J.A. Wynn Short Story Series, Number 2: The Ships
Most of the world’s populace were waiting for the announcement to board the ships. They had settled their affairs and were anxious and expectant. Ancient and untested, the enigmatic ships had been discovered in the desert outside Sinai in 2008 and, since then, the people had been quietly waiting. Everybody was sure that there could never be a solution to the extreme problems that the world faced and most were quite convinced that rescue from the stars was not forthcoming so they waited, patiently, for the public announcement that was their last and only hope. Soon after their discovery, the largest and cleanest of the ships was moved to Hollywood, California, and was parked in an upright position just outside the private residence of a very wealthy and famous pop star.
The pop star was not at all impressed with the weathered spacecraft as he already owned a far more impressive and sexier one of his own, which was parked, more conveniently and privately, in his extensive backyard. The residents of Hollywood were perhaps the only people in the world who felt that they had more pressing concerns than the announcement and they continued to drive past the ship daily with little more than vague expressions of annoyance.
It had been fifteen years since the ship had been parked and it was now something of a tourist attraction. On certain days, depending on the season, large crowds could be found mingling outside the imposing iron gates that protected the pop star’s estate. This enraged the pop star, not because he particularly relished his privacy per se, but because the gathering was not in his honor.
The people of Earth had taken to placing bets on the ships. Not only were bets placed on guessing the correct date of the announcement, but on a wide variety of other speculations, the majority of which could not be conclusively proven. This fact did not seem to deter the rabidly gaming populace from betting with all their hearts and wallets. Bets were placed on what material the ships were made of, how tall they actually were, how many paces it took to walk around them and so on, ad infinitum. The local radio stations took to staging contests, awarding prizes to any man, woman or child who could keep their hand on the hull of the ship the longest. Contests were waged over whether groups of strongmen could lift the ship in the air (they couldn’t), and a prominent illusionist produced a television special showcasing his claim that he could levitate it (he could, with mirrors). The ship became something of a hangout, frequented by all manner of riffraff (as gambling establishments are wont to do).
One summer day, when the scene around the Hollywood ship was in full swing, the hatch on the ship opened. The crowd was aghast, the ships until then had been unbreached, impenetrable metallic riddles; a collective wide-eyed stare was focused on the open doorway. Before any movement was visible though, a question was raised, what were the odds that someone was inside? Not only that, was it hostile? A murmur rippled through the excited crowd as money was shown and more suggestions levied. “I bet you won’t go inside” was one. “I bet you they kill every last one of us” was another. The action was hot, and the people were willing to let it ride. But, before any money could change hands and before anyone could approach the door, the pop star arrived at the gate in his stretch limousine.
“Get away from my gate you filthy, stinking peasants!” he expectorated, annoyed, while graciously accepting and signing a proffered autograph book. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, this ship is old news, nothing to write home about. I have a far better ship inside, man. I can’t let the likes of you in, but they’re doing a major spread on it in Seen Magazine. Check it out next month. This ship is so yesterday, man!”
He began to roll his window up when he spied the gaping doorway on the side of the ship, with a shadowy void just beyond it. “Wha’..?” he exclaimed, “Ok, which one of you rocket scientists broke into the ship?”
The pop star hadn’t actually noticed the irony in his question when a slightly built, bespectacled man stepped forward from the crowd. “I didn’t break into the ship sir, but I am a rocket-scientist, and I have to warn you all of something that I’ve just recently discovered! It’s a matter of grave importance and I believe that all of our lives may depend upon it!”
The crowd surged forward, pushing the tiny academic nearly through the still-open window of the pop star’s limousine. The pop star waved off the heavy-handed bodyguard who stepped forward to pummel the diminutive techie and motioned to him to come forward.
“What is it you got ta say, little man?” said the pop star, motioning to the crowd to quiet down. “Spill it.”
Nodding, the elf-like researcher turned back to face the crowd and cleared his throat before speaking, at first with a thin, reedy voice and then with growing power. “People of Hollywood, I stand before you with the results of my years of study of the Ships. I bring you news that is neither good nor bad, but certainly unexpected. I bring you hope and despair, aspiration and desolation. I searched and searched for an answer to the riddle of the Ships, I compared the markings on the hull to ancient languages, I measured the angles of the fuselage fairings and compared them with advanced engineering formulae, I ran simulation after simulation, and performed metallurgical analyses. But, in the end, I was stumped.”
The crowd nodded knowingly, thinking of their own ruminations on the nature of the Ships. Most had tried to figure something out about them, perhaps discussing what they could be while a blunt was passed around, or maybe, in between gossiping about recent celebrity scandals, declaring the whole thing a conspiracy, put into play by the opposing political party.
The diminutive dweeb went on. “But, then…then… It became clear!”
The crowd roared their enthusiasm and the pop star directed his bodyguards to remove him from the backseat and lift him to the roof of the limo so that he could start a beat and pump his fist in the air. As the music started, the pop star handed a microphone to the micro-egghead, who was also being lifted to the roof of the car. As he settled in and the beat got rolling, he continued, “I saw the Ships for what they really were! I saw that they were placed here to bring us together, under one sun, under one moon. I saw that they defied examination, defied science herself! I saw that they were our last chance, not to escape to the stars, but to learn to live here! They were our ticket to REDEMPTION!”
As he screamed that final word, the bookworm leaned back and held his hands aloft in exaltation. The crowd drank it in. The pop star did a spin-move and posed in the same position that was on the cover of his last album, and his timing was impeccable. His agent was just below the limo, directing some of the front row to get pictures with their phones, giving the fans his email so that they could send the pics to his office. Just when it seemed that the energy could not rise any higher, inside the hatch of the ship, a shadow moved toward the opening and stepped into the sunlight.
The crowd gasped. Before the pop star, the chibi professor, the bodyguard, or the agent could turn to see what had emerged from the hatch, they were vaporized by a single blast from the weapon that was triggered behind them. Then, the weapon was lowered to aim in the general direction of the crowd. It was held in the grip of a slightly confused looking, certainly irritated looking child.
The child appeared to be about ten years old, female, and clad in a shiny, metallic silver spacesuit, complete with globe-shaped fishbowl helmet. She waved the blaster above the heads of the crowd and waited for them to settle down. They did so quickly, reminded of the fates of the pop star, the scientist and the others by the smoldering piles of ash that remained of them. When they were silent, the child adjusted her mouthpiece control, tweaking the volume slightly, and then, she began to speak.
“We are here to destroy you, no doubt about that. We will raze your cities and grind them into dust beneath our feet. We shall torment your leaders and drag them, humiliated, through your streets before we hang them above you as examples of your ‘finest and strongest’. This will begin immediately, and this will be your only warning.”
With that, she turned abruptly on her heel and strode back inside the ship, the hatch clanging shut behind her. The onlookers were stunned, but it was only a few moments before they began to murmur, and then to shout, louder and louder until there was a deafening roar in the street outside the ship. The people were working themselves into a froth of panic, only seconds away from a full-blown riot when, suddenly, a voice rang out, cutting through the din of the frenzied crowd.
“I will talk to her! Let me through!”
The voice belonged to another young girl, dressed just a bit shabbily, carrying a skateboard in one hand. She had short, dark hair, with a shock of bangs falling across her eyes, only allowing her fierce expression to be seen in flashes. She shouldered her way to the front of the crowd and, stepping through the charred remains of the pop star and the rocket scientist, she stood atop the ramp leading into the ship.
She spun and faced the crowd. “I’ll talk to her!” she shouted. “I’ll find out why they want to destroy us!” She turned her back to the dumbfounded crowd, who had now fallen silent, and raised her skateboard above her shoulder. She brought it down, wheels first, against the heavy door of the ship. There was a resounding boom that echoed above the heads of the spectators and rang throughout the interior of the ship. They waited. Nothing. The girl struck the door again, Boom!!! Finally, there was a slight noise from inside the ship as the hatch was opened and the girl in the silver spacesuit peeked out.
“What?” she said curtly, a look of exasperation clearly visible through the bubble glass of her helmet. “Go away. We’re busy preparing for your destruction.”
The skater girl craned her neck a bit to try and catch a glimpse of the inside of the ship but the silver girl blocked her view with a quick movement. “What do you want?” she said in irritation.
“Could I come inside for a bit, just to talk?” asked the skater girl. “I only have a few questions to ask.”
“No!” replied the space girl. “I told you all that there would be just the one warning. So, go away!” She began to close the ship’s door.
“But wait,” said the skater girl, wedging her foot against the door. “Just for a second. Please?”
The space girl paused, mostly because she didn’t seem to be able to make the door budge. She made one more attempt to close it and, when she couldn’t do it, she looked into the skater girl’s eyes to see nothing but determination there. She relented.
“Oh, okay. Fine. Come in then.” She stepped back and let out a breath, waving the skater girl inside. As the door swung shut, the crowd outside erupted in cheers, which were promptly cut off as the door closed, leaving the two girls in silence inside the ship.
After a while, the skater girl spoke. “I’m Ciara…” She was about to say more but she trailed off when she saw that the girl in the spacesuit was ignoring her and rushing toward a bank of instruments that was bleeping and blooping on the far side of the chamber. Instead, she took in her surroundings.
They were inside a large room with walls that curved gently upward and inward, with no visible seams at all. Ciara looked behind her at where she had entered the ship and she could see no sign that there was a door there. She looked more closely at the other girl and could see a slightly built, impish creature with dirty blonde hair pulled back inside her helmet. If Ciara didn’t know any better, she could have sworn that the space girl was from some small town in the American heartland. The space girl mashed down a button or two and then pulled a lever with both hands. She seemed a bit frantic as her eyes scanned the instrument panel. Ciara went closer to her and watched her as she moved back and forth, adjusting this, pressing that.
“What are you doing?” she asked, genuinely interested.
“I’m preparing for the total annihilation of human kind.” the space girl replied.
Ciara nodded, her eyes lifting as she thought of a response. “Um, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about,” she began gently, “Is there any way that you could cancel that?”
“No way, Jose!” exclaimed the alien. “We’ve been planning this for ages, literally ages. I’m not gonna stop now just because some X-Games reject is cryin’ a river.” She continued to work the instrument panel but with a little less intensity than before. “I’m Aurora by the way.” She glanced back at Ciara and it seemed that her eyes softened a touch. “You don’t seem as bad as them.” she quipped.
“Oh, I’m not,” replied Ciara, “They’re generally pretty horrible.” She leaned her skateboard against the smoothness of the wall, hoping it would stay there, and choosing to ignore the X-Games crack. “But is that any reason to annihilate us?”
“Of course it is!” shot back Aurora. “What other reason could there be?” She seemed as though she wanted to elaborate but then thought better of it. She fell silent instead.
In a flash, the truth dawned on Ciara. She looked more closely at Aurora and came to a decision. She started to extend her hand toward Aurora’s shoulder. “It’s just you in here, isn’t it?” She said in a low whisper. “You’re from Earth too, aren’t you?” She pulled her hand back quickly as she saw Aurora stiffen.
For a moment, Aurora said nothing. Then, she seemed to deflate a bit.
“Yes,” she sighed, “It’s just me.” She stopped working the panel and spun to face Ciara. “I shouldn’t have let you in here.” she finished.
“No, no. That was smart. I won’t tell anybody out there about it. I promise.” said Ciara, nodding. Aurora was visibly relieved when she heard that. “But how in the world did you get inside here?” Ciara asked.
Aurora was about to snap at her, but then she reconsidered and her demeanor relaxed. “Well,” she began, “it started when I ran away from home.”
Ciara sat down on the floor of the chamber and gestured to Aurora to do the same. She did and continued with her story. “I ran away last summer. I hated where I was living. After my mom died, they put me in foster and I went to three different houses. They were all pretty bad, but the third one was the worst.” Her eyes became moist as she appeared to remember. “I only stayed there for two nights before I snuck out before school. I never went back.”
Ciara motioned her encouragement and Aurora went on. “I was wandering around downtown for two days and I came by this thing when it was just after dark. I was so hungry and cold and you know how the people are around here at night.” Ciara nodded, she definitely knew. “As I walked by, I heard the door open and this light came out. There was no one else around and it looked warm inside. I heard about these ships before and they say that no one had been inside. I just thought that this was maybe a fake ship, like a carnival ride or something. I saw the light and I walked in here. I been here ever since.”
“Since last summer?” said Ciara incredulously. “That’s like a whole year!”
“Really?” asked Aurora, “What month is it?” Ciara told her it was July and Aurora’s eyes widened. “Whoa, I can’t believe I’ve been in here this long.”
“What do you eat? Where do you sleep?” asked Ciara.
“Oh, the ship has lots of rooms,” replied Aurora, “And there’s a kitchen and everything. Anything that I take out of the fridge gets replaced. The food just seems to be refilled in the morning.” Ciara’s mouth dropped open. “And there’s a lounge with TV and a couple of bedrooms too. I threw away my old clothes after they got worn and I’ve been wearing these silver jumpsuits for a while. I almost got this whole place figured out. I even figured out how the guns work.”
“Guns?” asked Ciara.
“Yeah,” said Aurora, raising her blaster from off the floor. “Like this one. But there are more, lots more. And ones that the ship shoots too. You just gotta read the directions on ’em.”
Ciara was getting more and more interested. “Where are all the other guns? Can I see?” she asked.
Aurora hesitated, a doubtful expression flashed across her face. “I don’t know… Are you gonna make me go home? Or try to make me not destroy the human race?” she asked suspiciously.
Ciara had been thinking the same thing to herself. She liked Aurora, and she didn’t really like the crowd outside, or any of the crowds she had ever known when she was outside the ship. She was extremely impressed by the inside of the ship. It appeared ancient and weathered from the outside, but in here, it was like a beautiful, calm, smooth meditation chamber. She decided.
“I won’t try to make you do anything. If you let me stay inside with you, I’ll help you. If we have enough of those types of guns, maybe they can’t stop us.” Aurora’s eyes lit up when she heard Ciara’s tone of voice. She nodded excitedly.
“I’ll show you the guns that we have. Maybe you can figure out the ones that I couldn’t!” She stood up and Ciara did as well. “Maybe together, we can even make the ship fly!”
Ciara stopped. She hadn’t thought of that. “Why do you think that?” she asked. Aurora turned to face her.
“’Cause there are controls. But I can’t understand them. I can show you.” She finished. Ciara nodded and Aurora turned to walk toward what looked like a blank space on the wall next to the instrument panel. A door seemed to appear out of nothing in the wall and she walked through and into a corridor. Ciara followed, astonished.
They walked a short distance down the corridor and Ciara saw that the walls were smooth and unblemished. At the end of the corridor, Aurora turned to the right and waved her hand. A door opened and she walked through. Ciara was right on her heels and she looked around in awe at what she saw when she entered. They were in a large room with shelf after shelf of various alien weapons. Some were recognizable in that they looked much like guns appeared on Earth, with pistol grips, triggers, scopes and that sort of lethal hardware. But some were as strange and exotic as anything that Ciara had ever imagined. Aurora walked up to one of the shelves and pressed a button beneath one of the weapons, a large multi-barreled contraption that seemed like a shotgun of some sort. When Aurora pressed the button, a screen appeared beneath the shelf and information scrolled past. Ciara stepped closer so that she could read it and saw that it was the operating instructions for the gun. She scanned the screen, taking it all in.
“Once you read the directions, you just have to put your hand around the handle here…” said Aurora, pointing to the pistol grip. “And then the gun knows you, like it knows your handprint or something. Then, you can use it. The video will show you how to aim it and load it and everything. I tried like ten of ’em already.”>
“Where did you shoot them?” asked Ciara.
“There’s another room down the hall that has stuff you can shoot at and everything,” answered Aurora, “The guns only shoot practice beams inside there. That’s so you don’t put holes in the ship.”
Ciara was amazed. Then, she remembered. “Where are the controls to fly the ship?” she asked. Aurora nodded and said, “Follow me.”
They left the armory and went down the corridor to where it ended at another blank wall. They waited for a moment and then the door appeared. The entered into a mid-sized room with two chairs placed at the far wall. There were a series of controls arrayed in front of each chair. The girls crossed the floor together and each sat in one of the chairs. Aurora pressed a button and in front of each chair, a screen lit up. Information began flowing across the screens simultaneously.
It only took a few moments for Ciara to realize what the problem had been. “This ship needs two people to control it!” she exclaimed. “Two girls I think.” She read a bit more and then she saw something flicker across the screen that shocked her. “Hey. Wait. I think there’s some sort of video chat thing here too.” She moved a slider near the screen and the screen split into multiple views. In each view, there were two other girls looking back at them. Ciara could see their mouths moving but couldn’t hear their voices at all. She looked over at Aurora’s screen and saw that the video wasn’t the same as hers. She made a few adjustments to the slider and then Aurora could see what she was looking at.
“Aurora,” she began slowly, “I think those girls are in other ships just like us.”
Aurora looked at her, confused. “What?” she said, frowning.
“I think they’re inside the other ships that are around the world.” she repeated. “Look. Same chairs.”
Aurora looked more closely, squinting, and then nodded. “You’re right. They are the same. But why can’t we hear them?”
“I don’t know…” began Ciara, “I’ve been trying all these buttons but nothing seems to be for the sound.” As she probed and pressed the buttons near her screen, her eyes wandered to a bank of buttons directly between both of their chairs. “Maybe it’s one of these…” She tried, but there was nothing. She looked more closely at the instruments on the center panel, they looked strange, as though they were formed in a weird fashion. She exhaled in frustration and sat back in her chair, watching the girls in the other ships move about in silence.
Then, she noticed something. From her angle she could see the buttons in the other ships from the backside. From that vantage point, she could see that the buttons on the left seemed to angle slightly toward the leftmost chair and the levers on the right seemed to angle to the right. The instruments on the center panel were angled perfectly vertically. She looked again at the panel between her and Aurora. Now, she could see that the controls were shaped strangely because they were made to fit two hands or fingers at once. Her eyes lit up.
“Aurora!” she exclaimed. Aurora, startled, looked at her in concern. “Put your hand here. We press these together! At the same time!” Aurora saw what she meant and nodded. They reached their hands toward the center switch at the same time, together. And pushed it upwards together. A low rumble began in the bowels of the ship. The girls felt their chairs rattle as the ship hummed to life. “Now this one!” shouted Ciara. Aurora followed suit and they pushed another control in unison. This time, the audio from the screens roared to life and they could hear the voices of the other girls in the other ships.
Before Ciara could say anything, Aurora’s voice cut through the rumble and the chatter of the other girls. “Listen! You have to use the controls between you together! Do it now!” The pairs of girls on the screen froze and then, like mirror images of each other, they all reached toward the central panels of their respective cockpits. As they did, Ciara began scrolling the screen downwards and she saw more and more pairs of girls on her screen.
“There must be fifty of us! Maybe more!” she exclaimed. She saw a touch icon on her screen that said LINK – she pressed it and felt even more energy surge through the ship beneath her feet. “I think all the ships are linked now!” she shouted to Aurora. “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!”
Aurora nodded and they reached their hands to the center console together. Together, and in unison with the other girls around the world, they pushed the main launch lever forward. From separate cities and villages around the world, from hidden forests and city squares, the ships lifted off the ground and began accelerating into the sky.
“Wooooo-hoooo!” screamed Ciara, clenching her fist and pumping it to her side. “We outta here!”
Aurora had the tip of her tongue poking slightly from her lips as she spun the view in her screen from the clouds before them in their flight path back towards the ground and the crowd that was gathered there. Just before they were out of range, she blanketed the launch site with a burst from the ship’s rear gun array, blasting the crowd into cinders. Laughing hysterically, the girls and their new ships roared together into the stratosphere.
The ships decelerated when they escaped the atmosphere and began to drift, in a cluster, above the clouds in the darkness of space. Ciara opened up the communication channel and addressed the pilots in the other ships. One by one, the girls in the other ships introduced themselves as Ciara kept count of the number of ships. When they had finished, she turned toward Aurora.
“There are fifty-four ships. One-hundred and eight girls, including us,” reported Ciara. Aurora nodded smugly, a satisfied look on her face. “What should we do, Captain?” asked Ciara.
Aurora looked surpised but didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll put it to a vote.” she replied. She looked at the faces of the other girls looking back at her on the screen before her. She took a breath. “How many of us think we should destroy the human race?” The other girls began to chatter excitedly but before they could vote, Ciara said to Aurora. “Maybe we should give them another choice.”
“Like what?” mouthed Aurora. Ciara thought for a moment.
The final choice that Aurora gave them was this: Destroy the only home that they had ever known, erase their past lives, their families and friends. Or, strike out into the stars, while showing mercy for the misguided masses below them on Earth.
The girls went silent for a long heartbeat, deep in thought. Then, slowly at first, then more quickly, the votes came in and Ciara counted them. To a girl, all one-hundred and eight voted alike. The lost, abandoned, mistreated, runaway girls set their gunsights on the cities of Earth and turned them all into rubble and ash. And when they were satisfied, they turned their ships away, and set course for new planets, systems and adventures.
And that, my friends, is how the Tribe of 108, the most feared and brazen band of space pirates, began. They went out into deep space, further than the colonies, further even than the Expeditionary Space Marines went. And vanishing with them, were the hopes and dreams of a once wicked planet.
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