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Tallie Talbot sat listening to the sounds of their captors as they attempted to open the hatch on their life craft.
“Shall we open it?” Tropo asked her again. They had been debating this for the last hour or so.
“No. I’m not that anxious to meet them.” Even as she said it, though, she wondered what choice did they have, really? Their tiny life craft was running out of air fast, the craft itself a prisoner with no chance of escape. If they even could escape they’d been taken so completely off course they could never make it to a human or Restan base.
Some sort of jamming was preventing them from seeing outside or even sampling the atmosphere in the bigger ship on the off chance they could live in it. Either their captors didn’t care if they could or not, or they were certain they could. Otherwise they wouldn’t be attempting to open the hatch.
“I guess we should let them in, or rather, us out, Tropo.”
The great furry head nodded, a custom he had definitely not had when they’d first met. “How shall we proceed?” She could see him gently touching the partigun on his belt.
“Let’s activate our life-envelopes in case their atmosphere is toxic to us, or a complete vacuum even. And don’t make it so obvious you have a weapon, okay?”
“I’m sure they will recognize a weapon when they see it. At least this static interference is not affecting it.” He lifted it and showed her the ominous blinking red light, meaning it was charged and functional.
She checked her own. “Yes, at least we can go out with our partiguns blazing,” she said. His nod showed her he understood her words, even if not the reference to the old cowboy movies.
They touched their belt controls and a faint aura of energy engulfed them, enough to protect them from the harsh environment of open space or poisonous atmospheres, yet nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.
Powered by the energy created by their own bodies, their life-envelopes, or more popularly called auras, translators, and even their weapon would stay charged as long as their hearts were beating. That was the tricky part, with no food to fuel their bodies for much longer.
Not to mention a probably hostile alien or two hundred waiting outside!
“We have shared our technology wisely, yours and ours,” Tropo said. “And this is a rather favorite one of mine which you humans invented.”
She looked at him. Why was he thinking about this right now? Her heart was pounding and the flight or fight hormones were in full throttle. Yet here he was making small talk! Then she remembered Restans had practically no fear, not in the physical sense.
Not having to share your planet with other predators would tend to make you a fearless race, after all. Humans hadn’t had that luxury.
She opened her mouth but before she could speak the aliens outside had lost patience and just ripped the hatch and part of that side of the life craft away.
So much for ever escaping on this, she thought, as she instinctively raised her arms in front of her face at the sudden violent noise.
Tropo also crouched lower. He would call it crouching, not ducking. She just plain ducked. They stared at the jagged opening but saw no little or big alien eyes staring back. She had her fingers on her partigun now, also.
Could it be whoever had ripped the hatch off had it fall on top of them and died under it? She shook her head slightly at that faint hope. Just as she was about to mention this to Tropo, however, a large figure appeared, looming over the doorway.
It was humanoid in shape and very shiny. It reminded her of a robot from one of those old science fiction movies, sort of crude and not very convincing. Yet she was convinced!
“It must be my knight in shining armor, here to rescue me at last,” she said, more to herself than to Tropo. Out of the corner of her eye she could see either he hadn’t heard or wasn’t listening. He was totally focused on the being, which was looking in at them with the same concentrated interest.
Tallie then noticed Tropo’s tail slowing twitching. It wasn’t a good sign if they hoped to find a peaceful end to this.
“Tropo. Don’t try anything yet. Let’s see what happens.”
YES DON’T TRY ANYTHING YET TROPO. DO NOT BE FOOLISH. I CAN TEAR YOUR FLESH AS EASILY AS I TORE OPEN YOUR LITTLE SHIP.
Tallie squinted at the alien. Of course she should have expected it would understand her language, but it still surprised her a little. The words had been broadcast straight into her brain seemingly bypassing her ear drums.
And she didn’t like what it had said to them, not one bit. Her hand moved closer to her partigun.
Tropo’s paw did more than move closer to his partigun. He lifted it, his ears flat against his head in rage, and roared back something in Restan even her translator couldn’t decipher. His partigun spat out it’s lightning shaped death straight at the chest of the alien.
“Tropo!” She watched the jagged blue ray strike the alien.
Instinctively, though she was sure it would do no good, she drew up her own partigun, meaning to aim for the eyes of the alien or robot or whatever it was. Though it may not work, there was no doubting they had to try now!
But before she could shoot, the alien staggered backwards, smoke rising from the huge hole in its chest. It then fell unceremoniously backward and out of sight.
Tropo scrambled up to see it, his partigun ready to deliver another shot to either it or it’s companions. She was beside him a heartbeat later. She stuck her head over the side and looked, fully expecting to feel a deadly beam weapon take her head off.
But nothing happened. They looked around, then down. All they could see was an empty compartment except for a very dead and still smoking robot alien lying flat on its back on the floor next to their life craft.
“Tropo, I’m not mad, but why did you do it?”
Even Tropo was looking a bit shaken, the hairs standing on end around his neck giving him a wild look which many animals on Restas must have seen in the ancient days as they took their last breath.
“It threatened us.”
“But it was only a threat. A warning.”
“To Restans there are no empty threats. A threat is the same as an attack. You just don’t do it.”
She started to disagree, but how could she? His viewpoint was as valid as hers. “Well, humans do it all the time. And aliens I’m sure, including maybe that one,” she motioned at the dead alien with her own partigun.
“Definitely not that one, not anymore,” Tropo said. “I am sorry Captain, my feeling was it was not just an empty threat as you humans call it.”
Tallie leaned on the edge of the hatchway. Then she noticed all of their sensors had come back to life. And her own life-envelope was blinking faintly green, telling her the atmosphere in the larger ship was compatible with their own. She deactivated her protective aura and Tropo did the same.
Now what, though? She put her hand against her forehead, trying to concentrate. Her short, brown bangs were wet from the stress of the last few hours. She rubbed them away from her forehead.
Tropo wasn’t worrying about anything but watching the compartment for more threats. “Maybe it was alone on this ship,” he said.
“It’s a pretty large ship for one being, but let’s hope so.”
He glanced back inside the life craft. “All of our systems are functioning. It must have been this being which was disabling them. Let’s self-destruct and take this ship and all the others with us. Our crew and warship will have their revenge!”
“Tropo, we discussed this. We don’t know if this is an enemy ship for sure.”
But the idea of revenge for her ship and poor crew, her responsibilities and thus her utter failure, was appealing to her also.
“Let’s look around,” she said.