It was a fair and warm day in the afternoon hours, when the man was walking down the street. The city, small and homely, was not a buzz with people.
"Good day," another pedestrian said to the man. He nodded back at the friendly gesture. Suddenly, the fellow slapped him on the face. Not hard, not enough to concuss. But hard enough.
"Why did you do that?!" The man asked his assailant, surprised.
"Well", the other explained in a calm tone, "it is the end of the world." The man, the victim, steered his head and vision to encompass the large shape in the sky, sitting outside the atmosphere, yet very visible.
After all, it is a well known fact that a regular sized seeming object from far far away is actually vastly large, so much as to boggle the mind's grasp of perspective.
The fellow pedestrian tilted his head up and to the side as well, seeing the meteor that was slowly but surely approaching them. Them all. Quietly, they both stared, and said nothing more.
Eleven was his name, and he was an elf. No, not a mythical creature of legends, but a person who likes to con and trick people.
"Mister, what is your name??" The little girl asked. Eleven looked down at her. She was as high as his knees.
"They call me... Eleven," he answered.
"Why do they call you Eleven?" She asked.
He turned his face away, toward the ceiling, in a rather dramatic fashion. "Eleven means courage. It is a very old word. It was the name of a great hero, once, many generations ago." He peeked back at the girl, seeing if it had the wanted effect. It did not, and she was already walking away, in fascination of the next dull thing.
"So, what do you have for me this time, Dougler?" Eleven asked back, business-like.
"Nobody calls me Douglar..." Jamison started to complain, but knew that it will not get through. "We are going to take a couple of items that mean a lot to my boss."
"Expensive items?"
"Expensive," Jamison lowered his voice, "and dangerous."
"Dangerous items?" Eleven smiled to himself. "How dangerous?"
"Have you ever had an entire planet going after you?" Jamison asked.
Eleven cocked his head, and stared at nothing for a long moment. "I have never had a planet know that I was there."
"Good. We are going to need invisibility, for this one. No one must figure out who we are, or who we are working for," Jamison warned, but received no emotional feedback.
The galactic crew occupying the prime transport vessel - the Cut Mink of the Coalition, sat down, planning their negotiations. The transaction was to take place on the host planet, Zigma Froy, a recently inhabited moon of Jupiter, where the Institute of Suspect Objects ran a museum and catalog, for the public to enjoy. It was entirely inhabited by alien artifacts.
"Have you arranged for the head of the Institute to meet us somewhere outside of the facility?" Captain Silvarre requested of his second in command, First Lieutenant Kirk.
"Aye captain!" Kirk saluted firmly. Silvarre glanced at him from the corner of his eye, sitting on his captain's chair, and continued nibbling on his simulated-wood pipe. A few long moments later, Kirk removed his hand from his forehead, and Silvarre decided not to mention the error in saluting a pirate. Kirk might have his quirks, but he still was the best of them.
The plan was, as Captain Silvarre put it, "to distract the dogs with the cats, while the rats steal the cheese." While the transaction was to take place, officially, hand Jamison and his chosen trustee will retrieve the two most expensive artifacts. The Cut Mink is out of suspicion, as they were innocently doing official business at the time with the Institute, and yet Silvarre gains a much desired card to play with, in this ancient game of trade.
Eleven stared at the customs official, a private agent of the ISO company, who's soul purpose was to figure out if any person was attempting to smuggle artifacts in or out of the planet. Eleven was a straightforward kind of guy. He did not smile or flatter. He simply stated his lies, and expected you to accept them, as they are, and without question.
"Anything to declare?" The customs officer asked.
"No," Eleven answered, waiting for that specific response used in queues; a nod that means, 'Move along.'
"Anything to declare?" The customs officer asked Jamison.
"No," Jamison answered, trying to mimic his companion's sternness. The officer looked him up and down, saw that Eleven was a couple of steps ahead, waiting, and said, "Okay. Next!"
At the back entrance to the Institute of Suspect Objects' grand museum, the two waited, staring at the locked door. This was where those most rare and strictly guarded items stood on display; specifically, those items that they had come to steal.
"Tsk," Jamison noisily badgered. "What now? Let's just enter from the main entrance."
"Cats do not go from the door, Jamison. Only dogs do so," Eleven retorted, without turning his eyes from the door. The door opened. Out of it, came a guard followed by a janitor robot. "Excuse me!" Eleven shouted at the guard, and hurried forward.
"The main entry is that wa..."
"We just accidentally got out through this door, but it locked on us. Can you let us back in, sir?" Eleven's posture and mannerism hinted at a confused customer, the sort of customer that found a hair in their sandwich, and instead of shouting and complaining, simply returned the item back quietly, and quietly mentioned the problem.
"Oh," the guard looked at Jamison. What he saw, however, was a well-dressed gentleman, and not a thief. "Of course, come in, and make sure you do not get lost again."
"Yes, we will stay with the guide this time," Eleven smiled, grabbed Jamison's hand, and entered hurriedly.
They both had prepared for this well in advanced, memorizing a map of the compound, and where their targets lay. "Easy enough," Jamison whispered.
"Easy for you to say, newbie," Eleven grunted back, quietly.
"What is so difficult about this?"
"This part," Eleven paced up through the artifact filled corridor, and approached another guard, standing at the next door. As the guard moved to open his mouth, Eleven struck him in the face with an unidentified black object, and quickly began removing his own outfit.
"Oh," Jamison noted.
"Take his outfit off. While I am getting the artifacts, you can put together the cart," Eleven removed a few long black sticks from his jacket, and gave them to Jamison. Jamison stared at the parts, figured they were a stick-each-stick-into-the-other-stick kind of puzzle, and began working.
Within a minute, Eleven was back out with the two items, each under each arm. One looked like a big musical wind instrument, and the other had the shape of a sharp weapon. In reality, however, they both knew that the tube looking item was an explosive weapon, and the other just a harmless alien toy.
"Do not press the red button," Jamison said in humor.
"The Imploder requires a sequence of air thrusts to activate, which humans are unable to perform, without specialty tools," Eleven explained. Somehow, Jamison was certain that Eleven kept on him just the kind of 'specialty tool' that was required for its' activation, and shuddered.
The alien Imploder was notorious for creating bloody scenes, wherein people lost their skin and eyeballs, but remained alive just long enough to notice that new and surprising prickly sensation.
Finally, Jamison had the cart prepared, and after carefully locking the items down magnetically, they started moving back to where they had come from. Each put a hand to push the cart forward. Considering how small the artifacts were, it had a heavy pull to it.
"I know you don't like to get your hands dirty, but this really was nothing special," Jamison gestured. "These clowns can't even get their attack-bots to work."
"This is still the hard part," Eleven answered, turning back to face the silent creeping machines that had almost reached them, and clicked a red button on a joystick-looking gizmo. Two of the bots dropped from the ceiling, but a third kept on crawling towards them. "Your turn," Eleven said.
Jamison, who had been expecting at least some sort of a melee with machines, took out an arrow, aimed it at the single machine, now only a few feet away, threw it, and turned back - still pushing the cart.
"What was that?" Eleven asked, able to hear the bot jingling, as its' parts were detaching from its' main body.
"Uranium Action Darts," Jamison said, and grinned widely. "Unidentified, rare, and most of all, efficient against bots. It emits a radioactive wave that destabilizes a..."
"I am going to borrow a couple, eh."
"Sure, buddy. You know I got your back," Jamison said, still grinning. It was a joy to work with the best tools, after all.
As they entered their escape vessel, a compact and efficient evasion pod, the air pressure started to increase.
"Airzers?" Jamison asked, covering his ears with his hands, in pain.
"Airzers," Eleven answered, clicked his earlobes to activate his anti-pressure buttons, and started the pod away. It was a shaky ride, but this pod was custom designed to outmaneuver this planet's specific Airzer technology.
Airzer. Definition: Gravitational laser beams that condense the atmosphere in a given radius, causing great harm to unprotected living tissue, while interrupting the ability of any vessel to detach from the surface, as it attempts lift-off.
By the time any meaningful pursuit had begun, their pod had changed colors, changed visible shape, changed licensing transmissions, and was gaining miles away from the planet's exosphere. The Institute's control center, now at turmoil, had its' deputy at a loss.
"We lost their signature, Commander," the guard said, still looking at the data screen.
"Inform the boss. It has to be those space-damned pirates!"
Suzuryu Jupitas, the head and owner of the ISO, grimaced. Captain Silvarre, surrounded by a posse of dangerous looking space-pirates, now enjoyed years of practicing his poker face.
"The Amalgamator and the Syphon?" Jupitas confirmed, over audio, not using any visible device.
"Is something the matter?" Silvarre inquired politely. Jupitas did not respond, nor look at him.
"I see," Jupitas ended the invisible conversation. "Two men," he began saying, "not locals," by which he meant not inhabitants of Zigma Froy, "had just left the exosphere with some very valuable artifacts, Captain Silvarre."
"You would not mean the artifacts that we have been discussing, Mr. Jupitas?" The captain asked back, the innocence of a child on display.
"Some of them, apparently. Two that we have counted."
"Well," Silvarre hesitated, "I am sorry to be so blunt, but you do realize that this is going to change the price we were negotiating," he declared.
Eleven is his name, and reticence is his profession. He is not a pirate, and not because he disrespects their work, or public image in society. He prefers the quiet and efficiency of working alone. The safety of not having to count on others.
"You know, Dougler..." Eleven began.
Jamison opened one sleepy eye, and looked to his right, where Eleven was sat.
"You are very cunning, but not quite deliberate. Do you know why the customs official would rather bother you, than me?"
"Because you're a scary motherfu..."
"Because he knew that if he had badgered me, I would have noted his name and appearance, and some day, when all is forgotten, he would see me again. Maybe on his way back from work. Going back home, I suppose. And then, Dougler, he would regret his past choice of badgering me."
"You would keep a grudge for so long?" Jamison asked, sleepily.
"No, I would not. I would just keep even," Eleven mended, and returned to reading privately, from his own internal display.
It does not take much to be free. Actually, it takes very little, as any space pirate would testify, outside of a court of law, of course. It is doing that makes us free; not having.
Captain Silvarre of the Union Prominence fleet, a registered subdivision of the Coalition, reviewed the results of their recent success. A venture into a renegade planet near Saturn. A planet that had not been known to the public, for most of its' colonized days.
"Gold," the captain requested.
"Five hundred," a rough voice answered from below the captain's deck, aboard the Cut Mink. The ship was named after an accident involving the First Lieutenant's pet, and the Captain's pet lizard.
"Five hundred?" the captain demanded, in a curious, but friendly voice.
"Oh," the voice of the First Lieutenant apologetically announced, "that number is wrong."
"Wrong?" The captain asked. "Who has left our friendly company, in recent days, Kirk?"
"Jamison, Captain," Kirk said, after approaching the captain's chair.
Depicting the renegade pirate Jamison. Photography: Nuno Silva, Makeup & Hair: Cheri Chung, Model: Bradly James
"Let me guess, oh no, let me guess," the captain interrupted condensing arguments from the lower deck. "Deck Hand Jamison, and maybe two more friends, decided to take an early vacation. Right, Kirk?"
"Yes, sir," Kirk answered, and quickly replaced it with, "Yes, Captain."
In the lower levels of the Cut Mink, were imprisoned the previous 'maintainers' of the now captain Silvarre's glorious business vessel. The Lieutenant approached those cells, followed by a group of young recruits, full of confidence.
"Watch your step," he warned one of the younger recruits, as the lad walked precariously near to the cages. The boy stepped away, and felt a quick tug at his coat.
"Help," the miserable creature inside the cell cried. The boy ignored it. "I can get you gold," it growled the name of the precious metal, and insisted. The Lieutenant paused mid-step, and so did the group behind him.
"You say, err, gold? Gold, my friend?" He turned towards the cell holding the creature.
"Yes," it failed to pronounce its' affirmation. But the meaning was not lost.
"You two," Kirk pointed at two of the boys. "Take our esteemed guest to the captain, for further examin... for a chat. Now!" The young recruits approached the cell, opened it with their identifying tags, imprinted on their hands, and grabbed the creature, forcefully.
As the group continued through the hall of the ship's prison, Kirk received a private transmission from the captain, which said, "Take five, keep two." Kirk knew it was solid advice.
When they reached the requested cell, Lieutenant Kirk ordered to, "bring five out, and if any of them resist, beat them as hard as you can." The lads moved into action, with the sound of bodily harm, echoing from the cell.
Five thin and tall creatures, composed mostly of tentacles, crouched before Kirk. Three of them were selected to lead the scouting mission, after the renegade Jamison. Well, renegade as much as any pirate can be.
"The other two will be brutalized every half an hour, for one minute, until we get the prize. Got it?" Kirk asked the prisoners, not expecting any misunderstandings from the aliens. The creatures drooled thick watery liquids, now supposedly cajoled into compliance, and bobbed their heads in a rather circular motion.
Using remote surveillance equipment, the captain and his primary crew were able to hear and see everything that went on, during the reconnoiter.
"Never trust someone with kids, I say," the captain warned, and murmurs of agreement surfaced from behind him, on the deck. "Those aliens should have known better, than to let their kids on board. Now, all they know is my orders and fear," he finished with a merciless laughter that regularly caused his crew to become enamored to his methods.
The vessel that Jamison had stolen, in order to transport his stolen gold, well, as stolen as any gold can ever be from pirates, did indeed have some combat capabilities. However, it was no match against the vast matrix of laser shields that a mining vessel operated; specifically, the Cut Mink.
The encouraged aliens managed to locate and attach to Jamison's boat, and as they dragged him back towards the Cut Mink, Jamison tried, in a last attempt of bravado, to fire his magnetic pulse canons at her.
"I brought you back the gold, from these thieving aliens, captain," Jamison saluted in a serious manner, as he was put inside the command deck.
"Oh, indeed, you did, my Hand," the captain fondly referred to Jamison.
Evidently, the corpses of two aliens, last seen in their duty as boat maintainers, were found on the vessel stolen by Jamison. Without pause, Jamison used them to his favor.
"Killed them with my own two hands, captain, and proud of it," he said with an accent that attached itself to no specific colony.
"Give me one reason not to send you to alien duty, Jamison," the captain nodded at Kirk, to escort the younger man down below, where no duty was ever favorable.
"I," Jamison hesitated for a brief moment and contrived, "I am the only one signed on the new artifact contract, Captain."
The captain hesitated. It was, after all, a very valuable contract. And it really was Jamison's work that got them that contract. There was a lot of competition for it, as well. A lot of messy competition, that gave them even less friends in the fleet, than they had before.
"Kirk," the captain ordered.
"Yes sir," Kirk answered, and once more his previous military service had derailed the space manners required from him on board. "I mean, yes captain," he mended.
"Assign Hand Jamison a lower rank, and remove his privileges from the boating deck."
"Right away, captain."
"And Jamison," the captain added.
"Yes, captain?" Jamison turned back, as Kirk's massive hand started moving him backwards.
"No more vacations." The captain's eye glimmered against the shine of the information screens, and a twinkling of a smile surfaced. Jamison, for just that moment, felt some real concern churning up in him. But only for a moment.
The Cut Mink and its' unrecorded space escort were last seen heading towards the moons of Jupiter. Official reports tell of an upcoming ancient alien artifact transport deal, but for some reason, only a minor clerk was signed on it, instead of the expected signatures of the Captain of the vessel and his second best. The signature read, "Dougler Jamison, Head of Accounting, in the name of the Cut Mink."
The Dzed nest in forests, but they hunt wherever there is prey. Their gigantic arachnoid form, while intimidating, is also very adaptable. Reports of adult Dzed swimming the oceans, started early on, after the invasion of the alien race to Earth.
A recent record tells of a long-time hobby fisherman that fell into the water, while fishing in the ocean. "It was an accident," the man says, "but nothing that would scare a sealover, like me." It was, however, quite a surprise, when he realized that underneath the water, and attached to the bottom of his yacht, there lurked a giant Dzed.
The man was afraid that it might attack him, now that he fell into the water. When the Dzed moved to attack, he was certain that this was the end. When he felt nothing, but the movement of water around him, he opened his eyes again. To his astonishment, the Dzed had caught a shark. The shark, apparently, had been drawn to the swimming man, and thought it got lucky. "You can imagine its' surprise," the record goes on to say in the voice of the fisherman, "when it was snatched up by the spider!"
MikeAp shuts the record viewer off, and restores his normal vision. Tomorrow, he will be doing what had not been done before. He will be boarding a Dzedship. The irony was not lost on him. Hey, maybe he will get lucky, and the Dzed will just hunt-away any space monsters that came at him. Although, in all likelihood, the researchers insist, the Dzed will not be joining the trip.
They have reached the Dzed's nest, and are finally preparing to board. Well, board might be the wrong word. It feels like they are infiltrating the Dzed's privacy, really. Like some sort of insidious larvae, using its' host to find shelter, against the harsh environment. Two assistants start running the checks on MikeAp.
"Can you hear me?" One of the women asks.
"Yes," MikeAp answers.
"Can you feel this?" The other woman asks, as she jabs something against his suit.
"No," MikeAp answers, and both women nod approvingly.
MikeAp starts his approach, walking under the watchful eye of all space lovers. This first attempt at utilizing the remarkable balloon-shaped vessel of the Dzed is broadcast to the public. MikeAp doubts that more than a handful of hobbyists are actually watching the live feed.
Confronted by the giant woven ball, MikeAp shoves himself, slowly, into the sphere. The material is sticky, but it is not able to resist his invasion. He can already feel that sort of lightness that comes from being inside a magnetic field.
"I am alright," he reports over the voice.
"Roger that," he hears a barely audible response, through the loud static noise. The speaker is his counterpart and trusted engineer, KaliKi.
MikeAp bends down, spreads his arms wide, and jumps as hard as he can. The giant sphere responds, by increasing the tension of its' fabric, and thus begins a levitating motion upwards. MikeAp sits down, takes his helmet off, even though it is not advised to do so, and draws a salty snack from his side-pocket. As he slowly nibbles through the snack, MikeAp imagines the others looking at him. An unremarkable white ball, floating through the air.
"Biological space engineering, at its' best," he says aloud, after about half an hour. He lies back to enjoy the view, through the now transparent fibers of the vessel.
MikeAp is the first man to ever successfully reach space, using Dzed technology.
I am in a shuttle. Not a train. More like a plane, or a spaceship. It is an in-between of those two, really. It is shaped like a long rocket without wings, and it is populated by rooms, and halls full of safety-chairs, where people wait for the landing. Only the bottom part has an engine and control center.
I am inside a waiting room, all for my own. I just woke up. I get the feeling that the end of the journey is approaching. Although I slept through it, it was not a long journey, actually. It is a mystery to me where I am, and where I am headed. And although it is a mystery, it is not important. The only thing that is important is the landing.
I slowly climb out of my room. It is connected to one of those sitting halls, through a corridor entrance, above me. The gravity is awkward, and although I do not float, I do need to crawl my way out of the room. As I approach the above chamber, I find myself pausing next to a window.
The view is intimidating. It is not just a freefall. It is an accelerated drop, from who knows how high. There is no sound. I keep staring into the incoming ground. It is littered with boulders, as if the landing site is meant to be more of a hazard, rather than less.
Suddenly, the thrusters below me burst, and the noise of combustion roars, as if from a long distance. Just as it seemed the vessel would hit the ground, and my mortal life would end miserably yet quickly, an ever so slight wobble motion hits, and everything just stops.
We have landed, and not surprisingly, everyone in their sits start applauding.
In a dark corner, beneath the edge of a mountain, lie a little Dzed. The alien, whose ancestors had arrived on Earth only a century ago, was hunting. He was hunting in the dark, as all his kind do. His vicious arachnid form, extremely suitable for trapping and the silencing of his prey, hung from the top branch of an oak tree.
The man, a native of the land, dark skinned and rough natured, walked over the trap, without hesitation. He was not aware of the trap being there, yet he was not afraid of such a possibility. He was a hunter, and for him, it meant that danger was a casual thing.
Giant alien spiders are our friends. That's the narrative, anyhow.
Just as the Dzed activated his trap, contracting the wires of his immense weave, the man jumped. As the man fell out of its' way, and rolled back on to his feet, a roar filled the night, behind him. Inside the Dzed's web, a large cat with pointed ears was wrestling with the arachnid's device. Needless to say, it was a futile attempt.
The man looked up the tree, where the trap connected to higher branches. A shadow loomed against the star-filled sky. The man knew it to be a Dzed. Shaming the hunter, the Dzed did not even consider him worthy prey. Real prey, for the mighty arachnoid, had to pose a real challenge.
