheel. It sent her into the back of her seat. They went up and faster. The ramming ship flies past her again, too set on its own path to follow her in time. She adjusts the control thrusters with her foot and levels out. It is tricky since the right one didn’t work. She shoots off, away from the planet. The engines rattle and the steering wheel jitters, so hard it could have taken her arms off.

“Little human”! Starboi calls to her just as she put on a burst of speed. He wasn’t expecting it and his back slammed into the rail behind the door.

Tierney is starting to feel at home with these controls. They look different, but they are similar to that of a regular airplane. She can do this.

Her face is in her steady in her focus scrunch, but inside the vacuum tugs at where she left her guts behind them.

She swerves to avoid a space rock. Dives under another and whirls as a moving one almost forcefully U-turns them.

“What are you doing? This is a debris fieeee-“ Starboi flies into the hallway again.

She turns to go back around. The Infoil ships have already caught up. They swerve and twist, blue flames stream out their fronts to come to a dead stop. The dented one that rammed her flails and twirls to keep up with her path.

“That’s the plan”, she announces and sets her focus on the debris field.

“This is a terrible ideaaaaaa”. He slides down the opposite way of the hall. That was an accident, there was a boulder.

She spins the ship behind a stray moon and uses its gravity to make her faster.

The light hits her eyes from the other side and with it the glint of a ship.

The ramming ship charges for them at high speeds. Ahead of them is a tight wall of rocks.

“We should turn a AAAAAA”! Starboi shrieks and ducks down onto the floor with his brethren.

Tierney shoots forward and sends a couple engines on the bottom of the ship into full throttle. They slip into the crack and were able to swerve before they hit the sides. She turned the thrusters off along with two on the right wing. In that flash of a turn the ship skids along the rock, but is able to shoot out of the opposite end of the asteroid.

“You are a comet crazy lunatic”! Starboi sobs and crawls up to her. It was the closest he had come to swearing. Tierney is proud of him.

“Better than dead”, she yells, invigorated by her brazen move she laughs hard at the windshield. She swerves and dodges a couple more rocks and shoots off at full speed when black appears to her.

The stars spread out in the billions in the black freedom and long lines of lights swirl through them.

“Oh it’s over. Oh thank the stars it’s over”, he slumps into the copilot chair next to her.

In her damaged rear view camera a glittering shape tears out of the darkness.

“It’s not over yet. Hang on”! She announces.

This is bad. The entire front board beeps purple for some reason and there are no more asteroids to dodge with. That ship is faster than they are and if it hits one of the engines, the ship could go cablooey and send them all flopping and gasping in the endless black.

“The battery is low. But we have some juice left in the hyperspace battery. Quick, go to that section of stars right there”.

“Isn’t going towards a crowded place a bad idea in hyperspace”? Tierney yells over the engine.

“That highway is a real safe one; the system will catch you and put you safely in a lane. Trust me”, he pleads, his flippers dig into the control board ahead of him and his crotch hand presses buttons to the best of its ability. It presses hard since it is too soft to really put pressure on the buttons.

She nods and hovers over the board. She can still not read it.

“I’ll do it then”! He sniffs and slams his flipper into a massive button with an odd symbol on it.

They shoot forward with a familiar sick feeling like that of riding a rollercoaster.

The stars shoot past them and then they are blinded.

Tierney opens her eyes and lowered her arm. Ahead of her are the tail thrusters of a blue ship. A small alien with a brightly colored toy ship blinks at them from where she plays from the back seat. She spots Tierney and stares.

“Oh I have never been so happy to see ‘malfooorip’ traffic”, Starboi breathes and his neck nostrils flare in one huge sigh.

It is bumper to bumper traffic for miles. No one seems to be moving. Several aliens had set up little food trucks in parts of the lanes and aliens in various space suits clamber out over to them. The guy next to her is using the large dashboard on his fancy ship like a pillow.

“And is the traffic usually this slow”? She asks.

“Absolutely. We could turn the ship off and let ourselves float here. There is no exit for miles”, he answers with a long stretch that ends in him relaxing on the steady stalks of his arms.

“No exit? Does that mean we’re stuck here”? Tierney demands, “What if that ship finds us and tries to kill us again”.

“It will have a hard time finding us, look at this mess! They would have to scan the whole thing to figure out which one of these ships are us”.

He has a point. It is like being stuck in a massive school of fish. The stars are a thing beyond the water and past the butts of twenty fish above her. Not to mention these fish are extremely big fish.

“And if they do, they can’t just attack us like that. They are Infoil, they are the protectors of all space. Like those police you told me about”, he explains with a relieved jubilancy in the crinkle at his eyes.

“That does not comfort me”, she shares and sinks into the wheel. Above her, past the chassis of several ships, she notices a flash of silver over the top of them. It gives her a terrible chill into the muscles of her shoulders.

“Anyway. We have nothing to worry about. We are kidnapped people. All we have to do is turn ourselves in, give Infoil an accurate explanation, and be on our ways back home”.

Where even was home. Tierney has no idea in what part of space she is in and how far it is from the Milky Way galaxy. Surely the telescopes could have found a river of pure traffic and seen the flashy billboards at the sides recommending the drivers some kind of green slop that an alien sucks through a trunk.

Had her parents even noticed she is missing yet? Did they even think, “Whoops we forgot to pick our other daughter. Maybe we should go look for her”. Maybe these Infoil folks would drop her off at area 51, stay for tea, and fly off and she would walk into her parent’s hotel room with a “Hey mom and dad, got abducted and almost sold into the slave trade, how are ya”. And they would say “Oh you were gone”? Unrealistic in reality, but Tierney wouldn’t put it past them.

“Let’s check on the others then. How do you put this thing into park”, she asks and examines the nobs around her. If she released the brake she would bump right into the back end of the kid’s ship. Its parents had turned to look at her too.

“Seriously? Have you never driven a ship before”, Starboi complains.

“Yes”, she meets him dead in the eye. His shrink farther into his skull. He shows her how and they leave the sight line of the gawkers.