Everything I Need to Save my Friend and Doom the Universe

All Victoria wanted was to go back to sleep when her best friend Martha dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night to study a fallen meteorite. Now thanks to a freak accident she's stuck in an alien galaxy,  wearing nothing but her pyjamas and borrowed shoes, hunted by the monstrous General Dranslen, and even all of Martha's genius seems to have no hope of getting them home alive...

~~~~~

I woke up and looked into Martha’s haunted, blood shot eyes. Warmth enclosed me. I still was tucked tightly into my blankets but the stars surrounding Martha suggested I wasn’t in my bedroom.

“Did you... break into my house, climb into my room and drag me me out of the house?”

“Yes.”

“And then...” I felt around the uncomfortable, lumpy surface. “Into your car and out into the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“Um.... why?”

“Because I wasn't sure if I woke you up in the middle of the night you'd agree to come out.” Martha grinned impishly then banged a hand down on my chest and sprang away from the car. “Now come on, get up, we’ve got things to do.”

I pulled myself upright in the back of the car and the blanket fell away. I swore as the cold bit deep against my skin.

“Did you bring me any clothes?”

“Why would I do that? You’ve got pyjamas.”

“Which are hardly known for their insulating nature.” I felt around in the murk. “Did you at least bring me my shoes?”

Silence hung guiltily in the air.

“Would you believe me if I said I meant to bring them?” Martha asked.

“No.” I closed my eyes, flopped back across the seats and wrapped the covers back over myself. “Wheel me back home when you’re done, I’m going to sleep.” I closed my eyes and felt my brain retreat into the happy fog of sleep, but was cut off by the sudden brush of cold rubber touching my nose. I opened my eyes to see converse right in front of my face. Martha’s converse.

 “Take ’em,” Martha insisted.

“Thanks, but you’re a size nine. I barely fill a size six.”

“So you’d rather stay in the car than occasionally trip up over the toe?” Martha cocked an eye.

“So you’d rather you cut your soles up than I cut mine up?”

“I told you, I meant to bring your shoes.” Martha pushed the shoes towards me until they were practically under my nose. “Victoria...” Martha whined.

“Give me one good reason why I should get out of the car,” I said as I cuddled the covers, “and maybe I’ll consider it.”

Let me paint a picture of Martha Marsh. She was trapped perpetually between lanky and chunky. She never had the patience for proper exercise and the consequence made itself known around her belly, but her bones still stuck out awkwardly. I think without the belly fat she would be nothing but elbows, knees, shoulder blades and a chin. She towered over me at almost six feet, sole to scalp.

This is why when she grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me out of the car there was very little I could do except flail.

“Because look at that thing!” Martha yelled, pointing. My eyes adjusted to the low light. Nottingham blazed orange under a bank of cloud five miles away but here, in a middle-of-nowhere field only a farmer knew, everything glistened in blue light billowing out of a ... thing.

It was smashed into the landscape and had obliterated the crops all around it, the size of an overstuffed pumpkin and shaped like a quartz crystal. Every side of it shone like glass. Within it there was... something...

“Are those stars?” I gasped as I slipped slowly out of Martha’s grip. My legs gave out from under me and I stumbled towards the thing. I dropped Martha's shoes and slipped my feet inside. “Stars inside the crystal?”

“I think so,” Martha danced towards it and down into the crater around it.

“Don’t go near it!” I warned.

“Why not?” Martha grinned but hung back just on the edge of the crater.

“What if it’s... er... radioactive or something?”

“Then we’re already dead.” Martha’s smile flashed wider and she skipped towards the crystal. She ran a finger along it and it sang like a wine glass. “Look, the stars inside move when I touch it!”

It was without a doubt the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was as if someone had trapped a deep-space phenomenon and pressed it inside glass. Stars and nebulas swirled around each other drawing the eye further and further in. I didn’t even realise I had dragged myself across the ground towards it until the coolness of the crystal hit my forehead. I felt I could have fallen forever into that crystal.

“Right, now, help me get it into the car.” Martha snapped me back to reality.

“What?” I tore my eyes away from the beauty of the crystal.

“Help me get the crystal into the car. Then we can drive it to my house.” Martha pointed to the end I should lift from and braced herself.

“Er, I think I missed a vital step here…”

“It’s very simple,” Martha rolled her eyes. “You and I pick up the crystal, we put it in the car and then we drive it back to my house.”

“Why?” I looked from the crystal to Martha and narrowed my eyes. “We’re not going to try to sell it, are we?”

“No, I’m going to study it. Now, please, lift?”

“Doesn’t… doesn’t it belong to... er… whoever  owns stuff that falls out of the sky?”

“The person whose land it fell on, but that doesn’t matter, look.” Martha squatted down so her eye drew level with mine. It was hard to ignore the heavy shadows that hung below them, or the angry, tired blood vessels throbbing inside. “This is a once in a lifetime or maybe once in a civilisation discovery. When we report it to… the police or whoever, scientists from Cambridge or NASA or something will come down here and take away the crystal and keep it in some secret vault and study it and we’ll never ever see it again.”

“Right, OK, yes, I can see that.”

“So we pick up the crystal, put it in the car, drive it to my house, I can take some photographs, maybe some samples, run a few tests, then put the crystal back in the car, plop it back here and still have time to be ready for school tomorrow.” Martha grinned.

And when do we sleep? I was desperate to ask, but held back. “Why couldn’t you have done that yourself?”

“Because it’s really, really heavy.” Martha rested a hand on my shoulder. “Now come on. The sooner we lift this into the car the sooner we can have you falling asleep at school.”

“If this turns out to be illegal let it be known this is against my specific objections.” I sighed and braced against the crystal. Every point where my finger touched made a different note, like water on a wine glass.

“Objections noted.” Martha braced on the far side of the crystal. “Now, this is really, really heavy so lift on three, OK?”

Heavy didn’t cover it. I felt as though I was pulling my arms out through my neck as I heaved the thing off the ground. It was only as wide as a car wheel but had to weigh as much as a car itself. My knees locked, my stomach tried to leap out of my mouth and flee. My blood pounded in my ears until eventually, even as I felt my spine about to break, we managed to lift the crystal an inch.

“Up, up, up,” Martha insisted.

“No more up. Up depleted,” I gabbled.

“Up!”

“Can’t up. Serious up shortage. Peak up reached. Up-producing nations empty and bankrupt.”

“Crab walk,” Martha insisted and took a step sideways. “Crab walk to the car. Crab walk.”

“I’m going to kill you...” I groaned. With every step sideways the crystal tried to stay where it was for a second before swinging back towards us like a pendulum. Within seconds we were bouncing back and forth, the crystal pulling us towards the car one moment and back to the crater the next. We hauled the crystal out of its crater and across the twenty feet to where Martha had left her car in a country lane.

“OK, now, kinda… kinda swing it,” Martha muttered.

“Hggluarrbe.” My body was unable to make any coherent response, just as it was unable to help or prevent Martha swinging the crystal further and further until it was finally high enough to drop and watch it roll onto the back seat of the car.

It bounced exactly once and the air split with a creak of groaning suspension. The back tires were almost pressed against the wheel arch but somehow, miraculously, the car held. I wanted to laugh with relief but I was too exhausted. My arms felt like elastic bands pulled too far to go back into shape and my spine burnt.

“Right.” Martha wiped the sweat from her brow. “Now we just have to get to my house, carry it into the shed and we’ll be one third finished.”

“You’re mad. I hate you, and you’re mad,” I muttered between trying to rub some feeling back into my arms.

“I know,” Martha shrugged.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I growled. “I was talking to myself. I should have rolled over and gone back to sleep, no matter what you said. Even if you have found a singing crystal.”

“I’ll tell you what, it’s probably easier to get it out of the car than into the car.” Martha rubbed the back of her head guiltily. “How about you just help me get it to my house and I’ll be the one who puts it back. You can just go to sleep at mine. It’s only a mile and a half to my house.”

“Well, fine. Thank you.”

“Great!” Martha burst into motion and opened the driver’s door, bracing against it and pointing towards her house. “Now, onwards!”

“At least give me time to get inside,” I cursed, tripping over laces as I rushed to the passenger door as the engine burst into life.

“Onwards!”

*****

Martha lived on the outskirts of Nottingham in an old farm house somehow spared by the Nottingham sprawl. Well, I say Martha lived there. I don’t think she spent any time inside the house itself. Even before I met her Martha had taken over one of the outbuildings and turned it into some strange hybrid of laboratory, library and bedroom. This is where we headed.

It was one of the most surreal journeys of my life. The crystal seemed to transform everything we passed with its strange, ethereal light. Familiar shrubs, trees and bushes were now alien and sinister with its blue light. At every turn in the road I expected to see a police car or a fire engine heading towards the crash site, or even just another car that might see the eery glow and discover our theft.

I couldn’t imagine anything worse. They’d call the police, certainly. Then my parents would get involved. Then the whole town – the whole city! I’d become “that girl”; the thief, the weirdo who steals in her pyjamas and borrowed shoes. Even if no-one arrested me I’d never be able to show my face again. I blushed with the imagined embarrassment. My brothers would only be the start of the teasing.

I spared a glance at Martha. Her eyes were shining and I felt as if I could see inside her mind. For her, in this moment, there was nothing but the crystal. It was a discovery like no other in history and she didn’t care a moment if she was caught. The thought didn’t even enter into her mind. The only thing that mattered to her was getting the crystal inside her laboratory.

It felt like we spent an eternity winding through country roads. Certainly it made my feet feel that way, rubbing and sliding inside Martha’s clown shoes. I felt bad thinking that, seeing as she had gone without so I could protect my feet, but then I remembered it was all her fault I was doing this and the guilt swiftly faded. Despite my feelings my watch showed it was scarcely fifteen minutes before we were sailing through the farm gate and towards Martha’s private laboratory.

Light glinted off heavy steel. The crystal illuminated a huge slab of metal that formed the door into the laboratory. On her seventeenth birthday Martha insisted her parents rebuild her laboratory to professional standard, including airtight doors and a sterile ventilation system. And because Martha was an only child with rich parents, she got it. And because they were very rich parents they had thrown a car into the bargain. I was only slightly jealous. Not because I wanted a laboratory, but because she held her parents’ ear like that. If I wanted something I practically had to stand on the kitchen table and shout to get it.

“Look away while I enter the code,” Martha ordered as she got out and ran towards the door.

“It’s not 182/30 is it?” I said. Martha’s two favourite bands both had numbers in their name.

“N... no.” Martha glared and rested her hand on the keypad. “Now look away, will you?”

I obliged. Her hand was already hovering over the one key anyway. The seal of the door cracked open and air hissed through the gap like some beast was slithering out. Martha hauled on the door and it swung slowly until the doorway was wide enough for us to pass through.

“Here we go, one final push,” Martha announced, and took up station next to me at the back door of the car. With a grunt of effort we heaved and slid the crystal off the back seat. The suspension jumped upwards with a lurch and almost sent us tumbling as we waddled across the few feet of tarmac and into the laboratory.

It was the first time I’d seen the inside since she had had it rebuilt. We hauled the crystal into an area a little smaller than my bedroom, that looked like the common room at school. With a grunt and a gasp we dropped it in the centre and I danced around trying to shake some feeling back into my arms.

The broken-down armchair, old engine hoist and aging fridge I remembered from before, but someone had moved them into the corner. A microwave and a kettle joined them and someone had put in cheap countertops and cupboards.

The far wall was of glass, and beyond it I could see... well, I think even universities would have been envious. Along with the usual things I’d expect from a laboratory like Bunsen burners and the complete glassware collection, Martha had filled it with delicate scientific instruments. Most of them I didn’t even recognise. A 3D printer sat paused in the middle of a job, and I knew the spectrometer from my chemistry coursework, but the others just looked like big beige boxes. Big, expensive beige boxes.

The other thing that struck me the moment I walked in was the smell of the air. It was like what came out of a hair dryer, sterilised, burnt and utterly devoid of character. When the steel door hissed shut there wasn’t any hope for fresh air to replenish it.

“Right,” Martha slid open a door in the glass wall and walked into her laboratory proper. She grabbed a metal cart and wheeled it back to the crystal. “Just help me with this and I can let you go to sleep.”

“You had a trolley this entire time?” I glared at the cart and then at Martha.

“Yes?”

“Then why did you need me?”

“I didn’t, I just thought you’d want to be a part of this,” Martha said. She added, loud enough for me to hear but too quiet to be sincere, “So sorry if I was wrong.” She grabbed at the old engine hoist, wheeled it over and ran the chain around the crystal. Metal ground against metal as she winched the crystal up, inch by inch until with a grunt of effort she could swing it over the trolley. Metal screamed as the trolley took the weight of the crystal from the winch.”You lost a wheel,” I pointed. The axle was completely unusable but was still attached to the rest of the cart.

“I’ll cope,” Martha undid the hoist chain and dragged the cart back into her lab and pushed it towards a work bench. Once the crystal was safely inside the lab she returned with a dark look on her face. She pointed to the old arm chair. “I’ll switch these lights off and it should be dark enough for you to go to sleep.” The big lights in the ceiling went dark in an instant leaving only a few desk lamps on in the lab, and the glistening crystal. “I’m sure Daddy can give you a lift into school tomorrow and I’ll put the crystal back myself.”

She said it so swiftly and so coldly she could have been describing that there was no escape from the piranha pit and even if there was I would still have to defeat her henchmen made of bees; this is what I deserved for abandoning her.

But before I could reply she had shut the door on me and returned to the crystal. There was no hearing anything through that glass. I watched Martha heave the crystal onto a work bench and lower a microscope down to it.

Unsurprisingly the feeling of weight nearly ripping off my arms was extremely good at waking me up. Half an hour ago I felt an almost magnetic impulse to stay under the covers, but now my brain was firing on all cylinders the last thing it wanted to do was sleep. The fact I’d got Martha angry at me only made it worse.

I looked around the little common room; there were several worrying signs. Empty pots of instant noodles were stacked all over the place. Coffee rings lined empty mugs and old Kit Kat wrappers filled the bin. They all said, ‘here is a person who doesn’t sleep and eats only to keep their brain moving.’

It was quite irritating to be in the shadow of a genius, and Martha was a complete genius. Everyone knew it. She had perfect marks in all the subjects she cared about and ignored the ones she didn’t to feed even more time into the subjects she loved. She was the only one in the school permitted to study five full A-levels. All it would take was for a university to round off the rough edges of her personality and instil some rigour into her scientific method and she’d be ready to change the world.

It was hard sometimes; to be proud of an A you struggled so hard for when your best friend sneezed one out with barely a thought. Especially when that best friend didn’t even realise they were making you feel small. I was the captain of the netball team but people didn’t think of me as Victoria: Captain of Netball. They thought of me as Victoria: Girl who hangs around with Martha.

But despite it all Martha was my friend and she did care for me. That was why she drove me out in the middle of the night. She didn’t understand why I don’t actually want her to steal me while I sleep, but she wanted me to experience the same excitement and wonder she felt while looking at the crystal. She only wanted me to be happy. As a friend I had a duty to do the same for her.

“So... what’re you doing with the crystal?” I slid the glass door open a crack.

“I thought you were going to sleep,” Martha didn’t look at me. She opened a drawer sulkily and drew out a hammer and chisel, like they had in the wood workshops at school.

“I’m not tired anymore,” I said, which was the truth at least.

“I’m going to see if I can take a sample of the crystal,” Martha said and rested the chisel edge against the crystal surface. “If I hit the cleavage plane right it should come off so cleanly no-one would ever know a piece was missing.”

“You’re going to split it?” I gasped. “Won’t the stars leak out?”

Martha shot me a strange look and hung in the act of swinging her mallet.

“No...” She said after a while. “I don’t think so.”

The instant she swung the mallet my ears filled with a scream like glass grinding on glass. My eyes scrunched shut and my hands rammed over my ears before I knew what I was doing. When the sound died away I spared a glance. I hadn’t realised how far a face could scrunch until I had to consciously unscrunch it.

The chisel cut into the ceiling; the hammer wedged into the wall. Martha stood frozen in the act of smashing apart the crystal with a bemused expression on her face. It did me a little good to see her bemused.

“That... shouldn’t have happened,” Martha said.

“Yeah, I’d be more careful next time.” The chisel was still wobbling in the plaster.

“No, I mean it shouldn’t have happened scientifically,” Martha said and crouched down to get her eye as close to the crystal as she could. There wasn’t a mark on it. “It entirely reversed the full force of the strike into the hammer and chisel. Maybe even added some extra energy to it. There is nothing in nature that can do that.”

“There is nothing in nature that has galaxies floating in it and reflections of the deepest depths of space as if you could fall in forever and ever and float amongst the stars and feel alien sun on your –” I didn’t notice I was babbling. My eyes felt drawn to the stars inside the crystal. They swirled around each other now. Galaxies in motion, spinning and twirling in cosmic ballet.

“I think I agitated it,” Martha said, so softly it was almost a whisper. She lifted a hand up to grab at a camera suspended on an arm from the ceiling. “I should probably record this.” She pointed it at the swirling stars.

“Can you agitate a crystal?”

“Well maybe it’s more than a crystal.” Martha spoke slowly but her eyes were moving fast. I could tell her brain was turning over thousands of potential solutions every second. “It could be some sort of computer or information storage system for alien intelligence. It is not so vast a leap. Already in laboratories they are experimenting on using crystals for high density storage. Maybe what we perceive as stars inside it are actually computational cycles deep within the crystal?” Martha’s eyes turned to me as wide as saucers. “Do you realise what this could mean? I mean, I thought this was just some strange meteorite, but what if this is it? What if this is the definitive proof of alien intelligence?”

I rolled my eyes. “Why would alien intelligence drop their computer onto Earth?”

“Why would an explorer in deepest Africa drop a phone in the jungle? It was probably an accident. Maybe they come to check up on us from time to time to see whether we are ready to join the galactic community? What if this – no. No. Bad Martha. Bad, bad Martha!” Martha slapped herself very hard on the back of the head. “No extrapolation without sufficient data.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t hit yourself on the back of the head? That’s where your brain is.”

“I deserve it when I am an idiot.” Martha gave herself one more solid slap for good measure and rested her hands on the table. She stroked the edges as if to reassure herself they were still there. “I got caught up in the moment and started creating hypotheses and acting as if they were true without testing them.”

“So it’s not an alien computer?”

“It might be an alien computer.” Martha raised her finger to correct me. “But we have to test the theory. If I can coax some meaningful electrical data out of it we can assume the hypothesis is correct. If I can’t, we can assume it is just an interestingly strange rock.”

“And to do that...?” Martha was already grabbing things from various supply cupboards and plugging in electrical equipment. Before my very eyes a cradle of electrical measures coated the crystal, like sensors on an intensive care patient. They fed into a tiny computer that was little more than a circuit board with a monitor attached. From idea to finished creation took Martha less than five minutes.

“How much electricity do you think it will need?” Martha paused and drummed her fingers on the crystal top creating a few strange chords.

“How much do computers use?” I asked.

“Well that’s the thing...” Martha squirmed one way then another as if the possibilities were a pendulum in her brain. “My little PC there takes barely three watts,” she pointed to the circuit board. “But most laptops take between ten and twenty watts, and yet a good gaming PC could eat up to five hundred watts.” She paused. “Although quite a lot of that is cooling fans.”

“And if you use too much electricity it’ll what, break?”

“Well, one of our silicon chipsets would, it isn’t an unreasonable extrapolation to assume that if this is some kind of computer it has similar weaknesses.” Martha rubbed her chin.

“Well, er, resistance is roughly constant, right?” I said racking my brain to remember some physics. “If you start at a low power, like, one watt, and work up slowly it should reach its operating point and start spurting out data before you overvolt it. Right?”

“Brilliant. Done.” Martha grabbed the camera and brought it in close. “Starting test with one watt.” She flipped the switch. Instantly the light in the crystal grew brighter. The stars inside stopped their random fluidity and all started rotating in unison. Martha clapped with joy. “It works! It works, Victoria!”

“What about the data?”

“Er... nothing clear yet...” Martha looked at the computer screen. “A few blips and bursts but nothing consistent. Nothing that... proves anything. Increasing to two watts.” The crystal grew brighter again and the stars started moving faster but nothing appeared on the computer screen. “Three watts.” Again the brightness increased and the stars span faster. “Four watts.” By the time Martha reached twenty watts the crystal lit the room as brightly as when all the lights were on. The dull blue glow turned into sharp white brilliance. The stars inside span too fast to see.

“I think before we go any further you’ll need a pair of these,” Martha said and threw me a pair of dark glasses. Laboratory grade, they shut out everything but the crystal itself.

“Are... are you sure we should go further?”

“No!” Martha laughed and snapped a pair of glasses on. “Rising to thirty watts!”

Up and up it went, through the double digits and into the triple digits, through the hundreds and into the thousands. By the time we hit a kilowatt I could see the entire room through the smoked glass! And yet the light wasn’t hot as if it had come from the sun or a light bulb. It was just light.

Martha paused to rebuild her contraption to cope with the higher intensity of electricity but showed no signs of wanting to stop. Who cares if we were getting junk data out of the machine? We had discovered something no-one else in the history of the Earth had ever seen.

“Two kilowatts!” Martha clapped her hands with delight.

“Surely the fuses can’t take it!” I wanted to back away from the crystal but there was nowhere to back away to. It felt like I stared at a tremendous explosive, trembling and waiting to explode.

“Oh we can take it,” Martha didn’t take her hand off the knob, rising through the twenty hundred watts faster and faster. “When we had the place brought up to professional standard that included the wiring. I could bring a full megawatt through these cables!”

As if to prove it she hauled on her machine up through twenty kilowatts, to thirty kilowatts, to forty, to fifty, all the way up to a hundred. I felt the energy thrumming through the floor. There was more electricity in this room alone than was used by an entire street of houses.

“Martha....”

“Oh, we’re just getting started!” She flurried around her machine, swapping cables and grabbing boxes in the brilliant light of the crystal. I could feel fear choking at me now. I didn’t trust this crystal and I was terrified of what it was going to do.

“No, we need to stop, we need to hand this over to the professionals,” I said. “Someone who can do it safely.” That wasn’t going to sway Martha. As far as she was concerned this was safe. “Someone who can... give it the energy it needs.”

“That,” Martha punctuated her words with a snap of cables coming together, “would be us.” She’d replaced every single piece of her machine with heavy duty cable. It looked like the inside of a power station or coiled vines of the deep forest. “Rising to two hundred kilowatts.”

“Martha –” Even behind the protective glasses the crystal was becoming uncomfortably bright.

“Three hundred kilowatts.”

I could almost taste the electricity in my mouth. I could feel the hairs rising on my arms. This was going to get us killed. And not just romantically struck down in our folly. That level of electricity would explode us.

“Martha we need –”

“Five hundred kilowatts!”

The crystal was too bright to look at now even through the glasses. It had to be as bright as the sun itself. If I took my glasses off for even a second I’d have my retinas burnt out of me.

“Seven hundred and fifty kilowatts!” Martha could have been laughing or crying, I couldn’t tell. She was utterly caught up in the moment. She wasn’t even looking at the computer to see if any data was coming out now. I couldn’t let this go on. I needed to stop her machine and stop her and maybe, just maybe, she would forgive me.

“Eight hundred!”

I leapt for the bundle of distant cables. I could see the heavy duty junction box in the far corner. It was as big as an encyclopaedia and all the cables poured out of it like snakes.

“N-nine hundred.” Martha’s stutter made me turn. The crystal was rising out of its cradle and started to spin slowly like the stars inside it had.

“That’s it, I’m ending this!” I yelled and reached for the breakers.

“NO!” Martha cannoned into me and smacked us both against the counter on the other side of the room.

“It’s gonna kill us!” I kicked out at Martha and pulled away only to have her grab onto my leg and pull me back to the ground. In a one-on-one fight Martha was almost a foot taller with all the strength to match.

“It’s not going to kill us!” Martha hooked her long arms around me and held me so tight I could barely move. I struggled and squirmed but she didn’t let go. “It’s just going to –”

Lightning arced across my vision and struck the wall. Martha dropped me instantly and stumbled back. Another bolt of lightning burst across the room. I turned to the crystal. It crackled with energy. Tendrils of lightning crisscrossed its surface and spread out until they shot across the room. My eye fell on the watt counter. As Martha had leapt for me she had cranked it as far as it would go. One megawatt. One thousand kilowatts. One million watts of electricity.

“Oh sugar-snaps,” Martha groaned. Lightning shot out from the crystal and struck every wall of the laboratory at once. The crystal span faster and faster and the lightning grew thicker and thicker. Martha leapt at me, not to attack, but to shield. The last thing I saw before she landed was her grimace of remorse.

The air shattered in a crescendo of thunder as Martha landed on me and everything went dark.

*****

Those seconds that followed the lightning strike... I think my brain simply shut down and refused to record what was going on. The first thing I remembered after the event was elation flooding me when I realised I could still feel my heart beating. I wasn’t dead.

The only thing I could feel around me was Martha holding me as tight as a child holds a bear. As the tension wound down and I relaxed my muscles I realised I was holding her just as tightly. I felt like a monster letting her go first but once I began she let go as well.

I couldn’t see anything even with my open eyes so I risked removing the protective glasses. I’d either go blind instantly or be blind already. I pulled them off. It was dark, the world lit only by the faint glow of the crystal.

“Did we blow the transformer?” Martha asked as she pulled her own glasses off.

“Depends,” I said. “Would blowing the transformer turn off the gravity?”

“What?”

We were floating lazily four feet up in the air, very gently drifting towards the ceiling and away from each other. Our hair billowed as if it was under water. Well, Martha’s hair billowed. My hair was too short to billow; it waved, at best. All the equipment was drifting at the ends of their electrical cables. The cart gently bounced off the ceiling. The crystal floated in the middle of the room in its cradle. There was no sign anything untoward had happened to it. It was exactly like we found it in the field. Only floating.

“Maybe... maybe the crystal is an anti-gravity device,” Martha said. “Or the levitation module for an alien craft.”

“Then why would it fall out of the sky?”

“I don’t know,” Martha wailed. She moved to stamp her foot in irritation and only succeeding in setting herself spinning in the air. “Why would giving a crystal a megawatt of electricity cause anti-gravity? I don’t know what’s going on, Victoria! I am operating without a map here!” Her flailing brought her to the wall and she used it to bounce towards her computer. “Maybe the exterior cameras can tell us something. Maybe show us how far the anti-gravity field extends.”

I pulled myself along one of the cabinets towards the light switch and flicked it off and on a few times. Nothing happened.

“No electricity,” I said.

“Figures. Maybe we did blow the transformer.” Martha tapped a few things into her computer. It was unresponsive. “I have an ipad somewhere...” She pulled open some drawers and tools began to rise out of them. Only a soldering iron escaped to float free.

“What good will an ipad be?”

“Phone lines have a separate electrical source and an ipad has a battery,” Martha said. “I’d be able to plug it into the phone line and check the internet to see if the news says anything. If this caused a large-scale brownout we might be in a lot of trouble and we’ll have to work quickly to come out the other side unscathed.”

“Good point,” I nodded. “But I thought the term was blackout.”

“Blackout is if the system fails. Brownout is the electrical supply on the cusp of failing.” Martha plugged a modem into her ipad and then the other end into a phone line. I guess wifi needed the mains. “Drawing a megawatt of power might have caused a brownout which the National Grid isolated to our junction box and cut us off at their end.”

“Er... right,” I said, feeling helpless. I had no idea what to do in this situation and Martha was just taking charge. What do you do when the laws of the universe are broken in front of your eyes?

“No... phone lines...” Martha said and gulped nervously. “Not even able to make a phone call.” Her eyebrows knotted together. She looked around as if trying to find windows.

“Should we try going outside?” I asked.

“I don’t—”

Some guttural and phlegm filled noise burst out of the ipad speaker. It sounded like a man choking to death on a fish bone with dolphin clicks and whistles mixed in.

“That doesn’t sound good.” I stated the obvious.

The voice – although I struggle to even call it that – paused. A second voice joined it and seemed to have a competition at shouting at us. Martha and I stared at her ipad in growing horror and I felt a tugging in my gut towards the left hand wall.

It was faint, but looking at Martha’s billowing hair confirmed it. There was a definite return of gravity pulling us towards the left hand wall. That was almost as worrying as the horrendous voice coming out of the ipad.

“What’s happening?” I said as I bumped against the wall.

“I... I... I don’t know!” Martha bounced, hands and knees on the wall. “Nightmares? Hell? Wizards? Revenge for all the ant farms I forgot to feed? Your guess is as good as mine right now, Victoria!”

The feeling of gravity grew stronger and stronger until I just about felt comfortable standing up on the wall without springing up into the air. A groaning above me alerted to me the spectrometer swinging on the end of its wire. It wasn’t the only one.

“Move!” I grabbed Martha and hauled her towards me. In the strange sideways gravity she weighed less than a sack of potatoes. The industrial 3D printer smashed into where Martha had been moments before. On Earth it weighed almost three hundred kilos. Even in this half-gravity it could have killed her.

The intensity of the words coming out of the ipad increased; angrier, louder and more vicious. I dreaded to think what would happen when we met the speaker of that hideous voice.

The walls of the laboratory started to rumble and shake. Equipment poured out of drawers and clattered onto the wall around us. A thousand pounds worth of glassware smashed to pieces, another grand’s worth of high-end computing shattered from the fall. Whatever the crystal had done it had utterly wrecked at least ten years’ worth of Martha’s birthday presents.

Then, as suddenly as the rumbling had started it stopped with a clunk. The entire laboratory bounced and fell still. Gravity was still going in the wrong direction, wallwards, and felt half as strong as it should be, but it wasn’t getting any stronger and we’d finally stopped shaking.

So had the voice on the ipad, I realised. The silence now it was gone was deafening.

“What... what do you think...is it...” I struggled to find the right question. “Is it over?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Martha was barely able to speak. Her stockinged toes brushed the edge of some of her broken things. They rattled loud in the silence. I moved to rest an arm on her shoulder but a crackling from the door made us both turn.

Red hot metal was spitting and crackling as it melted out of the cracks in the solid steel. Whether we looked outside or not something was coming in. Without a conscious thought in my head I reached out for Martha’s arm and drew her in close.

What came through those doors was utterly unhuman. It was squat, probably four feet high, and had four stumpy legs. The body was like a large sheep, or maybe a small cow, and hairless. The front of it split into a large, wide mouth. It didn’t seem to have any clear head. The front was thicker and taller than the back and... things were embedded in it. If they were eyes there were too many of them and had no discernible pupil. If they were noses they were nothing but a slimy pit and there were still too many of them.

Perhaps, I started to shake at the thought, they were for some kind of sense that I had never even imagined.

From the top of its ‘head’ sprouted two long, opposable tentacles or trunks, I never decided what the best word for them was. They weren’t arms, and I found out later they were remarkably evolved ears. The tentacle ended in four wobbling, boneless fingers. The fingers gripped guns. They were unmistakably guns. The design of a device to shoot something very deadly at another being has changed little in hundreds of years.

Gibberish poured out of their mouths as more swarmed through the glass door of the common room and into the laboratory. Out of reflex around anyone with guns Martha and I raised our hands. Similarly out of reflex my heart tried to pull itself out of my chest, run away and found a samba music school.

I felt a rush of alien air hit my face as they approached. It reeked of sulphur and... lilac flowers. But it didn’t burn to breathe, so that was a plus. The alien in front waved his gun at us and yelled something unintelligible so I didn’t have long to think about the air quality.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language pleasedon’tshootus!” my voice got higher and faster until it was almost a squeak. The alien paused and waved at his men to slow their advance.

He spoke again in his horrendous guttural fishbone language and I was still completely unable to understand.

“I can’t... I can’t understand.” I shook my head and my eyes widened so far I thought my eyelids were going to cross themselves on the back of my eye.

“I’m Martha,” Martha lowered one hand to press it against her chest and emphasised her name. “This is Victoria.” She pressed her hand against my chest.

“Vik’Torah,” the creature said. There were no facial expressions to read, it didn’t have a face, but I swear it was glowering. “Maritya.”

“Yes!” Martha clapped her hands but froze when twenty guns pointed in her direction.

“Maybe that was a bad idea,” I muttered.

“Gilko*lek moshingko retlin primitive sirento time for,” the lead alien started speaking. It was like the tuning of an old radio. Fragments of understandable speech were coming in through the static. The alien seemed to catch our comprehension and carried on talking.

“Understand grlkrinknar better now?” the creature lowered his rifle.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Understand you better now I,” the creature continued. “Slowly learn translation microbes in head. Simple start complex time later.”

“Translation microbes?”

 The creature paused and then shook its torso. “Time not I have for primitives.” The creature raised its rifle again and pointed it right at my chest. “You primitives, I soldier. You prisoner.”

“We’re your prisoner.” I nodded and raised my hands. “Whatever you say.”

“How you get here?” the creature demanded after he processed this.  “No hyperdrive do you have.”

“Where is here?” Martha asked.

“I think we can safely assume its somewhere in space,” I said.

“How did you get here?” The creature pressed its rifle barrel into my chest. Its grasp of English was near fluent now.

“We don’t know!” I said and suppressed the urge to vomit. “We found that crystal, put some electricity in it, next thing we know you’re yelling at us through the ipad and cutting through our door.” There was a pause.

“You have no idea how you got here?” He pushed the rifle against me again.

“No, no idea, just crystal + electricity = you standing here yelling at me!”

One of the aliens stepped up to the one pushing the gun into my chest and whispered something.

“Well go check then,” the creature holding the gun to my chest said almost sarcastically. The whisperer pulled its way across our broken equipment and inspected the crystal with its tentacles.

“I think this... is the crystal, sir,” the whispering alien said.

“I see.” The alien almost seem to sigh and then struck me across the temple.

“Stop it!” Martha yelled.

“It’s alright Martha,” I held up a hand for her to calm down. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should.

“Tell me why you have the Eternity Crystal on your... craft,” it demanded.

“I don’t know what an ‘eternity crystal’ is!” I said. The alien seemed to be glowering again with its strange, pit-like eyes.

“That is the Eternity Crystal,” it said after a while, pointing at the crystal. “Why would primitives like you have it?”

“It fell out of the –” Martha but a tentacle across the mouth silenced her.

“Didn’t ask you. Asked this one.” A jab with the rifle punctuated his point.

“We found it on our planet. It had crashed to the ground. We took it to study it and we thought maybe it was a computer, or had some data on it, so we fed it electricity and now we’re here, and that’s honestly all we know please stop poking me with your rifle.” Without realising, I had started crying. It was all too much. I’d had two hours sleep, a trek through the countryside in my pyjamas and now an alien was interrogating me.

It rubbed one of its tentacle fingers against my tears.

“Hmm, the secretions of truth, I think,” the creature said and then turned away. It said something untranslatable that sounded like swearing.

“This is over my head.”

“Isn’t everything?” Martha rammed her hand down her throat the moment the words were out of her mouth, her eyes wide and shining like the moon.

“You four secure the Eternity Crystal for transport,” the alien ordered his men, apparently ignoring Martha’s comment entirely. “You three go get a hover-dolly for it. You four are with me. We’re taking the prisoners to General Dranslen.” The alien that I now had to assume was some sort of sergeant or officer turned back to us. “Do you understand me well now primitives?”

“Yes, I think we can understand you pretty clearly,” I nodded and rubbed my tears away.

“Then understand this. You are now prisoners of the Legion of Doom under the Authority of the Omnikrator. Everything that belongs to you and everything you are will be audited to ascertain if it is of use to the Omnikrator. Then you will be released –”

“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” Martha said, sarcastically. “We’ll be released when we’re god knows how many light years away from home and our ship is a floating shed.”

“Released into the sweet embrace of Death.” The alien concluded.

“Oh.”

“This way, prisoners,” the alien ordered. They didn’t handcuff us. I guess cuffs would slide right off their tentacles. We hauled ourselves over the barrier formed by what used to be the wall, out through the door and onto stinging cold metal.

“Oh. Wow.” Martha had gone first so she looked up first. Then I looked up.

Space opened up ahead of us. Not space as in openness but space, the infinite void. Blackness filled with stars. And yet, and yet above us was a great ceiling, and starships shooting past like fighter planes. We were in a hangar, like an aircraft carrier’s deck, and the great panorama of space ahead of us was the fightercraft’s passage to the stars.

Flashes of light filled the dark infinity beyond the hangar, and that’s when I realised the stars were not stars. They were starships, each kilometres long, hundreds of kilometres away and each one trying to smash the others to pieces.

I must have seemed like a gawping tourist because after a few moments I felt a sharp poke in the small of my back.

“Perhaps now, primitive, you understand the gravity of exactly where you are,” the sergeant alien said. “Now move. Dranslen will be very interested in you.”

*****

They poked, prodded and chivvied us across the floor of the great hangar. I didn’t realise it at the time, but a quick glance behind me was the last glimpse I’d ever have of Martha’s laboratory. The little piece of Earth was jarringly out of place in a flock of starships. We were lucky, I suppose, to have appeared so close to a starship. Had the laboratory appeared almost anywhere else in the universe Martha and I would have faced the choice between the slow, lingering death of asphyxiation or opening the door and dying immediately in space.

It crept over me then like a chill; the horrendous realisation that I was in deep space. I was lost light years away from my family and hostile forces held me hostage. The feeling crept up my spine and created a purple fizzing in my brain. A lump weighed down in my throat while my head was lighter than air.

I’d never see my family again. I’d never play Halo with Mark or wander the countryside with Tom ever again. We’d never drive to Cardigan Bay or sit around tolerating each other at Christmas again. I’d never see the netball team again. I’d probably never even play netball again. I’d never finish my A-levels or go to university or get married or have children or go to Paris. I’d never tell my family I loved them. I wanted to throw up, I wanted to run and never stop running. My vision blurred as the crushing weight of my lost future came crashing down on me. As I took a step forward I felt my legs start to give out from under me. This was it, I was fainting, and my captors would probably kill me rather than wake me up again.

“Have you noticed,” Martha’s voice dragged me back to reality just as much as her hands caught me from falling, “that our captors are a bit slow?”

“What?” was all I could manage. I hadn’t been watching the aliens at all, I’d just been fretting. But that was Martha. The fact she had probably lost out on ever seeing her parents again didn’t bother her. She simply focussed on the new puzzle the universe had thrown in her lap. “They seem to move fast enough.”

“No, I mean watch their –” Martha was cut off with a gasp as one of our captors poked its rifle hard into her spine.

“Quiet! No talking until you see Dranslen!” The reminder of how close we were at any moment to an instant and unceremonious death held our tongues.

We were ferried towards a hub like an air traffic control tower. All around us the air thronged with noise and aliens. Engines roared as ships shot out to join the battle or returned for repairs. Teams of workmen yelled at each other for tools whose names were apparently untranslatable or so far beyond my comprehension I didn’t recognise them. Medics hauled half-dead pilots out of fighters, trying desperately to stop the flow of blood or bandage a burn while a fresh pilot climbed into the fighter ready to take it out to the battle. Most of the aliens were the four legged, stumpy creatures that had captured us, but the pilots were something else. Thin, ethereal creatures that looked like a stiff breeze could snap them in half. They glided towards their fighter craft on a mass of legs too numerous to count. We were a very, very small piece of a very large battle.

Elevators filled the control tower’s base and our captors drove us towards them. Thinking of Martha’s comment, I watched our captors carefully. Like on Earth a button summoned the elevator and a bell chimed when it arrived. Martha and I were both moving for almost a full second before our captors moved.

It wasn’t that they were slow physically, I realised. They moved and spoke just as fast as Martha and I, but their reaction times were slower. That explained the pauses when they talked. It took longer for them to hear me and longer for their response to get from brain to mouth. If used at the right time it could be just the advantage we needed. I glanced at Martha and a flash of understanding passed between our eyes. At the right time, we’d both be ready.

Inside the elevator the controls were set into the wall at three different heights. One was about two feet off the ground, perfect for our captors. One was about four feet up, a comfortable height for Martha and I and the ethereal pilot species. Finally there was a control box almost six feet high. I dreaded to think who, or what, needed that. The elevator itself could have fitted an elephant inside.

Our captors pressed in their order and the elevator began to plummet deeper inside the ship. Gravity didn’t get any stronger or weaker as we moved. Was this just the strongest force they were able to generate, or is this what the little aliens had evolved in?

I don’t know how many floors we passed through before the elevator came to a stop. When the elevator doors opened hot air rolled in, still laden with the bizarre mix of sulphur and lilac. It was a sickly mix to breathe and, I think, the real reason my body had tried to faint earlier.

It was an inauspicious moment for the first human to walk the decks of an alien space craft. Other than our captive guard, we passed few aliens, and those we did had the grim and determined look of men who knew the situation was grave. I am not sure how I was able to read the expression of an alien whose facial features were dark, slimy pits and a horrendous mouth, but somehow that was the impression I got.

The corridors started to get wider and more impressive the further we walked, and distant shouting became louder and louder; not the chaotic maelstrom of an argument but the firm voice of authority.

The orders reached their peak as we approached a set of double doors at least twice my height. A scurrying alien escaping the inside gave us a glimpse of the chaos within: holograms, barked orders, status reports, flurried activity, some dark shadow whirling around the room, and then it was gone, the inferno of noise trapped behind solid steel.

“You will wait in the anteroom for General Dranslen.” Doors opened into a small room and our captors ordered us inside. There was nothing in it but a pair of chairs designed for a four-legged body, a photograph of an alien world hanging on the wall, and another door on the far side.

Our captors retreated and the door clicked shut with a firm locked sound. Martha’s attempt to prise it open confirmed it. The door on the far side didn’t want to open either. On the bright side we were alone; on the dark side we were trapped. On the darker side we were on a warship in the middle of a battle and at any moment we could be blown to bits.

“Well—” I began, but Martha instantly put a finger to my lips. I recoiled and brushed the taste of her skin off my mouth. “What—”

Martha’s eyes darted to all the corners of the room and her hands mimed the action of a butterfly. It took a few minutes to understand what she meant. Bugged. The room could be full of microphones to hear us spill our guts figuratively and used against us so we spill our guts literally. Better to stay silent.

We stayed in the room for about half an hour, if my watch was still accurate in the depths of space. The chairs designed for the four legged aliens worked OK as benches, but were higher than I liked and a strange shape. Martha took an interest in the photograph and clearly wanted to talk about it but fought to stay silent. Better to let General Dranslen condemn us based on interrogations with him than for something we said now.

The far door opened with a jolt and we were ushered at gunpoint into the room beyond. Our captors were there with the crystal we found on Earth. The so called Eternity Crystal. It was still giving out its faint blue light and dappling the room in ripples of starlight. But that wasn’t what drew my eye. Behind the desk was some... thing. It was as black as black could be. The skin sucked up and digested all light that fell upon it. Deeper shadows hinted at some kind of wings behind it and light glinted on clawed hands. There were no eyes, nose or ears. The only feature it had was a mouth. It glistened full of saliva and teeth. It smiled when we were brought out.

“Kneel before General Dranslen!” our captor ordered, and its tentacles forced us roughly to the ground.

“Oh, now, now, sergeant, there is no need for that. They don’t know what they’re kneeling for.” The monster’s mouth moved, so the voice had to belong to the monster, but it felt so incredibly wrong. The voice was cultured, erudite... British. It sounded like a voice that hosted a talk show on Radio 4. “They may stand.” The dark creature indicated with a hand that we should rise. Each of its six fingers ended with a kitchen-knife claw.

“Th-thank you,” I stuttered.

“Now, I have been briefed on what you told my Sergeant Grilkrek,” General Dranslen said. “Primitives from an unknown planet, discovered the crystal, accidentally travelled to within a demi-lek of our ship, and have no knowledge of who we are and what we are doing. You will understand why I find that a little hard to believe.”

“Well, yes, I can see that—” I started.

“You will be gratified then to hear that I do believe you,” General Dranslen rested his hands together. The claws ran over each other with a clack.

“Er, yes,” I started to laugh from relief. Here I was, standing in front of an alien monster in my pyjamas and I was laughing. If I tried to stop I probably would have thrown up, crawled into a ball and wept.

“That is the mythical Eternity Crystal,” General Dranslen thrust a claw towards it. “I confirm that. And I believe you two primitives were, ha, primitive enough to ignite its power by accident. However, I somehow doubt it merely fell to your planet. Are you sure there was not strange news in your local bazaar or town criers? Perhaps recent disappearances, or a new war in a far-off land?”

“Er, no, I don’t think so,” I looked to Martha. She shrugged. “But I don’t exactly watch the news.”

“So there was nothing that could indicate the presence of aliens on your world?”

“No...” I said trying to rack my brain, occasionally hiccupping with an escaped giggle of fear. “I mean some people think aliens visited us, in Roswell, or whatever, right?” I looked to Martha.

“Conspiracy theorists. There is no proof intelligent life has ever visited the Earth,” Martha said.

“Earth, that is your planet’s name?” Dranslen rolled the word around his mouth. “Earth, meaning tillable soil, farm land. An interesting boast to name your planet after,” the general’s wings flinched. “No doubt the Legion of Doom would find it extremely valuable. Tell me, where is it?”

“I’m not telling you that!” I said and instantly regretted it. For a moment the general seemed to hang, processing what I’d said. Then before I could blink I felt his claws against my throat, my entire vision was filled with the dark maw he called a mouth. Brilliant white teeth sat in six rows.

“Would you like to reconsider?”

I tried to speak but was terrified of the pressure of opening and closing my mouth slicing my throat open against the claw.

“How can we tell you where Earth is if we don’t know where we are?” Martha cut in. There was another tiny pause before General Dranslen whirled back behind his desk in a single flowing motion.

“Of course, how remiss of me,” the general spoke softly and pressed a button on his desk. A hologram of a large blue planet appeared above his desk. “It won’t mean anything, but you are on board the Vyacker Sterne in orbit around the gas giant known locally as Vermic, orbiting the star Halaran.” Dranslen pointed out the tiny hologram of a starship orbiting around the holographic planet. “Halaran is part of the local cluster designated Coloron.” The hologram zoomed out to show a collection of bright stars. The hologram bathed the room in light everywhere but Dranslen. Only his teeth and claws reflected even the merest hint of a glow. “Recognise any of these stars? No, well the Coloron cluster is part of a region of space known as the Vyacker Traverse, recognise it now?” The cloud of holographic stars was beautiful but unlike anything I had seen on any star charts. Even Martha was drawing a blank. “No?” Dranslen’s voice grew suspicious. “Is your species really that primitive to have never looked at the sky?”

“We just... we don’t recognise it?” I shrugged.

“Assuming that magnetic north of the galactic core was the top of the galaxy,” Dranslen’s voice clearly sounded irritated now. “You are approximately half way up the sphere from the centre and two thirds of the way towards the edge.”

“Er, did you say sphere?” I raised my hand, like I was in class.

“Why wouldn’t I say sphere?” Dranslen’s voice grew dark and suspicious.

“Because... er... Martha, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought the galaxy was a spiral sort of disc shape and Earth was... er... in one of the arms?” I looked to Martha. Her furious eyes told me I should never have given away Earth’s location. I looked at Dranslen. He was frozen.

“The nearest spiral-armed galaxy is over a hundred and fifty million light years away,” Dranslen slowly began to laugh. “Oh it really is the Eternity Crystal! That or you are incorrigible, bare-faced liars,” Dranslen’s shadowy body swirled towards the Eternity Crystal. How he was even able to perceive it was beyond me. “But if you are lying I have never been told such an entertaining lie. Yes, I truly believe this is the Eternity Crystal, beyond all doubt.” Dranslen turned to the sergeant that captured us.

“Sergeant Grilkrek, how many people know this crystal exists?”

“Just me and me squad,” the sergeant said. “Maybe one or two saw it as we brought it here.”

“Excellent.” Dranslen smiled. He moved faster than a gun shot. His claws shot out and sliced at the necks of all the aliens in the room. Purple blood poured out and coated the floor. The soldiers bled out in seconds. None of them had even the strength to call for help. It was as if Dranslen had plucked their strings and they flopped lifelessly to the floor. Dranslen turned towards us. “Now, as for you two...”

After threatening it all this time my stomach finally did it and hurled bile and acid all over the floor. I couldn’t help it as I coughed up the vile brown goop. I was utterly convinced I was going to die. General Dransclen tsked and retired behind his desk once more.

“I can only assume, little primitives, that this is the first time you have met the Legion of Doom?” Dranslen’s voice was almost kindly, as if speaking to children. He waited for some sign from us. Martha nodded. “You may not understand, then. You see, in our religion we believe that the afterlife is one of perfect bliss. It is the same state which our souls exist in before we are born. I have simply returned Sergeant Grilkrek and his men to that state. They knew it was coming; they were looking forward to it. Perhaps they did not expect it to be so soon.” The general paused to rest a claw on a button on his desk. His mouth moved towards a microphone in the desk. “Dranslen to central, please order all of Sergeant Grilkrek’s squad to my office. And send in Lieutenant Swyl.” After hearing the acknowledgement he returned his attentions to us. “The Legion’s sworn duty is to hurry the soul’s passage to the next life. It is our duty to end life wherever we find it. Which, again, brings us to you.”

My stomach managed one final hurrah on the vomiting. My bile and the alien blood were pooling in sickly puddles.

“I will be remanding you to the custody of my exo-biologists who will study your unique attributes to see what may be of use to the Legion’s glorious purpose,” Dranslen smiled. “Even if you are lying about your origins your biology appears unique. You should live several months before we release you into death. More, if you can produce an offspring.”

“Er...” Martha spoke up for the first time. “That’s... impossible.”

“Oh I am sure neither of you are the other’s first choice of mate but—”

“No, I mean, we’re both female.”

“Really?” Dranslen leaned towards us. His mouth opened in astonishment. “But you,” a claw thrust at Martha. “Clearly the larger and stronger, with obvious capacity to birth a child and the stored food to provide nutrients during gestation and child care. While you,” the claw swung in my direction. “Are obviously the smaller, more agile—” Dranclen gave up and retreated behind his desk. “How very fascinating our exo-biologists shall find you.” I tried to stop my cheeks flushing with the combination of rage and embarrassment flooding my veins.

The door chimed and the remainder of Sergeant Grilkrek’s squad entered. They didn’t have time to look surprised before Dranslen ripped the life out of them. Behind the squad one of the thin, ethereal pilot species stepped over the corpses. A mask of force fields and light hid its face.

“Lieutenant Swyl reporting as ordered,” the ethereal’s tentacles writhed in what I supposed was a salute.

“Excellent, please come in Lieutenant,” General Dranslen beckoned. “The battle goes well?”

“The Alliance crumbles in the face of our might.”

“Splendid. Please take note of the crystal just to your left. Assemble a team to protect and transport it. I want the crystal taken to the following co-ordinates.” Dranslen handed over a computer pad. “I want you to kill everyone besides yourself who sees this crystal once the mission is complete. Issue no official orders and send me no reports. There must be no sign this is happening. The Omnikrator must not know this crystal has been found.” The lieutenant paused for even longer than I expected from these aliens. His mask wavered from the crystal to the general a few times before he saluted again.

“Understood, sir.” The mask turned in our direction. “And what of these... things?”

“Oh yes, please send in a squad to escort them down to the prison levels,” Dranslen nodded. “After the crystal has been safely removed. And send in a clean-up detail, I have made rather a mess.” The lieutenant retreated from the room with his orders and barked out some instructions into a communicator as he left. The doors closed leaving us with just the stench of bile and bodies.

“Do either of you primitives care for tea?” Dranslen asked. His hands were resting on a flask and a pair of small round glasses. “My species has limited senses but nevertheless I am trying to develop a taste for it.”

That was it. That was the point where my brain had had enough. I was surrounded by corpses being offered tea by a creature darker than the depths of space itself whose only clear feature was teeth, and I was wearing nothing but my pyjamas and a borrowed pair of shoes.

My poor brain simply shut down in the face of the impossible. Everything went dark and the ground came rushing up to meet me.

~~~~~

And that's the end of the sample! Everything I Need is available on the amazon store in kindle and paperback (link)