Episode 08 - Krystos

The saucer descended through the rainbow-hued clouds of Krystos, leaving gossamer streaks of water vapor in its wake. The diamonds that covered the surface of the planet reflected the light of the sun into the atmosphere, creating a constant dance of light.

“Wow”, was all Jim could say.

To Zed, the planet looked like an acid-induced fantasy he’d had in high school. The surface was an ever-shifting sea of sparkling light, and as they flew in closer, he saw a forest of tree-like stalks rising high into the sky… each connected by an intricate web of green fibers which caught the light from all directions. Streams of crystal-clear water ran in ragged patterns through the white rocks and diamonds on the planet’s surface, where tufts of clear grass grew in random clumps here and there, swaying gently in the breeze.

“So we gotta find some kind of animal?” Zed asked Jim, breaking the trance-like awe that they both felt.

“Yeah”, Jim answered, “I used to hear about this place when I was young. Early space explorers claimed to have stumbled upon a planet covered in diamonds… said there were creatures who roamed the surface that digested their food for so long and with so much internal heat and pressure that they literally shit diamonds.”

“Diamonds? Seriously?”, Zed said, astonished.

“We all thought it was some bullshit legend”, Jim answered, “But here we are. The Keepers must’ve kept this place hidden to protect it. I can see why. There’s a fortune to be made here.”

The saucer glided quietly over the crest of a hill, and a large plain stretched out beneath them. The wind caught the expanse of grass-like vegetation, sweeping through the transparent stalks in soft waves. The surface sparkled brilliantly as they skimmed the surface, as billions of diamonds caught the sunlight. On the horizon, a herd of creatures came into view, grazing lazily in the morning light. To Zed, they looked like a cross between a Rhinoceros and a giant slug… long and slender with a thick hide and a small head which rested on the ground as it ate. As they drew closer, Zed could see that their grey, armor-plated bodies hid several pairs of thick, muscular legs.

“These the ones?”, Zed asked.

“I can’t tell for sure”, Jim answered, “But if the size and shape of the tank is any indicator, they look about right”.

“How big is the tank?”, Zed asked.

“Big”, Jim answered.

As Zed and Jim watched, one of the creatures lifted its tail, and a large diamond popped out of its body.

“There’s our answer!”, Jim said, his voice somewhat giddy. “Head down to the cargo bay. I’ll lift one into the ship, and you can coax it into the tank”.

“How the hell am I s’posed to do that?”, Zed asked.

“Don’t know”, Jim answered, “Never done it before”.

Zed hopped on the lift and made his way down to the cargo bay, grumbling as he went, just as the ship’s main portal doors spun open. The cool air of the plain rushed in, and for the first time, he saw the creatures up close. They were huge, at least forty feet long, and he heard the diamond-encrusted ground crumple beneath their feet as they grazed.

Jim’s voice buzzed to life over the ship’s intercom. “Do you see the tank?”

Zed looked across the cargo bay, and saw a large tank with crystalline walls in the shape of a pentagon. One of the walls folded downward like a ramp toward the saucer’s portal, and beside the ramp was a simple control panel with green and red buttons.

“I’m pulling one up”, Jim continued, “Get ready”.

The green beam burst to life, shooting down through the portal doors and encompassing one of the creatures. The creature rose a few feet off the ground, and began writhing and wailing with a high-pitched shriek. Zed could feel the ship sway from side to side with the weight.

“This son of a bitch is heavy”, Jim said, “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to do this the easy way”.

“What do you mean?”, Zed yelled back, “This doesn’t seem that easy to me!”

“I mean, I’m gonna land the ship, and you’re gonna have to go out there and herd one of those things up the ramp”.

“Are you crazy?!?”, Zed yelled back, “They're huge!”

“Zed, you killed an entire ship full of Zanarans. You can do this.”

The saucer descended slowly until it hovered just above the vast, diamond-studded plain… landing gear extending from the hull and touching down gently. Zed felt the weight of the ship settle into the gear, and saw the ramp extend downward.

Grumbling, he walked down the ramp and into the the grass of the open plain. The ground felt soft as his boots sank into the gravel of sparkling diamonds, and the strange transparent blades of grass bent away from him, as if sensing that something alien had stepped onto the surface of the planet.

Approaching one of the creatures, Zed got a clear sense of its rimmense size, not unlike a whale back on Earth. As he walked around the body to its head, It continued to tear the strange grass out of the ground and paid no attention to him. Zed could hear its large jaw grinding the food, and smell the pungent aroma of its breath as it expelled air from a series of holes along the sides of its body.

What do I do now, Zed thought to himself, trying to come up with something.

“AHHHH”, Zed yelled suddenly, waving his arms as menacingly as possible. The giant creature ignored him, continuing to pull at the tufts of grass growing on the plain. Zed tried it a little louder, lunching at the creature’s head. Nothing.

Frustrated, Zed pushed against the creature, but it was like pressing against a stone wall. The creature disregarded him completely.

“Having trouble Zed?”, Jim asked over the saucer’s loudspeaker.

“Goddamned thing won’t budge!”, Zed yelled back, bending over to pull the blaster from his ankle holster.

“Zed, I wouldn’t do that”, Jim warned.

He lifted the blaster and pointed it at the creature.

“NO! DON’T DO IT!”, Jim yelled, frantic.

Zed pulled the trigger, and a burst of blaster fire slammed into the creature’s armored body.

The creature lifted its head, glanced back and forth across the plain, and returned to grazing. Though it had clearly seen Zed, it disregarded him completely.

“Fuck!”, Zed yelled, “Did you see that!?!”

“Yeah.”

“What do I do now?”, Zed asked.

“Give me a minute”, Jim returned, “I’ll come up with something.”

Zed walked around the creature, looking for a weak spot in the armor. Maybe if I can hurt it, he thought, I can urge it into the ship.

The segmented armor along the sides of its body looked flawless. Zed noticed an open ridge on its back, but the creature was too tall for him to see it clearly. Putting the blaster back in the holster, he decided to scramble up the side of the creature and check it out more closely.

“What are you doing bro?”, Jim asked.

“Looking for a way to motivate this big guy”, Zed answered, pulling himself to his feet on the back of the creature. The creatures back was as hard or harder than the ground, and Zed stepped carefully from segment to segment, looking for a weak spot in the armor. As he approached the open ridge, he heard and felt the creature exhaling through a hole on its back. He also felt a strange vibration that wasn’t there moments before.

“I think I found a weak spot”, Zed yelled, and pointed the blaster at it, “Lets hope this works”.

He pulled the trigger and fired on the open ridge. The creature’s head jolted upright and it let out a tremendous high pitched screech… moving a few steps forward and it glancing backward in a panic. Zed felt the vibration grow stronger.

“I think that’s working!” Jim said over the loudspeaker, “Try it again!”

Zed lifted the blaster again, but before he pulled the trigger, he noticed the other creatures in the herd lifting their heads and screeching as well. The vibration grew steadily stronger, and he heard a barely audible rumble appear in the distance. Glancing over his shoulder toward the source of the noise, Zed saw what looked like a distant dust storm heading in their direction. In the cloud of dirt, diamonds sparkled brightly as they flew through the air.

“What the hell?”, Zed muttered to himself.

Suddenly, the creature beneath him raised its head and let out a low growl. Without warning, It lifted itself off the ground, and broke into a sudden galloping run. Zed fell backward, and grabbed a ridge on its back, barely avoiding a tumble to the ground. The creature moved fast, and in his violent struggle to recover his balance, he saw the Jim’s grounded saucer receding into the distance. Though the creature bounced as it ran, and the wind rushed at his body, Zed pulled himself to a sitting position. A shadow crawled across the back of the creature, and he looked up to see the saucer hovering above him.

“You okay?”, Jim yelled over the intercom, “Those things are fast!”

“Yeah, I’m fine”, Zed yelled back, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know”, Jim answered, “There’s something big headed this way. I’m going to fly low and try to get your creature to run up the ramp.”

The saucer descended in front of Zed and the running creature until it was only feet off the ground. Once again, the ramp extended downward, and as it touched the planets surface, it skidded and bounced and kicked dust and diamonds up into the air. Zed shielded his eyes, but even the confusion, he noticed the saucer slowing down to allow them to approach.

The ramp bounced as it sent sparks flying in all directions, and Zed and the creature grew closer and closer. He spared a glance over his shoulder to get another look at the approaching dust storm, and nearly lost his balance again.

It wasn’t a storm at all. It was the biggest creature Zed had ever laid eyes on. It was slightly reptilian, with a complex pattern of spines on its shoulders and legs that made the horrendous creature look deadly. It roared through a mouth that opened like that of an insect, revealing rows upon rows of long curved teeth and sending streams of drool slapping against its body and the plain below.

“Holy shit Jim! Get us in the ship and get us out of here!”

Just then, the creature’s foot landed on the deck of the ramp, and Zed and the creature rushed upward a couple steps until the entire platform was ripped from the ship’s hull. The saucer wobbled out of control for a moment, one side skidding against the planet’s surface. The fast gallop of Zed’s creature was interrupted momentarily, putting them in the rear of the tight-knit herd… just feet in front of the tremendous, closing predator.

Zed could no longer afford to stay where he was, and he ran down the length of the creature’s body and jumped from its head onto the tail of the creature before them. As he landed, holding on for dear life, he heard the sound breaking bones and ripping flesh behind him. The monster had struck, and Zed had barely escaped being devoured!

Scrambling up the creatures back and getting to his feet once again, he scanned the surroundings for any sign of Jim. There was no saucer in sight, but what Zed did see caused his heart to leap in his chest.

The herd, still frightened and running blindly, was headed straight for the edge of a deep ravine. In a panic, Zed fired a couple shots into the air-hole on the creature’s back, but it was too little too late, and the herd of creatures plunged over the edge of the cliff and into an impossibly deep canyon. Zed felt his stomach leave him, and suddenly, he was in open air, tumbling uncontrollably as the air rushed up to greet him. He lost his grip on the creature, and the two fell side by side as the remainder of the herd tumbled beneath them, one hitting the cliff wall and spiraling into the others. Before Zed had time to think about his situation, the saucer appeared suddenly, flying straight down into the ravine. The familiar portal doors spun open, and the green beam pulled Zed and the large creature sideways into the cargo bay.

As soon as the cargo doors spun closed and the gravity returned, Zed fell toward the floor, and it became quickly apparent that something was wrong. The saucer continued to plunge, and Zed could feel that it was out of control.

“Zed, you in?”, Jim asked over the intercom.

“Yeah, what’s happening!”

“The creature’s too heavy for the ship!”, he answered, “We gotta get it in the tank. The Keepers would have planned for this!”

Zed ran toward the open crystalline tank, and saw that it was lined with the transparent grass that the creatures fed on. He pulled a tuft out of the ground, and held it up to the creature, who went from a state of panic to interest in a few seconds.

Zed led the creature into the tank, walking backwards into the cage as it followed. At the door of the tank, the creature glanced around suspiciously, and paused.

“Zed, get out of the way!”, Jim said, and the saucer tilted sharply, causing the creature to tumble headlong into the tank.

Untold tons of armored flesh tumbled toward Zed, and he jumped upward as the creature’s head slammed into the crystal walls below him. He scrambled up the long body, making his way toward the door of the tank while the creature wailed in panic, flipping its body dangerously. Just as he approached the door, the creatures tail whipped across the tank and slammed Zed against the wall. He heard several of his ribs snap, and fell to the ground, struggling to breath.

“Zed, get that tank closed, now!”, Jim pleaded.

Zed crawled out of the tank, and hit the green button on the control panel. The tank lit up brightly as the door slid closed, and he saw the creatures body lift a little as if floating gently off the ground.

The ship regained control, and Zed could feel the ship pull out of its downward spiral and begin an ascent.

“Yeah!”, Jim yelled in victry, “We did it!”

Coughing suddenly, blood sprayed out of Zed’s mouth and splattered against the beautiful walls of the crystalline tank. Through the blood, he noticed that the creature had stopped writhing and began eating the grass which seemed to grow from thin air at the end of the tank.

Zed laid his head on the floor of the cargo bay, and as he did so, two large diamonds fell out of folds in his clothing.

Jim’s voice reappeared over the intercom, panicked. “Zed, you’re bleeding! You okay?!?”

“The creature shit on me”, he said, coughing through his words.

The world began to fade to brown, and Zed lost consciousness.

Episode 05 - Zombie Apocalypse

“Brains!!”, Zoe screeched in an inhuman voice that chilled Zed to the bone, even as he tried to fight her off. She had become insanely strong, and clung to his clothing as he shoved her off his body.

Unfazed, she jumped at Zed again, hissing grotesquely and gnashing her bloody teeth. This time, he managed to roll back and get his feet under her. He kicked hard with both legs, launching her backward through the air.

Zoe landed headfirst into the metal bed frame, cutting her head wide open. By the time Zed had stood and pulled his pants up, she was running down the hallway at him, the fresh cut on her head spilling blood into her eyes.

Zed was in the kitchen, and he reached into the sink for something- anything- to defend himself with. As she closed in, he wrapped his hand around the handle of a frying pan and swung it hard. It connected with her head, sending her sprawling into the kitchen counter, hitting her head and falling to the floor.

Zoe lay motionless, and Zed backed away from her carefully, expecting her to jump up at any moment. Suddenly, Zed’s heels hit the edge of their couch, and he fell backward into it. His feet hit the flimsy coffee table, flipping it over and sending bottles and shot glasses crashing across the floor. The sound seemed to rouse Zoe, who raised her head slowly and rested her insatiable eyes on Zed.

Zed reached for the blaster in his ankle holster, and aimed it at Zoe. She began to crawl in his direction, raising her body to all fours.

“Braaiiinnnsss”, she hissed.

“Zoe”, Zed said, his gun hand shaking. “Zoe, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you gotta stop. You gotta stop or I’m gonna have to pull this trigger.”

She continued to crawl toward him, sneering. Zoe reached the broken glass, and it sliced her palms and her knees as crawled through it, leaving a trail of smeared blood behind her. Zed noticed she was naked for the first time, and her lack of concern for the pain of the cuts scared him. Zoe was a wuss when it came to pain.

“Zoe, I mean it. I’m going to shoot.”

She continued to crawl, getting closer…

“ZOE!”

She jumped to her feet and dived at him, screaming violently. Zed pulled the trigger on the blaster, and a burst of light filled the trailer. Her momentum brought her on top of him, and he threw her off in fear. She rolled over, and Zed saw that she’d been shot in the head, her hair blackened and smoking from the energy of the blast.

“Goddamn it Zoe! What the hell’s gotten into you!?!” He bent down and tried to shake her and slap her face to rouse her. No response. He checked her pulse. Nothing.

“Shit, SHIT!”, he screamed.

Zed lifted her limp body off the ground and ran out of the trailer, tossing her over the gas tank of his Harley and firing up to the engine. He ripped out of the clearing and onto the highway with a speed he’d never managed before, not thinking so much as acting on instinct.

The familiar landmarks that appeared relatively normal from the air only minutes before looked strange to him. Cars were smashed against trees or abandoned on the highway. The windows of the houses he passed were broken and the doors pulled off their hinges. Zed weaved through the stalled cars on his bike, and ran over the body of an old woman before he had time to swerve. Her arm had been ripped off and he could see that her skull had been cracked open an her brain missing completely.

“What the hell is going on?!?”, Zed yelled, once again speeding full tilt toward town. He could see the smoke rising from Main Street in the distance, and remembered the burning building. He wasn’t going downtown, though, he was headed to the hospital uptown. It was the only hope for Zoe.

Zed ripped up the hill toward the emergency room. He noticed there were none of the usual cars on the road or pedestrians on the sidewalk. It was as if the whole town had gone missing.
Pulling his bike into the roundabout outside the emergency entrance, he let his idling bike fall to the ground behind him as he carried Zoe into the hospital. The doors zipped open automatically. There’s still electricity, he thought to himself as he approached the check in counter.There was a woman behind the glass.

“Lady! My girlfriend needs help!”

The woman- middle aged and wearing a set of scrubs with overly-cute teddy bears and balloons in a gaudy pattern- looked up at him with the same dead eyes that he’d seen on Zoe. She lunged at Zed, banging her face hard against the glass pane and breaking several teeth. Momentarily disoriented, she picked herself up off the counter and threw herself at him again, smashing her face even worse and screaming, “Braaainnns!” at the top of her lungs.

Zed threw Zoe over his shoulder, and drew the blaster from its holster. Ignoring the receptionist, he ran through the double doors into the emergency room, where he encountered a large group of men and women feeding on the corpses of the unfortunate patients and staff members that had succumbed to their violent attacks. Zed stopped, and heard the doors swing shut behind him. The men and women- no, the zombies he thought- looked up from their meals and hissed at him. Within moments, the entire hoard were running at him, bloody faces twisted into grimaces of hunger and rage.

Zed opened fire, sweeping the blaster back and forth across the zombies with a continual stream of energy. Despite zombies in front dropping to the floor, faces melted off from the heat of the blaster, the zombies in the back kept running toward him, at times tripping comically over the bodies of their counterparts.

Backing through the double doors, Zed spared a moment to weld them together with his blaster, as the crowd of zombies piled violently against the doors, sneering at him through the glass windows. Zed heard a hiss behind him, and spun just in time to shoot a zombie in the chest and face as it closed in.

That one was just a kid, he thought to himself, what the fuck happened here?

Zed’s bike was too damaged to ride, so he ran to the ambulance, opening the back doors, shooting the zombie EMT inside, and throwing Zoe in the back. She was dead. He knew that now. He’d come to his senses and made the decision to get the hell out of town. He’d give her a proper burial out in the country, and when he got some goddamned help, he’d do the same for Amber, laying them in the ground together like they were meant to be.

The engine in the ambulance roared to life, and Zed took off toward Main Street. It was the only real way out of town on the old highway, and he was curious about what was going on down there. He wondered if there was anyone normal left, perhaps fighting zombies the way he was now. He decided to flip the ambulance alarm on to try and draw their attention, if they were out there.

The ambulance tore down Medical Avenue, screeched around the corner to Main. What Zed saw their caused him to stop the van.

There before him, wandering aimlessly down the street in every direction, stood a crowd of thousands of zombies. The businesses along both sides of the street were smashed open, and merchandise was pulled out on the sidewalks, mingling with broken glass and pools of blood. The zombies, sensing that some form of intelligent life must be driving the ambulance, stopped in unison and turned to look in his direction.

Zed’s eyes narrowed, he grinned, and he revved the ambulance engine.

“I’m getting through town one way or another”, he said, “Might as well be through you”.

With that, he slammed the ambulance into first gear and rammed the accelerator to the floor. Zed had reached fourth gear by the time he hit the crowd, traveling at a healthy fifty-six miles per hour. The sound of the first couple zombies smashing against the grill made him laugh, but soon, the hoard became too much for the ambulance, and it lost speed. Zombies bounced up and over the van and piled up sickly against the grill. Every other second, the van lurched upward as a pile of zombies slipped beneath the wheels of the vehicle. To Zed’s surprise, the front of the ambulance was caving in from the constant barrage.

Mere seconds after he’d begun his campaign to plow through the zombies on Main Street, the van came to a stop in the middle of the crowd, front grill smashed in and hissing clouds of steam and the front wheels twisted in different directions.

“Fuck!”, Zed yelled.

The zombies crowded up against the sides of the ambulance. Zed locked the two front doors just as zombie fists began smashing against the windows. The back doors of the van swung open, and zombies poured into the ambulance from behind. Zed blasted them easily, flinging them backward into the crowd with the force of the blasts. More zombies climbed in to replace them, and Zed moved toward the doors, sweeping the blaster back and forth across the crowd to keep the ambush at bay.

Behind him, the driver and passenger side windows were broken inward, and zombies began to clamber into the vehicle through the broken shards of glass. Zed knew he couldn’t hold them off on both fronts, so he blasted the crowd outside the back door of the van until he had enough space to climb on top of the vehicle without being pulled down.

Once on top, he spun around, and saw that there were still thousands of zombies surrounding him in each direction. It was as if the entire town had wound up here. Zombies climbed up the vehicle, and he shot them one by one. He didn’t know of the blaster had much energy left, and he intended to stay alive, so he spared as little fire as it took to kill.

The vehicle began to rock back and forth as the zombies on either side pushed. I’m not gonna make it if this thing tips over, he thought, and he shot the zombies along the sides of the ambulance. More zombies raced up from behind them, and their momentum raised the ambulance to rock even more dramatically.

That’s not gonna work, he thought, I’m fucked.

More zombies clambered up the side of the ambulance. Zed spared more blaster fire. The van rocked back and forth, and he could barely keep his balance. In one sickening lurch, the vehicle tipped over. As if in slow-motion, the ambulance rolled onto the zombies below him, and he heard their bones breaking as he himself was thrust out over the hoard of zombies like a crowd-surfer at an ass-rock concert. He saw their blank eyes and their bloody mouths open wide as their next meal descended on them.

Only Zed wasn’t descending. He was being pulled upward by a green beam of light. One zombie in the crowd had been caught in the beam with Zed, and he spared one blast from his laser gun on it, sending it spiraling down into the crowd in his place.

The familiar cargo doors spun open above him, and he was back on Jim’s ship.

“That was too fucking close”, Jim said over the intercom, “Get your ass up here”.

Zed rode the lift up to the control room, and there sat the tentacle-laden protoplasmic green blob that Zed had begun to think of as a friend.

“Jim!”, Zed laughed, “Why the hell did you come back?”

Jim turned toward him as he came out of the lift. “Jim Croce appeared on the ship and told me I had to go back and get you.”

“What?”, Zed asked.

“Don’t make me explain bro, I don’t understand it myself.” Jim's tentacles whipped across the control panel, and the ship began to move down main street toward the town’s only grocery store.

“We’re not going up?”, Zed noticed, “Where are we going?”

Jim grew angry. “You were right about those goddamned heads”, he said, more angry than Zed had ever seen him, “Those little fucks got into my beer downstairs and exhausted the entire supply. I went down to grab another six-pack, and there they were all drunk and rolling around. It’s enough to make you sick.”

Zed laughed, but Jim remained serious.

“We’ve got to pick up some more beer and get the hell off this planet in a hurry”, he continued, “I just haven’t worked out how we’re gonna get that beer outta the store with all those zombies running around.”

“Leave that to me Jim”, Zed said, “I’ve got an idea".

<<<<<>>>>>

The saucer hovered over the street outside the grocery store parking lot, and the cargo doors spun open. Zed, knelt down and peered at the parking lot. There was a group of zombies randomly criss-crossing the parking lot, peering in cars and hunting for human brain-flesh.

This should do the trick, Zed thought to himself, and pushed the bag full of live human heads out of the cargo door. They fell to the street below, and the net holding them together burst open, sending them rolling in every direction. One of them looked up at Zed, yelling, “We supported you!”

Zed shifted his attention to the zombies in the parking lot and yelled, “Here’s your brains assholes! Eat up!”

The zombies from the parking lot broke into a run toward the heads, and the heads flailed their necks in a vain attempt to get away. The pile of heads was a zombie smorgasbord, and Zed knew it would keep them busy long enough for him to get the beer they needed.

Jim flew over the entrance to the grocery store and Zed rode the green beam down to the ground... pulling his blaster out and running into the store. He knew the layout well, and ran straight into the back room to grab a large box cart, rolling it directly the the beer aisle. A stray zombie or two jumped out at Zed, but he made quick work of them with the blaster while loading the cart to the hilt with Bud Light, Miller High-Life and a variety of the fancy micro-brews he loved to blow his paycheck on. Running out of the store, Zed saw that the crowd of zombies out on the street had grown exponentially, but they weren’t in the least bit interested in him or the flying saucer. Not with the pile of easy brains right beneath them.

The green beam pulled Zed and the beer into the ship, and without a second to spare, it rose through the clouds and into space, picking up massive amounts of speed as it went.

Zed reached the control room, and sensed that Jim was frantic about something.

“What’s going on man? Why are you so freaked out?” Zed asked.

“When Croce told me the Earth was suffering a zombie apocalypse, I knew what we were up against. I’m hoping we can get the hell out of dodge before they show up.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Just sit tight and let me fly us out of here”, Jim said, “I’ll explain later.”

Zed sat in one of the chairs and watched Jim work. It’s tentacles were crawling over the complex control console, performing the tasks of an entire crew of pilots.

“Is there anything I can do man?”, Zed asked.

“Yeah, you can shut the hell up”, Jim replied.

The saucer buzzed out of Earth’s atmosphere and continued to pick up speed. They were approaching the Earth’s moon, when it appeared suddenly, as if blinking into existence. It was a ship nearly a fourth the size of the moon. It looked like a flying city to Zed, and the intricacy of its sleek black towers and brilliant lights transfixed him.

“Shit!”, Jim yelled, “This is what I was afraid of!”

Jim elbowed Zed in the chest with a tentacle to get him out of the way, and Zed’s chair fell backward, spilling him across the smooth metallic floor. He was about to protest when he got a look at what Jim was doing. It’s body had spread horizontally, and it’s tentacles were a blur, working every machine in the room.

“Hold on Zed”, was all it spared.

The saucer took a sudden and sickening u-turn, pressing Zed into the floor despite the artificial gravity correction. He could hear the alloys of the saucer groaning beneath him.

In the view screen, Zed saw thousands of fighters pour out of the impossibly large ship and head in their direction.

"What the hell are those?" Zed yelled.

"They're fighters!"

“Why so many!?!”, Zed exclaimed.

“I don't know!”, Jim answered, despite the blurred movements of its extremities as it controlled the ship. "They must know what I am!"

“What the hell are you?”

“At the moment”, Jim replied gravely, “I’m fucked.”

(to be continued...)