Chapter 15: Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground
I woke up to Jenna's gorgeous face, wrought with concern. Well, "wrought" might be stretching it, but you get the idea. I'm sure she didn't want to report back that she'd gotten me killed. Or not manage to report back at all.
"Status?" I blurted as she helped me up.
"I don't know, sir." She pushed past me to help Rydia get up, too. I adjusted my cybernetic eye to see better in the darkness of the S-deck. I noticed more Oolian corpses littering the floor. "Where are my parents?"
"Not here," Jenna said flatly. "You know as much as I do. The gas you chose," and she added a dirty little glare for effect, "apparently knocked us out, too. But they're not nearby, as far as I can tell."
"What about the ships? Your shuttle, and the Oolian scout."
"Both are still docked. They haven't gone anywhere."
"Then they must still be aboard. We need to get to the bridge--assuming we can. Looks like they took down a few more Oolians for us."
Both of them fell in line behind me. "Sir," Jenna began, "I didn't want to say anything while they were here, but something doesn't feel right about your parents."
"That's just how they are," I groaned. "They always put people off. If they hadn't been born into more money than God, no one would ever have listened to them."
"I don't mean that, sir. Something about their posture. The way they talk. I can't put my finger on it, it's just unnatural."
I really had no idea what she was talking about. Still, she had a knack for reading people that I lacked. Maybe she was on to something. I say "maybe" here to cover my own ass, though. She was right. Dammit, she was right. But I didn't listen at the time--too shell-shocked and overwhelmed by everything to fully absorb it. I just walked, dazed, through the ship, trying not to notice the trail of bodies. The bleeding, beige squid-people made my stomach turn. In one way, I was thankful they no longer looked human. Easier to process them, subconsciously. They weren't people. Just big, creepy invertebrates.
But the lie didn't work. Not really. I knew what they'd done. What I'd done. I just wanted to get to the bridge, secure the ship, and get it over with. Had I managed to capture an Oolian Cruiser without significant bloodshed, maybe the brass would overlook it. Not now. I imagined thousands of Oolian bodies, stacked high, with their silvery blood etching my name in a plaque. "Robert Thomas Maxwell, Infamous Mass Murderer and Traitor." I could only go in one direction, now: into the hands of the Koraxian rebels. I'd cast my lot with them, and was stuck. No way out.
On the bridge, I found my parents. They seemed just as surprised as I was. "Robert!" Mom exclaimed with disturbing glee. "You made it. I apologize for leaving you down there. Your father and I didn't pass out, and the Oolians were still stirring, so we..." She trailed off, as if not saying it would mean it didn't happen.
"We took matters into our own hands," my father finished. "Still a colossal fuck up, as always, I see. Couldn't even hijack a ship properly."
"Fuck you, old man. You have no idea what's going on here."
I hadn't even realized that both Lieutenant Collins and Doctor al-Salam were present. They'd been busted out of their cell by my parents, evidently. At that moment, though, I paid them no attention. Why did I feel like thirty years of separation had suddenly been compressed? Old arguments, old grudges resurfaced almost immediately. My mother remained an obsequious ass-kisser, and my father, the gruff perfectionist who found fault in everything. What I'd imagined as a boon, a friendly gesture from the rebels, turned out to be a menace. Even worse: a liability.
In truth, though, I was the liability. I had no idea. Not until Admiral Sellis walked onto the bridge. All of us--save my parents, that is--looked at him in shock. We all knew he was stationed on Earth. He didn't hitch a ride with us. How the hell did he get here?
"Captain!" he greeted cheerfully. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but let's put those aside for now. You did it. You captured an Oolian Cruiser."
"Technically, you might say my parents did," I grumbled.
"Details, details. It doesn't matter. You accomplished the mission."
"Wait, so you knew about this?" I abruptly took a more aggressive tone with the Admiral, almost instinctively. Probably not the best idea I ever had.
"You need to relax, Robert. Of course I knew. This is the entire reason you were sent here. Well, and this." He stopped in front of me, reached for my neck, and I swear to God, were it not for the decades of indoctrination into military protocol and the chain of command, I would have snapped his neck right there. Instead, I froze, while he grabbed hold of something and yanked toward himself. I saw silver threads dangling from his closed fist. The charm.
"What do you want with that?" I snapped. "It's just an heirloom. A lucky charm."
"Well, that's what your parents thought," the Admiral said. "But they turned out to be very wrong."
While I remained in my shocked near-panic, my father snuck up behind me and smacked a little device on the back of my neck. My paralysis went from momentary to slightly more permanent. I tried to reach back and grab whatever it was, strike whoever had touched me. I found I couldn't move at all. "What the hell is this?" I groaned through gritted teeth.
"Complicated," Sellis said succinctly. "Even if I did explain, I doubt you would grasp it. It is enough to say that the days of the Oolian Directorate are numbered, and so, too, are humanity's."
"Then you're the traitor," I accused.
"Mmm, no. Not quite." He nodded in my father's direction, and my parents flanked me, taking my arms, and began leading me off the bridge. I could barely move my legs at all, really--they almost had to drag me. Jenna, Sam, Rydia, and Carina just stood there. Even though they had no idea what was going on, they weren't about to second-guess an Admiral. I have no doubt he fed them a nice line of bull about what was going to happen to me. There's no way he told them what really happened.
In short: my parents stuck me in an airlock. My mother looked a little sad as she stared at me through the reinforced window. She tilted her hand in a slight wave as my father pushed the button that opened the airlock into open space. I wish I could say I mouthed something fittingly offensive before I was blown out the airlock, but I was still too paralyzed from the device on my neck to do that, and I hadn't thought of anything particularly witty to part with, anyway.
So, yeah, my parents blew me out an airlock. The last thing I saw before I fainted was a bunch of Oolian bodies being jettisoned from several other airlocks, and the Cruiser turning its weapons on the Protector. A bright flash ensued, and that was the end of that.
Chapter 15
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