Pretend like you—
"Sir," Ensign Burroughs began, "I think it was a brave choice to stop wearing your skin. Looking like an android, it suits you. Truth be told, you always had this kinda uncanny valley thing going on until now."
Golem sighed.
. . .
"No life signs, intelligent or not. No evidence of civilization," Elorg said, "But there is one piece of hope."
"Yes?" said Colonel Dart.
Using his wireless interface with the ship's computers, Elorg told the bridge's hologram generators to bring up an image of the Earth underneath them. He swung his hand over it a couple times to sheer the surface off the simulation, revealing a twinkling energy lattice a couple miles below the surface.
Elorg said, "Energy distortions under the planet's surface. Now, this might just be a super-active core, thanks to whatever happened here, but the other option is that there's survivors under there, with some shielding way out of their normal level of technology."
"How would we find this out?" the colonel said.
"Launch a geometrics probe," Elorg said, "Have it land on the surface and feed it a high energy pulse."
"Do it. And fast, if there's survivors we might have to evacuate them," Dart said.
Elorg said, "In that case we'll need somebody to calibrate it from the ground. The atmosphere is kinda unpleasant but it'll be breathable. I volunteer. I can interface with computers faster than anybody on the crew."
Chief Hayes said, "I'm going to end up the second one on this mission aren't I?"
The colonel said, "You would be a good choice, being the security chief."
Elorg put in a transfer order for the geometrics probe with two expansion slots. One for a teleport module in case the planet's native interference prevented them from teleporting back up and the other for a few simple beacons, for if communications with the ship failed. Both of those options were not just possible but very likely.
Chief Hayes walked over to the door out of the bridge. Elorg followed her.
"Let's just get this over with," she said.
The colonel nodded.
They walked into the hallway and down to the lift.
Elorg said, "Just wanted to get away from Brahma, don't you?"
"He's not so bad," Chief Hayes said, "Really, I just want to protect my best friend from getting splattered into circuit boards by some insane god-like energy-being."
Elorg chuckled.
"There's nothing down there," he said.
"With that energy field you can't be too sure," Chief Hayes said. "Mind you, the shield pods should protect you from just about anything.
. . .
Lieutenant Colonel Elorg and Security Chief Hayes appeared in a flash of light on the planet's surface. They were situated just above the thinnest part of the Earth's crust. On just about any other Earth this would be the Marianas Trench.
On this Earth, it was nothing but charcoal.
The air was thick with sulphur and a few other rancid, chemical stenches.
They saw a dark purple streak cutting it's way through the atmosphere, coming in their direction. That would be the geometrics probe. It slowed down as it approached, skidding down through the sky, then turning hard back upward. It reached the top of it's arc and let itself descend on it's own.
Thrusters on the back distorted space and gravity enough for it to land safely.
Immediately after touchdown Elorg approached it and slid a panel on it's side open. His cybernetic hand spun back, revealing a large format connector. He slid it into a slot inside the probe's interior.
"That's not good," he said.
Chief Hayes said, "What?"
"The probe is picking up an incoming object coming in at about mach seven," Elorg said, "Coming off what would be the North American continent"
Chief Hayes clicked her shield pod on, and upon noticing that Elorg hadn't activated his yet, she got his too.
"Can't be too safe."
"I dunno," Elorg said, "I'm getting better resolution on it as it closes in. It's only like a meter, maybe a little more, tall."
A dust cloud emerged on the horizon. Whatever was causing it was coming in fast. A spray of fine coal dust rained down on Elorg and Chief Hayes. The dust slowly fell to the ground.
A boy of maybe six or seven years stood, watching them.
"Hi kiddo!" Elorg said. "Bet you're wondering who we are and why we're here—"
"Don't explain too much." Chief Hayes said, "He has to be some kind of an illusion. A little kid couldn't survive on a graveyard world like this."
Elorg said, "Don't listen to my friend. My name is Elorg. What's yours?"
"Back when there was people," the boy said, "they called me Tom."
"Tom. A standard, North American twenty-first century name." Elorg said, "I don't want to alarm you, but we come from outer space."
Something glittered in the boy's eye. He smiled.
Tom said, "Do you guys have rockets and lasers and magic swords?"
"I think you'd call this a laser," Elorg pulled his plasma blaster from his belt. He fired a bolt into the sky. "On it's lowest setting it'll knock you on your butt."
"And on it's highest setting?" the boy said.
"It can melt hyper-steel, but it'll run the battery down real quick." Elorg said, "Actually, miners use almost the exactly same thing but with bigger batteries."
"And do you got bigger lasers on your space ship?"
"Yeah," Elorg said, "We could use those to mine neutron stars..."
"That's all I wanted to know," the boy said.
And suddenly a rush of light exploded from him. Dust swept up and blocked Elorg and Chief Hayes' view. When the dust cleared it revealed that the boy was gone. In his place a huge, craggy demon stood at least three meters tall. It's skin was spider-webbed with glowing orange, as if this dark form wasn't filled with blood and guts, but with lava.
He charged at Chief Hayes and Elorg, but he bounced off their shields. Elorg vaulted up behind the geometric probe. Chief Hayes stood her ground. She looked the lava demon in the eyes and raised her plasma blaster. She said, "Stand down or I will hit you with a full force blast. These suckers will reduce even the orneriest and most honorable Gamar warrior to a pile of ash."
She clicked the slider up, disabled the safety, then slid the slider the rest of the way up.
The demon jumped at her, bouncing off the shield.
"This is your last warning."
The demon jumped at the shield again.
Chief Hayes pointed her blaster at the demon. She hesitated a second before firing, but she quickly realized the threat alone wouldn't stop it. Chief Hayes pulled her trigger.
The plasma bolt hurtled out of her pistol. It slammed into the demon, melting his rock surface for all of a half second before it refroze. With this the demon suddenly looked disappointed. He grumbled.
A moment later the little boy had replaced him again.
"Well," Tom said, "that was fun, but I really want to see this cool space ship of yours."
The boy jumped into the air. He continued up until he vanished into a dark, gray-red cloud.
Elorg looked at Chief Hayes.
"Well, that was a big waste of time and energy."
. . .
Tom cut across the sky. He briefly wondered if he actually needed to breathe as he got high enough that the atmosphere disappeared. His body didn't mind not breathing. One more thing that he didn't actually need to do.
He closed his eyes and tried to sense everything around him. The Earth was a buzzing, crackling ball of unruly energy. But halfway across the Earth there was something else. Whatever it was, it contained a lot of energy, though not quite as much as the planet below, and it was contained in a much smaller package. More organized. That had to be it, he thought. That had to be the spaceship.
He cut across orbit, flying faster than he'd ever done before, thousands and thousands of miles per hour. And that's when he saw it.
A massive V-sha
ped superstructure. It was welded onto a smaller, oblong engineering hull with two energy pods at either side of the back. On the V-shaped superstructure the words "Galactic Union Starship Victory" were etched in huge letters.
Tom's jaw hung open.
. . .
"We've got an energy signature coming off the planet right where we teleported Elorg and Chief Hayes down," the ensign at the bridge scanners said.
"Damn it," the Colonel said, "Do we have communication?"
"Too much interference," Brahma said. "The energy signature—it resembles me, sir. It appears to be a post-corporeal being."
"What?" Colonel Dart said. "How can we defend against it?"
"Uh," Brahma said, "When I was first hatched the scientists used an energy cage to hold me. I was kinda a problem child."
"Do it."
Brahma sent a message direct to Engineering Chief Golem. He was drinking an engine lubricant smoothie at the time, but he had his tablet with him. From there he took control of the scanner array. A blast of energy erupted from the front of the Starship Victory. Tom immediately charged at it. The beam didn't seem to burn or hurt him in any way. It coalesced into an electro-magnetic straight-jacket.
He pulled his arm free easily and sighed.
"Oh, crap," Brahma said. "I think he's using the energy cage as a carrier wave. He's trying to get into the ship's computers—"
A craggy demon head emerged from every holographic display on the bridge. It's glowing orange lava eyes squinted at the bridge crew, minus Elorg and Chief Hayes.
"I demand that your puny ship surrender immediately or I'll destroy you all!" the demon said.
"Now, now," Colonel Dart said, "We are the Starship Victory and we are on a peaceful mission of exploration."
"I'll—" the demon searched for the right words, "I'll eat your bones, you chump!"
"What kind of monster space demon calls people chumps?" Brahma said.
"Shut up—" the demon said. His image flickered for a moment and was replaced with that of Tom's head. "If you don't kill me I'll shoot an energy beam thing at you and destroy you, okay?"
"Sir, might I suggest I leave my post and try to reason with this entity," Brahma said.
"Do it."
"Thank you sir," Brahma said, vanishing from the bridge in a swirl of light.
"Cut the power to the cage..."
. . .
Brahma appeared in front of the boy as the electro-magnetic cage evaporated.
Energy crackled in the boy's eyes.
"You're," the boy said, "You're like me."
"So it seems," Brahma said.
The boy said, "Good. Then it'll be more fun to crack you open than it was to destroy my world."
Brahma sighed. He said, "Look, kid, I don't know what you did but can we just skip to the high fives and big brother stuff? I don't feel like fighting you."
The boy fired an energy blast at Brahma. It exploded off Brahma's shoulder, hurling him backward in space, spinning. It took him a few seconds to right himself and fly back toward the boy.
"That really hurt," Brahma said. "But I'm still not gonna hurt you."
Tom fired an energy bolt again. This time Brahma dodged to the side. The boy fired another. Then another. And another.
"You're not gonna be able to hurt me," Brahma said.
Another blast came dangerously close to singeing his approximation of hair, but Brahma managed to dodge. And the next blast and the next blast.
Brahma said, "You've got a lot of power, kid, but you've got no finesse. I can keep dodging all day. Can you keep shooting?"
The boy said, "I could probably keep shooting at you for another day and a half."
Brahma said, "Kid, what are you after?"
"Why won't you kill me!?" the boy said.
Brahma hung in space and stared at the boy. He looked angry and scared, no matter how hard he was trying to put up a mask.
"So you weren't just threatening when you said you killed your world?" he finally said. "I can't just murder you. That's not cool."
"I killed like six billion people," the boy said.
"Did you mean to do it?" Brahma said.
Tom said, "Of course not. These science guys, they'd been running tests on me for months. Years. They were trying to figure out what I am and somehow..." his voice trailed off. He looked at the burned out cinder of the Earth. "Now I'm all