CHAPTER THREE
May 28, 2012 6:15 p.m.
It occurred to me that the perfect name for my invisibility device version 2.0 would have been “The Cloak of Invisibility.” That would have been an awesome name —obvious, but awesome. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before now. “The Cloak of ...”
The outer doors of the saucer slid closed with a clang. Darkness closed in around Brady and me. The trans- warp hyper-engines began to power up. The pulsing of the intergalactic drives caused the entire ship to shuddered and shake.
I knew we didn’t have much time. Brady was already moving.
“Go.” He said.
I grabbed my backpack - I never go anywhere without my backpack — and dove into the backseat. Fumbling with the latch, I looked back at my older brother. He grabbed the door handle and waited.
“See you in a second,” I said over my shoulder.
“Not if I see you first.”
I folded the rear seat down and crawled into the trunk. Brady always knew what to say. I pulled the seat back up just as the driver’s side door to the car opened. I waited, trying not to even breathe.
I could hear Brady protesting his removal from the car. His muffled voice filtered into my hiding place.
“Easy guys. Easy. No need to get physical,” my brother said. “Everybody here is cooperating.”
The aliens noisily went through the car. The engines and my hiding place made it difficult to make out their conversation. Brady, however, was still talking, giving me clues to our abductors’ strengths and weaknesses.
“Everybody just relax,” he said. “I’m not armed.”
They had weapons.
“There are three of you and only one of me,” he continued.
There were three of them (Duh).
Brady’s voice was now just outside the trunk. I tensed and waited for the signal. My brother and I had worked out an “abduction plan” after the last time we were taken. As soon as he said “Blitzkrieg” I would leap from my hiding place and unleash my fists of fury. I listened intently for the code word. Seconds turned to minutes. The silence stretched on. I couldn’t take it anymore. I eased the trunk lid open and risked a peek.
Brady lay unconscious on the floor. The tell-tale burn mark from a disrupter blast smoked on his chest. He had been stunned.
“Blitzkrieg,” I whispered to myself. I threw open the trunk lid and leapt from my hiding place. One of my would-be captors was knocked to the floor.
Turns out, the little men who abducted us were purple, not green (which is a common assumption people make about aliens. They actually come in a variety of different colors), and hailed from a distant planet called Grok.
Grokulans typically stand about five feet tall. As already mentioned, they are purple in color, the males of the species having yellow dots on the heads and torsos. Their heads are extremely large for their bodies, giving them a somewhat comical appearance. Grokulans have six arms and are known to be extremely adept at fighting.
The Grokulans arrayed before me moved forward in an attempt to flank me. I recognized their intentions and sprang to my left.
“Brady!” I yelled. “Could use a little help here, man.” I readied myself for the assault.
“Five more minutes, Mom,” my brother mumbled.
I tried to calm myself and focus on my attackers. Brady and I have both studied numerous forms of martial arts and a variety of street fighting styles. We spar with each other all the time and compete in organized competitions on a regular basis. I’m also really good at video games that simulate fighting.
Competitions and video games do not adequately prepare a guy for fighting aliens — just saying.
“Anytime now, Brady!” No response. He was out. Which left the fighting to me. Knowing what fierce fighters Grokulans are reputed to be, I decided to launch a preemptive strike. I lunged and punched the alien closest to me before he had a chance to react. The Grokulan I had knocked to the floor when I sprang from the trunk had recovered and gotten to his feet. A spinning back kick connected with his jaw and sent him back to floor in a crumpled heap.
The third Grokulan assailant proved to be a more difficult contender. He was armed - he had six of them. More importantly, he also had a weapon which he was firing at me. Judging by the sound, the color of the beam, and the mark on Brady’s shirt, I calculated that the Grokulan wielded a level three setting neutron disruptor. A hit from such a weapon on this setting, while extremely painful, should not be fatal or cause any permanent damage ... theoretically. Get well soon, Bro, I thought as I dove behind the car.
A disruptor blast arced by my ear. I could feel the heat from the beam as it grazed by my head - too close. My opponent and I circled the vehicle, each looking for an opportunity to attack. The Grokulan clearly had the upper hands. I kept hoping Brady would regain consciousness and join in the fight. The longer he was out, the more worried I became.
I couldn’t just keep running around the car. The longer this scenario continued the better chance the Grokulan would have of hitting me with a blast from his disruptor. I threw a head fake and dove across the hood of the car. My unexpected attack completely caught my foe off guard.
I utilized a series of masterful moves to disarm “Bob” (I’m calling the third Grokulan “Bob” because there’s a kid in my class named Bob that I despise). His disruptor skittered across the floor. A choke hold around the neck brought “Bob” to his knees. I applied pressure until he turned purple and then released the hold. In the confusion surrounding the fight, I had forgotten two things.
One—Grokulans naturally appear purple in color.
Two—Grokulans breathe through their feet.
Rookie alien abduction victim mistakes. I can’t believe I made them.
Seizing his opportunity, “Bob” spun sharply away from my grip and pointed his finger at my face. A small hiss sounded. My eyes began to burn and water. My vision clouded and my head started to spin. A terrible odor assaulted my olfactory senses. I fought the urge to vomit and staggered back away from “Bob”. The confusion surrounding the fight had actually caused me to forget three things.
One—Grokulans naturally appear purple in color.
Two—Grokulans breathe through their feet.
Three—and perhaps the most important of them all, Grokulans fart through their fingers.
“Bob” finger-farted me. And it was a good one. Oh man, it was a good one. For a brief second, I feared I might be permanently blind. Fortunately, a little distance between me and “Bob” helped clear the air - literally - and I began to recover.
I approached “Bob” with more caution and, I’ll admit, a good bit of admiration. The finger-fart was a nice move.
Now disarmed, “Bob” didn’t really have a chance. I unleashed a flurry of punches and kicks and subdued my most-worthy opponent.
“Blitzkrieg!” Brady yelled sitting up on the floor. He slowly looked around the chamber. “I knew you had it under control,” he said sheepishly.
“Your confidence is overwhelming,” I replied. “Have a good nap?”
“Shut up, Eli,” he said getting to his feet. I bit back a reply about him being grumpy after his naps. “Grab that disruptor and let’s find a way off this ship.”
The layout of the spacecraft was fairly simple. Brady and I headed down the central corridor toward the control room.
“Pray that this is a Class VII or older Grokulan saucer, Eli,” Brady said as we ran. “The Class VII and its predecessors are relatively easy ships to fly and the crew is generally limited to five Grokulans,” he continued.
“I’ve been abducted before, too, Brady. I know how many Grokulans it takes to fly a ship,” I said smiling. “I also know it only takes three Grokulans to take you down.”
He didn’t respond but I could tell he was ticked about missing the fight. I planned to give him a hard time about that for a long time. Usually, I’m the one on the receiving end of Brady’s jokes.
We reached the do
or to the control room. Brady moved to the left. I moved to the right.
“Ok, Eli. Just like we practiced. On three. One. Two...”
I burst into the control room and fired off two quick shots from the disruptor. Both blasts found their marks and the last two aliens fell to the floor neutralized.
“What the crap, Eli?” Brady yelled. “I wanted to kick some alien butt too!”
“You can beat up all the Grokulans next time we get abducted,” I laughed.
My smile faded quickly. “Uh oh.”
Brady looked around the control room. “Uh oh is right, man.”
Today was not my day. My hasty decision to shoot the pilot was going to come back to bite me. The saucer was neither a Class VII or earlier model, nor was it even of Grokulan design.
“Houston, we have a problem,” Brady said. “The pilot would have definitely come in handy at this point, Eli. Maybe next time we could stick to the plan.”
Brady was right. I hate when Brady is right. I hate when Brady is right because he’s right a lot. Like almost always.
“Check the ship’s log, Bro. Maybe we can figure out how to land this thing,” my brother ordered already forgiving my poor decision. Only it didn’t feel like an order. Brady was a natural leader. Even in the most stressful situations, he knew exactly what to do.
I checked the logs. “Looks like the Grokulan crew boarded and stole the saucer from a Randorian trader several months ago,” I advised. “At least I think that’s what it says.” I handed the log to Brady.
“Yeah, I’m not real fluent in either Grokulan or Randorian but whichever this is, it appears to be fairly similar to Velaxian.”
Brady and I are fluent in several intergalactic alien languages — we’ve been abducted a lot.
Several immediate problems vied for our attention.
First, having never flown this particular model of intergalactic space ship, we had no idea how to fly, much less land, this craft. None of the instruments made much sense to either one of us.
Second, the trans-warp hyper-engines continued to steadily increase in power. In fact, the engines had almost reached full power. When the drives reached maximum output, I knew the ship would jump to warp speed. However, I did not know where that jump would take us or, more importantly, how to stop that from happening.
Third, my eyes still really burned from “Bob’s” finger-fart attack. That thing lingered.
I sat down in one of the pilot’s seats and scrolled through the ship’s main computer options.
“Any idea where we are?” Brady asked.
“Hang on,” I replied. “I’m trying to calculate our current position. As near as I can tell, we’re somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico heading rapidly toward South America.”
“I don’t even have a passport,” Brady laughed.
Grams, Pops, and land got further and further away. We had to act now. If the engines weren’t powered down or disabled soon, we would have no chance of getting off this ship. At least not in this galaxy.
Multi-colored buttons, switches and dials winked on and off across the control board. A power meter showed the steady increase of the warp engines. The red level indicator had nearly reached maximum. We had minutes to act.
The “Fasten Seatbelts” sign flashed on above the console (this, of course, was a rough translation as there is no Randorian word that exactly matches the word “seatbelt”).
An automated voice announced, “Please fasten your seatbelts,” over the ship’s intercom system. My mind spun. Was that announcement in English?, I thought. Our more immediate problems pushed the question from my mind.
“Ideas?” I asked.
Brady looked at me and shrugged. “Kid playing a video game?”
“Kid playing a video game,” I agreed. Frantically, we began pushing random buttons. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to the poor family occupying the boat that we inadvertently sank with the ship’s lasers. That was a total accident and again - my apologies.
As I was slapping the console, I noticed a set of keys hanging out of the control board. The Randorian or Grokulan equivalent to a rabbit’s foot hung at the end of the key chain. Scales covered the foot and it ended in sharp claws, but I believe the idea was the same. I could only hope that this “rabbit’s foot” had some luck in it for me ... not that I believe in that kind of stuff.
“Brady,” I got my brother’s attention. I pointed to the keychain.
“Worth a shot,” he said shrugging. He reached over and turned the key to the off position. All the engines immediately shut down and the ship lost power. We each shoved our respective control sticks forward hoping to effectuate a crash landing of the ship in the Gulf.
It’s ironic that we had just been saved from crashing into the water by a ship that we now hoped to crash into the water in order to save ourselves.
As I pondered my ironic circumstances, alarms began to shriek throughout the ship. I checked the altimeter, a device that gauges height, and recalculated our position.
“We’re going too fast,” Brady yelled over the warning sirens. “We’re going to crash, Eli.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” I replied. “Buckle up and hang on!”
The alarms continued to wail. Warning lights blinked on and off all across the control panel. The ship trembled as the bottom of the saucer scraped over the top of the rain forest’s trees. Wondering why the idea of an escape pod hadn’t occurred to me just a little bit sooner, I grabbed the control stick, braced myself for impact and silently cursed both bad luck and irony. At the moment, I wasn’t a fan of either.
“See you on the other side, Eli,” Brady screamed. He was smiling. I found a lot of comfort in my brother’s smile. I managed to give him a thumb’s up.
“Love you, Bro,” I mouthed.
The ship spiraled out of control. It tore through the forest canopy, leaving a trail of broken trees and alien spaceship parts in its wake. With a final boom the saucer broke apart, the pieces crashing into the earth. The space ship had been totally destroyed.