The Forgotten Planet
Chapter 17 – Attack Dog

Suddenly we heard nails scratching on bare metal floors as Poochy came flying around the corner and into view. He slid and crashed into the wall, then looked around frantically until his eyes focused on the Servine thief. Then there was another round of nail scratching as he tried desperately to get traction on the smooth deck. His legs were pumping like a locomotive, and he was howling like a hound on the scent of a fox (What? I read period fiction as well) but he was sliding so much that he was barely moving forward.

Vee screamed and tried her best to keep Adan and Max between her and Poochy. She still had the gun in her hands, but she appeared to be too terrified to remember how to use it. Before Poochy was able to close the distance, Maxine laid a bone-shaking tackle on the blue woman. The pistol clattered to the floor and skittered to a stop at my feet. I picked it up, while Adan bear-hugged Poochy and got a firm grip on his collar. The dog howled and barked while lunging repeatedly against Adan’s grip.

“Don’t let him eat me!” Vee squealed, struggling under Maxine’s pin.

“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t,” Maxine replied bluntly.

“Other than it’s gross,” Adan answered, then yelled at the dog, “Dammit Poochy, shut up!” The dog didn’t listen.

“Untie me you idiot,” Russell snarled, “before she beats them up again.”

I looked around, and then realized he was talking to me. I sighed and knelt down, slicing the tape at his wrists first and then his ankles. Russell groaned as he stood up and got his arms back in working condition again. “Go replace me that tape kid,” he said. “I think it’s behind the loveseat.”

“Uh, sure,” I said. As I moved around to the back of the loveseat,

Russell crouched down next to Vee, getting his face centimeters from hers. “My, how the tables have turned little one.” Russel’s looming form was intimidating enough, but when you add in the coffee breath…

The tape was right where Russell said it was. I looked past the back of Russel’s giant dome to Vee, pinned to the ground under Max and face to face with Russ. Vee watched as I picked up the roll, and winked at me after I tossed it as far as I could down the aft hallway.

“All right little lady,” he said in an eerily quiet voice. “Why don’t you tell me that top secret story of yours?”

Her ears just about flattened against her head. “But I can’t,” she whined. “You do understand what top secret means, right?”

“Give me the tape kid,” Russell said.

“No tape here,” I answered. He looked at me, sighed and looked back at Vee.

“Yeah, I understand what top secret means,” he answered in a resigned sort of way. “Adan, let the dog go.”

“Really?” Adan asked.

I stared at my brother and said, “We are not letting Poochy eat the pretty blue girl,” with all the steel in my voice that I could muster. It got Russell’s attention, and he looked at me with that one raised eyebrow thing that he does.

Meanwhile, Poochy was going crazy, and Adan continued to hold on with both hands. Adan was also looking at me in that knowing way that I’ve always found infuriating. It’s not the look itself that annoys me, but the fact that he can read my moods better than I can sometimes. It wasn’t like me to get emotionally involved like this, which I’m sure he found amusing. That was more his territory.

“No, no, no – bad dog,” Vee said. Then she hissed, and Poochy redoubled his craziness. I stepped between Poochy and Vee.

“Damn it Poochy, knock it off,” Adan said, as he gave the dog’s collar a few solid tugs.

“She’s not going to listen to reason Adan,” Russell said. “Just let Poochy go and we’ll be done with it.”

“No, I love reason,” the woman begged. “Please, just take that monster away.”

“Then talk!” Russell boomed, and the thief winced. I jumped a little myself.

“My name is Commander Veezil Pax,” she said, the words coming out in a quick jumble. “My favorite color is blue – of course. I like long walks on the beach-”

“I don’t give a damn what colors you like, or what your secret hopes and dreams are Veezil,” Russell said. “Just tell me something useful, or your blue ass is dog kibble.”

“Poochy, bad dog!” I yelled. The dog flinched like he’d been hit. It was either my no-nonsense demeanor, or perhaps, the high frequency sound burst I directed moments after, that got the dogs attention. “Sit,” I said, and he did. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly... and realized everyone was staring at me. I made good eye contact with Poochy to make sure we were on the same page before turning towards Veesil. “Please, just tell us,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, then took a deep breath and started again. “Ok, Earth. Well for one, my people never double-crossed yours. And we certainly didn’t nuke Earth – though Mars did get carpet bombed after it was evacuated. We needed the footage of something blowing up.” Her voice was under control now, and the words were coming out at an almost-normal speed.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Maxine asked. A mixture of anger and confusion played across her face, and her voice was horse and shaky.

“Think about it,” Veezil continued. “How does anyone know that our race turned against humanity and destroyed Earth?”

“Uh, everyone knows it,” Max countered. “It’s history.”

“Yeah, and everyone knows this history because we told everyone a story. And there’s a reason why no one knows where Earth is anymore. And let me tell you – it took a lot of hard damn work.” It looked like she wanted to gesture with her hands, but since they were pinned, it just made her shoulders wiggle. She continued, “Bribes, viruses, some... darker stuff.”

Adan brightened up and looked at me. I knew what was coming… It was time for me to eat a big dish of crow.

“So, what you’re saying,” he said in an overly theatrical voice, kind of like the lawyers did on the old courtroom dramas, “Is that there is a grand “conspiracy” (yes, he made air quotes) to keep Earth hidden, and that your people went around abducting people and destroying maps.” Oh, the smile on his face. I rested my face in my hands for a few moments, but when I looked back up, he was still smiling at me.

“Yeah, I thought I was pretty clear,” Veesil said. She looked around and asked, “Wasn’t I?”

“Didn’t the lizards help with the final invasion of Earth?” Russell asked, ignoring her question.

“The Salarians had a few cruisers in the invasion armada, but we made sure none of them returned. There was a smattering of lizard survivors among the crews, but they only saw what we wanted them to, and so they backed up our story.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Maxine said incredulously. “Let the dog go, Adan.”

Adan didn’t appear any closer to letting Poochy go, but even so, Russell held up a halting hand and shook his head. For a moment, he just stared off into open space, seemingly lost in thought.

“It actually makes some sense,” the big man said finally. “By that point in the war our people had lost all the coreward systems. Earth’s leaders must have known the war was hopeless by then.”

“It’s true,” Veezil said nodding. “The Salarians had too many systems to draw troops and resources from. Earth had a technological edge, but was outnumbered in capital ships and crew almost ten to one. And those bastard Kaldonians wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

“How did you even replace out about the record,” I asked.

She smiled, with what appeared to be pride. “Well, we monitor most of the major players in the artifact trade, as well as subspace communications around key systems. Plus, we have malware in just about every server in the quadrant.”

“And why didn’t you just kill us back on Palance?” Russell asked.

“I knew you had the record, but I didn’t know at the time if you had decoded the data. I didn’t want to kill you if I didn’t have to. That’s not exactly Directorate policy, but…” She shrugged. “So, I bugged your equipment to see what you knew, and it turned out you knew too much.”

Veezil seemed to get a partial reprieve at that point, because Russell motioned for Max to get up and then hauled Vee up by her collar to a sitting position. When Poochy decided this was the time to go crazy again, a loud shout from Russell made the dog immediately crouch for cover behind Adan.

I wasn’t sure if I believed Veezil, but I was sure I wanted to believe her – and not just because she was cute. Okay, she was more than cute, but still... At this point in history, we Terrans were a beaten race. If it turned out our people just took a tactical timeout, well, that changed everything. In the face of that, did seeking personal riches on Xanthus really matter? I was leaning towards no.

“What’s the plan exactly?” I asked Veesil. “Is there going to be a liberation for the occupied systems at some point?”

“Well, we really don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “Earth disabled all their local jump gates at their end. They used to fire them back up to send messages through at regular intervals, but the time between messages grew longer over time, and then twenty years ago the messages stopped altogether.”

For the first time, Maxine’s look of righteous indignation morphed into something else. Whether surprise or confusion I couldn’t tell, but she was suddenly very much interested in the conversation.

“How were the messages sent?” Max asked.

“They were encoded in radio bursts close to the frequency of hydrogen, passed over entangled communication devices. We got them second-hand through Terran operatives.”

“You ok Maxine?” Adan asked.

Maxine eyes were unfocused, and she swayed on her feet. Then her knees buckled before she could backpedal to the couch, and she almost fell to the deck. Adan swooped in and helped guide her onto the couch, though I’m not sure she even noticed. Russell was less sensitive to her condition.

“What the hell’s wrong with you kid?” he asked gruffly, one eyebrow arched high.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” she said with irritation, as she brushed Adan’s helping hand off her thigh.

I shook my head at my brother, and he smirked and shrugged. He was caught in the act but not sorry. Never let a moment of weakness go to waste, I suppose. Russell turned his attention back to Veesil.

“Why didn’t your people ever send a ship? It may have taken a few decades at A10, but then at least you’d know what was up.”

“Do you know where Earth is?” Veesil asked. “Because we don’t.”

Russell narrowed his eyes. “How could you not know?” he asked.

“I mean, we know the general locale – to within roughly a thousand systems or so. You do know there are over a billion star systems in this galaxy, right? The Salarians have us on a pretty short leash. It’s not like they let us keep a bunch of secret encrypted servers. We destroyed all evidence. The virus we used was nasty, and the generation of people who had actually been to Earth are all dead.”

From the outside, a thousand systems doesn’t sound like narrowing it down much, but when you figure our galaxy alone has more than a billion stars, it’s actually pretty close to zeroing in. Still, without jump gates, we’re talking about decades, if not centuries of legwork, depending on the number of ships and probes committed to the search.

“But I know where it is exactly,” I said with a slight, slight, hint of pride. Ok, I was pretty damn cocky about it. But I did literally replace a special grain of sand on the beach of the galaxy after all.

“I know,” she said excitedly. “And since you have a site-to-site wormhole generator, we can just hop on over.”

“I may have oversold the working part of the wormhole generator,” I said carefully.

“He just needs those magic particles,” Adan added unhelpfully. He then yawned and stretched, the casually put his arm around Maxine’s shoulders. She gave him a look but didn’t attempt to extricate his arm from her person. She may have even leaned into him slightly.

“Magic?” Veesil asked with a face scrunched up in confusion. Facial expressions tend to be pretty universal. Convergent evolution perhaps, but that’s just a guess. The soft sciences have never been my thing.

“It’s not magic,” I answered with a glare in Adan’s direction.

“I’m positive I’ve heard it both ways,” Adan said, smiling.

I sighed and returned my attention to Veesil. “I just need a little negative-mass exotic matter, but I’m not sure where to get it.”

“What, like cosmic strings or tachyons or something like that?” Veesil asked.

My eyes widened in surprise and my tongue outpaced my brain. “You’re really pretty,” I said before feeling a rush of blood to my face. She smiled though.

“Look, they both talk nerd,” Adan teased. “How cute.”

“Is there somewhere we can replace these magic particles? Russell asked.

“Why is the term magic particle catching on?” I asked the room.

“And by replace I mostly mean steal, because we certainly can’t buy them.” Russell continued, then went back to rubbing his chin some more. It made him look like an ancient wise man. He caught me staring and attempted to melt me with his eyes.

“My people were experimenting with Tachyons for faster-than-light subspace communication back in the day,” Veesil said. “There are a few places I can think of off the top of my head that would have some. And yeah, we’d have to steal them – unless I can convince my captain to help you.”

We all looked at each other uncertainly. The purely theoretical discussion of Servine double agents and forgotten home worlds was about to get real.

“Oh, and the rest of my squad will start looking for me if I don’t check in soon,” Veezil added helpfully.

“Great, no pressure,” Adan quipped.

“I bet I can talk them into super-teaming up with you all. We could get the exotic matter, and then go to Earth together. But first you have to let me walk out that door,” she said, gesturing towards the rear of the ship.

“Yeah right,” Maxine said, having seemingly fully recovered from her dizzy spell, or whatever it was. “She’ll sell us out the first chance she gets.”

“No, I won’t,” Veesil replied, genuinely, as far as I could tell. “You have to believe me,” she pleaded.

“No, actually, we don’t,” Maxine answered with a mix of sarcasm and bile.

“It’s not like I can make the stuff myself,” I said to Maxine. I probably could actually – I would just need a billion credits in equipment and a few years of careful experimentation. That thought sent me into a brief daydream of Veezil and me working side-by-side in white lab coats and matching glasses. I made little jokes and she giggled as we flirted our way through our workday.

“I think it’s worth the risk,” Russell was saying. I shivered involuntarily as his craggy mug replaced the Veesil of my daydreams.

“What?” Max asked incredulously. “Russ, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

They looked at each other, and something appeared to be communicated unsaid between them.

“Ok, later then,” she said frowning.

Russell stood and I stuck out my hand and helped Veezil to her feet. Maxine still kept the gun pointed generally in our new friend’s direction – not at her per se, but a good fast-twitch contraction from being so.

“Thanks, handsome,” Vee said, causing my face to go supernova. Then she looked at her gun in Maxine’s hand.

“Do I get my gun back?” she asked.

“This gun?” Max gestured with the weapon in her hand. “Mmm, nope. This is my gun”

“Fine, whatever,” Veesil said, waving her hand dismissively at Maxine, before turning to Russell. I guess from the outside he looked like our leader too. Or possibly the only adult. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll really have to sell this plan to my Captain.”

“The faster the better,” Russell answered grimly.

“We’ve pissed off a lot of people in a short amount of time,” I explained.

Veesil nodded. Apparently, she was willing to take that statement at face value. She snuck a peak at Poochy, and the dog experimented with a low rumble in the back of his throat. After getting away with that, he chanced a sharp bark.

“Dammit Poochy, shut up,” Adan said, and I swear the look on Poochy’s face looked almost apologetic – like he just couldn’t help himself.

Veesil stuck out her tongue at the dog and then made a break for the cargo hold. On her way around the corner, she glanced back once, and I was pretty sure she was looking at me.

“Let’s get the engines fired up and the new navigation system online,” Russell ordered. I guess even he thought he was in charge too.

“The nav may be new to us, but it’s by no means new,” Maxine answered unnecessarily.

“Do you really want to play semantic games right now?” Russell asked, irritation in his voice.

Maxine just shrugged and smiled playfully. Apparently, she did want to.

“We’re not leaving without her, are we?” I asked with a twinge of surprised disappointment.

“Someone’s in lo-ove,” Adan said. I gave him a standard and practiced glare, which just made his smile wider and toothier.

“We need to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice – one way or the other,” Russell answered. As it turns out, he was spot on with that one.