We've Seen the Enemy Read online

  Growing in the furrows was the same moss they had seen earlier, but now it was deep and luxuriant, with a rich earthy smell coming from it. The air seemed fresh and renewed, and Jack wanted to sit and relax in the freshness of it all, but she had now taken the lead, if only to avoid looking at Scratch’s body. Scratch had other ideas on what to do on the moss, but he kept those to himself, trying to avoid the start of another erection.

  “What is it with this woman?” he muttered to himself. As she walked ahead of him, he was painfully aware of how beautiful she was, but it was more then that. He knew he easily could have had a number of beautiful women. All ship Captains encouraged this, and they even paired people up according to their DNA if anyone wanted to follow the volunteer eugenics guide.

  But Jack was different. The way she observed everything, moved her lips just right, the way she walked with grace and determination, how she held her head high and didn’t cheapen herself in an environment where people lived short and loved hard. There was so much surrounding her that he liked, and he was in pain every time he saw her. “And she totally ignores me!”

  “What was that?” Jack asked as she heard him mumble something.

  “Oh, just can’t figure out why the ants totally ignored me.”

  Jack continued taking the lead into the tunnel, aware of the lushness underfoot. It felt inviting to the touch, warm and slightly moist. She imagined sleeping on this soft downy cover. ‘Eighteen hours without sleep. And food. And sleep. AND beer. God I could go for a beer right now,’ Jack thought to herself, but she cut her thoughts short. They had to get off this planet within the week if they had any hope of finding her WF ship.

  She couldn’t keep her mind off the vision, no matter how hard she concentrated. She also couldn’t keep her mind off of Scratch walking just behind her. ‘What is it about him that does it to me,’ she wondered. Sure he was smart and good looking, one of the best pilots she knew too, though she’d never admit it to him. She would prefer him by her side over anyone else in the fleet. He didn’t screw around like the others, which drove the women crazy. A good looking guy who wasn’t trying to lay every woman in sight. She knew he could, and she admired his restraint. But emotionally, he was a child and undependable.

  Still, the attraction was undeniable and Jack was tired of being mad at herself because of this, so she just ended up concentrating on the tunnel, now busy once again with alien traffic.

  The aliens were walking quickly, drones of equal size and appearance, all carrying this moss in their mandibles. Others of a different type tended the furrows and kept them moist with a liquid they discharged from a sac in their underbellies. They appeared to be gardeners. Jack was repulsed but at the same time fascinated by what they were doing.

  “What’s wrong?” Scratch asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just indicated something was wrong.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, I know you didn’t, but…well, you know, sometimes people can just tell. Anyway, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m hungry, tired and I have a headache coming on. That’s all.”

  “Oh, Probably lack of sleep, then.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Jack said as she looked curiously at Scratch.

  He was the first to notice smaller openings through the moss, and eventually they saw one that had a very small ant go into it. It barely fit, and immediately after it entered, Jack sank to her knees in terrible pain.

  ”What’s wrong!?” Scratch asked, alarmed. Jack was on her hands and knees, groaning in pain.

  “Jack, you gonna let me know, or are you going to spend the rest…” his sentence trailed off as Jack fell over, curling into a fetal position on the floor.

  “What’s wrong?!” Scratch said again in panic but he got no response. He felt a sense of deep pain welling up in his body but he was too worried to notice.

  “Jack, tell me what’s wrong!” Scratch repeated as he looked over her body for signs of anything unusual. Jack had her eyes closed and was now holding her head, oblivious to anything around her.

  He didn’t know what to do as he knelt there, and panicked as he saw Jack muttering in a low tone. Her eyes had rolled over but she continued, her body twitching as if she was having a bad nightmare.

  He bent down and put his ears to her lips as he asked again what was wrong. Suddenly Jack screamed out, “SCRATCH!”, and opened her unfocused eyes wide. The surprise of the yell in his ear knocked him over, but he quickly got back to her again and frantically asked her what was wrong.

  “Scratch get me out of here! Hurry!” Jack yelled again, momentarily focused on him before she started moaning in pain again.

  She didn’t need to tell him twice. He quickly picked her up and stood there, undecided as to whether to go forward or back. Jack, lucid for a few moments but in obvious extreme pain moaned, “Describe the tunnel ahead!”

  “Uh, it’s clear of moss, there are side tunnels for the next forty yards, and after that the moss begins again. I can’t see further…”

  “Go, run past the side tunnels and as far ahead as you can!”

  He ran off with Jack and became terrified as he heard her scream and jerk straight. He almost lost his grip on her but kept running. As he ran, the gardener ants were now busier than ever, and Scratch almost tripped over one. They turned to him and brushed both of them with their antennae as they crawled by, and one or two stopped to analyze the findings, but none tried to stop them. He was relieved that no alarm had been raised. If they noticed something wrong, it wasn’t apparent. It didn’t bother Scratch either, because he was much more worried about Jack, now draped limply over his shoulders. He was also painfully conscious of her naked body, up tight against his as he held her arm and leg over his shoulder. He gave up trying to fight an erection and just concentrated on not falling and hurting himself as he ran to the other side.

  Jack couldn’t believe the pain in her head. What was the beginnings of a mild headache turned into the worst migraine she had ever had. And just after that small alien ant entered the tunnel, the pain exploded into something indescribable. At the moment of the worst pain ever, she had an incredibly clear image in her head.

  The crab-like aliens she had met earlier lined the inside of the tunnel, glued in place by some sort of excretion. They were all being pierced one by one by these gardener ants and injected with a liquid. Others that had been already injected had their innards turned to jelly, which was now being sucked out by the gardener ant through the same orifice.

  Carcasses of the smaller dead aliens were strewn on the floor, waiting to be picked up by another member of the Hive. Jack was sensing thousands of these little creatures, all in different stages of this agony. All were being slowly liquefied over a period of time, and through the pain Jack counted twenty one sunrises in the vision. Whether that was a twenty-four hour day or not Jack didn’t know, and with the pain she was going through she didn’t care either.

  If Jack had had anything to eat, it would have come out long ago from the intense pain now wracking her body. The black cloud now forming in her head was quickly becoming an inviting release from this hell. Just before she passed out, one final combined pulse of pain was transmitted to her, so strong that the harvester and gardener aliens stopped for a moment after they themselves picking up the signal. It was such an intense cry for help that Jack’s heart was wrenched with sadness, and the pain from this sadness was almost as intense as the one that now caused her to blackout.

  Jack woke up lost in a sea of confusion. She could look down and see Scratch hovering over, calling out her name over and over again as he beat his fist into the ground. The vision went blank for a moment, and then it reformed to show her the harvesters and gardeners all working hard and her little crab aliens commanding them. All the crabs then turn to her and transmit a sign of gratitude, for what she didn’t know. This vision also dimmed to blackness, only to have another one appear.


  Now she’s bloody and injured, running as she carries Scratch over her shoulders through tunnels filled with a confusion of aliens and the odd looking humans.

  This vision faded to black and the next thing she saw was a glimpse of her body lying prone, the crab-like aliens completely covering her and Scratch as they carried them both to what looked like Scratch’s Klinger, but now completely different and somehow…alien.

  This vision once again dimmed and after a few moments reformed to show her a monstrous alien creature, stories high, centered in a room full of her fellow crew members lying side by side with their eyes closed. At first Jack thought that they were somehow restrained, but as she focused in it became clear they were somehow… aware. The hairs on her neck rose as she saw their lips moving, and eventually the sound of something like an unintelligible mantra reached her. Her view was temporarily blocked as the monstrous alien came up to one and gently, almost caressingly, engulfed it.

  Behind it, a black shadow rose until she could see the outline of a large, black, sleek ship, an alien craft like one she had never seen before. Everything she had seen faded in importance as she looked at it, and a horrible sense of foreboding and danger sat around it like an aura. She didn’t know why and desperately wanted to find out, but at that moment this vision dimmed too.

  The last vision was of her looking down on Scratch from high up and seeing him surrounded by thousands of those same small telepathic crab-like aliens as they crawling all over him. This vision also finally dimmed to black and Jack woke with a start. Not sure if this was real, she stretched out her hand and felt the moss underneath. She was confused, not knowing if what she saw were actual events, or possible outcomes from the choices she would make.

  ‘It could also be my sub-conscious going crazy,’ she thought, happy that the horrible pain in her head had subsided. And if they were events, were they past, present or future, or a combination of all three? The sense of danger and foreboding lingered on in her head like a painful nightmare.

  Scratch had been peering intently into her face, and she saw concern and fear in his eyes. She felt touched but wasn’t ready to show it just yet.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asked. The look on Scratch’s face was of utter relief when she talked, and he smiled and said, “Back to the land of the living! How’s your headache?”

  Jack remembered the intense pain she had felt earlier and winced at the thought as the remaining tendrils of pain lingered.

  “Feeling better?” Scratch asked again when he got no response.

  “You have really bad breath”, was her reply, but he didn’t say anything.

  She felt guilty and replied somewhat sheepishly, “I feel like someone got an egg beater and mixed up my brains. The worse is over but I have a hell of a hang-over.”

  “What happened anyway?”

  Jack ignored the question but asked instead, “Were you beating your fists into the ground?”

  “No!” Scratch said surprised, but they both knew he was lying. Scratch felt a hot flush creep through his face as Jack enjoyed the moment, but her smile soon faded as she became pensive. She felt that her visions were true, including the one where Scratch was injured. Changing the conversation, she asked, “When you were walking through the tunnels, did you meet up with these small, crab-like aliens?”

  “When, now?”

  “No, earlier when you crash landed. Speaking of which, how in the world did you survive?”

  “In answer to your first question, yeah, they were everywhere. The moment I crashed-landed, they swarmed over my ship. And as to my successful landing, it was skill.”

  Jack would have laughed at that, but any movement right now would not be a good idea. “Did they…communicate with you in any way?”

  “No, why? Can they make sounds?”

  Jack didn’t want to answer that just yet. She didn’t want Scratch to think she was going crazy.

  “Did you meet any in the tunnels?”

  “Yeah, whole colonies. But they left me in peace, and I avoided walking over any of them. I figure them to be our version of rats, except much, much smarter,” Scratch guessed.

  “Somehow I have a feeling that they’re more then rats – that they’re very important to us.”

  Scratch waited for an explanation but he didn’t get any. “What happened to you anyway? I mean, after you got to the dogfight late…”

  Scratch winced at that but said, “Well, after my thruster got torn apart with flechetes, I lost most of my control. It’s the damn Klinger’s weak point, seeing as their four main thrusters are paired off opposed to each other… Anyway, I did get the bug, making that fourteen by the way, and once gravity pulled me into this planet’s atmosphere, my control surfaces allowed me to stabilize enough to survive a crash landing with my ship intact, and without having to eject I might add,” he said smugly.

  Jack ignored the sarcasm and asked, “Will she fly?”

  “Unfortunately, no. With one bad thruster and the damage from the landing, it was going nowhere fast. Plus, those crab-like aliens dismantled the ship.”

  “They what?!” Jack asked incredulously.

  “They took it apart and carried it into their tunnel. That’s how I found this place. I followed them as they took the pieces in. Luckily, after staring at me for a few minutes, they totally ignored me. I tried stopping them but it wasn’t happening. They were very insistent, and I figured there was no use doing anything about it seeing as the Klinger would never fly again anyway.”

  “What did they do with the parts?”

  “Damn if I know. Just stood there, or sat, or whatever, looking everything over. To be honest it seemed as if they… studied the pieces. They divided them up in between them, neatly organized them in different areas of the tunnel.

  After a while, they would crawl on top of a part or turn it over. I tried to communicate with them, you know, dots on the floor, colors, tried giving them some of my emergency rations, but honestly, I felt like I was interrupting them. No, actually, I know I was bothering them, but I can’t explain it. I ended up being really annoyed, but with the ship dismantled, thousands of them in there and all of them ignoring me, I eventually left because I had to pee and I didn’t want to do it there. They kept on ignoring me as I walked the entire length of their area and I’m sure they didn’t even notice my absence. I haven’t been back since. What happened to you?”

  “I bailed in orbit, dropped in my suit, squashed a couple of aliens on landing and eventually worked my way over here after meeting our mutual friends, those crabs.”

  “You squashed aliens when you landed?” Scratch asked, trying hard not to show he was impressed. “Anyway, I don’t know if I’d call them friends… They do anything with you or your suit?”

  “I’m…not sure. I mean, my suit they left alone, but…I’ve had dreams.” Jack thought about that and then decided to come clean. “I’ve had visions, actually.”

  “You had what?” Scratch figured she was pulling his leg, until the look on her face told him otherwise. He looked at her with renewed worry. “You sure you’re ok? Didn’t bang your head…” Jack punched him hard on the arm.

  “Ouch! No, I mean it! With those headaches and now this…” but he could see she was ready to punch him again. “Ok, ok! What kind of visions?”

  Jack glared at him but finally said, “I don’t know! I’ve seen stuff…from the past, and from the future I think…” Jack was embarrassed to admit it, but Scratch looked seriously concerned. He waited for more, but once he realized nothing else was coming he quietly thought about what she had said. Jack waited, frustrated and confused about what she saw and unsure of what to say next.

  “Are you sure they’re visions of events in time?”

  “No, I’m not,” Jack said. “But, I’ve seen things in these visions that actually happened, and things that are supposed to happen, maybe…I mean, whether everything I saw will actually happen or not I don’t know, but as of now I have no re
ason to doubt it.”

  Scratch paused again to consider what Jack said and finally asked: “So, what have you seen?”

  She didn’t want to answer. “Now it’s my turn. What else did you see that got you all excited?”

  “About what?”

  “You said earlier that what you saw meant the difference between life and death. What were you talking about?”

  Scratch got excited again but he refused to tell her. He was adamant in showing her so ‘she could see with her own eyes’, as he said. “Anyway, it’s right around the corner, if you don’t mind some crawling.”

  “Well, might as well go see,” Jack said, a little irritated. “This area is giving me the creeps anyway.”

  “Yup, might as well,” he replied. “Although we’re not going anywhere better than this.” At that moment, they both heard a deep tremor and a muffled rumbling sound as loose sand came down all around them.

  “Wonder what that was,” Jack asked.

  “Something big just crashed for sure,” Scratch said, and they both knew what that meant. Jack and Scratch walked in silence, depressed and angry at the thought of their home crashing into this planet’s surface.

  Soon Scratch turned into a small opening in the tunnel wall and crawled inside. Jack followed without asking, and after crawling for nearly an hour, Scratch turned toward her and told her to be very quiet.

  “I came in through here when my ship crashed, and when I passed an area up ahead and made a little noise, it almost cost me my life.”

  Jack understood and they crawled ahead carefully, trying hard to be as quiet as possible. After a few minutes, they came to a small opening at the side where indirect light came through an old, beat up, but clearly very human, air diffuser. They both peered in to see a large room full of machinery, with hundreds of aliens scurrying about in their tasks. But what surprised Jack was that there were humans there, dwarfish and pale skinned, but humans non-the-less, appearing to actively cooperate with the aliens.