Transgalactic Antics

Chapter Two – Going AWOL

Chapter Two – Going AWOL

SURE THAT THE SQUASHPUMPS would soon report her to a Council or Unity official, Carrie sped down the tunnel. It was narrow and stuffy, barely wide enough for a human to pass through. Light from the entrance grew dim as she went deeper, and she took out the small torch she carried in her Transgalactic Council Officer toolbox: a large handbag filled with handy devices. She shone the torch ahead. The tunnel’s damp walls glistened in its beam, and water dripped from the ceiling. With a trembling heart, she hoped the squashpumps had made the tunnel safe from collapse. She was getting the feeling she always got when she did something impulsive—a nagging sense of regret. At least, she hoped she would live to regret her decision.

It was warmer underground than on the surface. The air was still and moist. As she went on, the tunnel walls began to close in even more. Soon, Carrie was stooping. Her neck began to hurt. To take her mind off the dull ache and her fear that she would die alone, entombed underground on an alien planet, she tried to think what she would say to the placktoids when she arrived at the squashpump city. She shook her head and hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder.

Recalling her first encounter with the mechanical aliens, she mentally went through the different types and their roles. The placktoids,bizarrely, resembled office stationery that was common across Earth. A fact that—Carrie swallowed—meant they harboured a particular hatred for humans, who they saw apparently enslaving and maltreating their distant cousins in Earth TV transmissions shown throughout the galaxy. With a sinking heart, she realised that, as a human, she was perhaps the last Officer who should be negotiating with them face-to-face.

The main placktoid types she could remember were the ones that resembled paperclips and the massive shredders. Staple removers, staplers and ballpoint pens were some of the other kinds, but she had only seen them moving around boxes of stolen oootoon. The paperclips, on the other hand, seemed to be responsible for ship-to-surface transportation, though Carrie had also encountered smaller versions that attacked viciously. It was the shredders she had to worry about, however. They were the coordinators and commanders. No doubt there would be at least one shredder in charge of the situation ahead. A fiery anger rose up in Carrie at the memory of the shredder that had nearly killed her best friend, Dave. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed to stay calm if she was going to succeed in persuading the placktoids to give up the hostages and surrender peacefully.

“Carrie, Carrie, please answer immediately.”

She jumped, startled by the voice coming from her translator. It was Gavin. News must have got back to him about what she was doing.

“Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Hatchett, respond at once.”

She winced. Her Manager knew she hated it when he called her that. She took out the translator. There was no point in talking to him. He would only tell her to go back, and she wasn’t going to do that. No squashpumps were going to die if she could help it. But if she answered Gavin she would have to directly defy him.

“Officer Hatchett, answer me. Do not turn off your translator.” He knew her too well. “I repeat, do not—”

Releasing the operating button on the translator, Carrie replaced it in her bag. She would need to turn it on again to speak to the placktoids and avoid hearing the piercing off-key music that was the language they used with other species, but for the time being she could escape Gavin’s commands. Sweat trickled down the side of her face, due to either increasing temperatures or her racing heart. She pulled down the zip on her jumpsuit and wondered how much farther she had to go. She must be nearly underneath the city by now. Her chest tightened as she realised she had no idea where the tunnel led to. Was it right under the placktoid headquarters or on the outskirts? If she couldn’t see any placktoids when she emerged, how would she find them? And if she popped up right in front of them, would they attack on sight?

Carrie stopped and, her hands shaking slightly, opened her Transgalactic Officer toolbox. She riffled through the contents. She had never really taken a proper inventory of the devices at her disposal. There didn’t seem to be any weapons in there. She sighed. She wouldn’t have known how to use them anyway. Careful preparation had never been one of her strengths. Pushing her sleeves up to her elbows, she concluded that she could rely only on her skills as a Bagua Zhang master if it came to a fight.

The end of the tunnel reared up, and she had to stop abruptly to prevent herself from bumping into it. Scanning round with the torch, she confirmed she was at a dead end. Above, the ceiling looked the same as the rest of the tunnel except for some old, dead roots poking through, but Carrie was sure the squashpumps’ calculations were correct and only a few centimetres of soil separated her from the city, and the invading placktoids, overhead.

Holding the torch between her teeth, she began grabbing and tearing down handfuls of moist earth. She worked quickly but quietly, unsure what technology the placktoids might have to detect sound or movement. Crumbs of soil fell onto her face and hair, and she blinked and shook them off. Then her right hand grasped at nothing but air, and light shone from above. She had reached the surface.

She squatted down and turned off the torch before putting it away. There wasn’t much light from the squashpump chamber above, but there was enough to see by. All was quiet except for her heart, which thumped in her ears. Carrie pulled down more clods, creating a hole large enough for her head and shoulders. Now she could see another ceiling above, which held the source of the light. Emitting a pale blue glow, it was coated in some kind of lichen or fungus.

An object crossed her field of vision. Carrie stepped back. The object had been moving too quickly for her to identify it. Had it been a placktoid, or a springing squashpump? Though slug-like, the squashpumps could move quickly if necessary. There was another movement, and another. Squinting, Carrie tried to follow the objects, but they were moving too fast. There was nothing for it, she would have to take a chance and climb up. She decided to leap up, so that if there were placktoids in the room, at least she would have the element of surprise.

Carrie bent her knees, and launched herself upwards, throwing her top half across the floor of the space above. She slid backwards into the tunnel, the hole’s edges crumbling around her, but she managed to get her knee up and onto the floor. A sharp object hit her in the face, and another hit the back of her hand. “Ow!” She closed her eyes just in time as another impacted her eyelid. “Ouch.” After scrambling a short distance on hands and knees, Carrie sat up and covered her face with her hands. She was being hit on all sides by small, thin pieces of metal.

Peeking between her fingers, she confirmed her suspicion: she was being attacked by small placktoids, ‘baby’ paperclips the mechanical aliens had developed as part of their plan to reproduce in enough numbers to take over the galaxy. She inhaled sharply as a paperclip hit the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger. Peeking again, she saw her escape route through the mass of swarming, vicious miniature placktoids. In the corner of the rounded room was a hole, a dark exit.

Cringing from the attack, she crawled slowly towards the hole, unable to stand due to the placktoid onslaught. But as she neared the way out the paperclips redoubled their efforts, until it felt like she was in a swarm of stinging wasps. Gasping in pain, Carrie scrambled back to her original position. The intensity of the attack reduced enough for her to take a peek again. The baby placktoids were definitely concentrated around the hole. They were trying to prevent her from leaving. But why? Were the placktoids in the process of destroying squashpumps before the Unity forces closed in?

Carrie set her jaw. These annoying little mechanical aliens were not going to stop her from doing whatever she could to save the squashpumps. There might be lots of them, but she knew their weakness. When she had first fought them on the placktoid starship she had discovered they needed light to energise them.

Eyes squeezed shut, she jumped up and dug her fingers into the fungus growing on the ceiling. It was spongy and soft and yielded easily. Before long, she had pulled more than half of it away from the roof and put it face down on the floor so that only its dark, non-luminescent, earthy roots were showing. She was sure she felt fewer stings. She risked another look. The chamber was quite dim now. The placktoids seemed to be struggling to fly. With one eye on the exit, she grabbed at the remaining pieces of fungus, plunging the chamber into darkness.

She shuffled forwards, holding her hands out in front of her, until she found the wall. Feeling downwards, she soon located the hole. As soon as she was out, she scanned the area for signs of placktoids. The mound’s interior was dingy and warren-like. There was no sign of any squashpumps or their eggs. All she could see clearly was a single light in the distance. A green light. It was only a faint trace of glowing mist, but Carrie’s heart sank at the sight of it. The placktoids had escaped. They had disappeared through a transgalactic gateway.