Apocalypse Omega Read online

  It was like were riding the RollerBlaster on Planet Adventure. Which was nothing like the hilariously antiquated Disney World.

  Every alien and human child in the known universe had been to Planet Adventure at least once. If it was discovered a child hadn’t been there, they were immediately sent free of charge by the planet’s internal grant unit. Planet Adventure’s motto was: “Every child in the universe or no one at all.”

  The rides were hyper-realistic, beyond the most advanced virt-reality. It was the most exciting danger-filled place in the galaxy. But the difference was that on Planet Adventure, no one got hurt. Ever.

  The safety protocols were so advanced even the most advanced safety oriented beings, the Skaltons, were in awe. It didn’t matter if you had scales, skin, or tentacles. In their three hundred years of operation, the only injuries that ever occurred were aching stomachs from eating too many Orgluz-pretzel wedges. They were so addictive, you couldn’t eat just fifty!

  Ugh. I’d kill for a Orgluz-pretzel right about now, the little voice said.

  This dang tube was going on forever. If we could only grease up and slide down. We must have been running for at least a couple of miles at this point. Why would anyone need miles of tubes under the planet’s surface? What the frak was this thing?

  “It’s an abandoned travel chute,” Kat said.

  “What?”

  She just kept jogging.

  Travel chute? Like a launch tunnel?

  “Yes,” Kat replied.

  “Stop reading my mind!”

  “Stop screaming your thoughts.”

  “Stop assuming I have any control over the volume of my thoughts. I’m not a Chirom monk.”

  “Ha. You’re not even a Krupton squeal bug.”

  “Oh, that was a low blow. No need to get nasty.”

  The bot interrupted our arguing with its creepy mantra. “The Ultra must remain.” It was getting louder. The walrus was closing the distance. Its stupid hover-gliding mechanism had to be going faster than usual because of the slick metal floor of the tube.

  That’s when Kat stopped, and I almost ran into her back.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  She pointed in front of her at a door. Well, not a door door, like a human one. A door like an alien one. Or maybe it wasn’t a door at all. I had no idea what it was. It just looked like a door to me. A large green oval gemstone that reminded me of the Ultra when I first brought it onboard.

  But this was bigger. Could it be the Ultra’s mother? My mind reeled at the idea that there might be something more Ultra than the Ultra. It couldn’t be. Even though, of course it could.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked.

  “A door,” Kat replied.

  Okay. So it was a door, not a giant, fire-breathing Ultra-Ultra.

  Kat slowly moved the palm of her hand closer.

  “You sure about touching that thing?”

  “I don’t know. Seems like the thing to do.” She moved her hand onto the gemstone and the door began glowing green. Her hand glowed in response, and soon it was as if the two were communicating with each other. Having a green glowing chat.

  “The Ultra must remain,” I heard the walrus chanting in the distance.

  “Can you two quit chit-chatting, or whatever you’re doing, and open the door up already?”

  “Give me a second,” Kat replied.

  “The Ultra must remain.”

  “I’m not sure we have a second. That thing’s getting close.”

  “Shhhh.” She put her hand on the center of the door, and it mushed in like jello. Even the rock-hard gems were made of marshmallows here. Her hand smooshed into the gemstone until she was elbow-deep, then Kat slowly turned her arm to the left, then the right. Was she unlocking the thing, or trying to help a cow with birthing a calf?

  “The Ultra must remain,” the bot repeated much louder this time. It had to be close enough to see, but I wasn’t about to look.

  “Hurry up!”

  “I am!”

  Kat shoved her arm in even deeper and twisted a couple more times. Then I heard a hiss and a plop. Like the air had just been let out of a balloon and then it farted.

  The door melted away. Of course it did. Was I expecting it to just open like a normal door? No. It couldn’t be that simple. Not here. Here, everything had to melt and be goopy.

  Kat took my hand with her slime-covered one. “Come on. Hurry.”

  “Oh now you’re telling me to hurry.”

  We jumped over the pile of goop that coalesced on the floor of the tunnel. Hopefully, the damn bot would get stuck in it like a Drez-rat in a glue trap.

  We raced through the doorway and sprinted a couple hundred feet before we both stopped dead in our tracks. Kat stared in stunned silence. But I already knew where we were.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The throne room was even bigger than I’d remembered from the portal jump. Or maybe I hadn’t quite gotten the full perspective from my quick visit. This place looked bigger than the hollow moon orbiting Catsun Five.

  I’d been there once on a military training exercise before they put me on the Outpost. I think they used it mostly for the auxiliary, because it wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t a big moon, but it was still fraking huge. It was a damn moon, after all. But I could swear it wasn’t as big as this room, or place.

  “This is the throne room you were talking about,” Kat said.

  I nodded my reply.

  It was all there. The thousands of spheres, maybe millions, stuck into the walls, the ceiling, the floor. A giant dome filled with bubble pack.

  And in the middle was the Ultra’s throne.

  We were standing in a small pathway that led directly to it. Like it was made just for this moment. Like…

  “It was always meant to be,” the bot-alien said, standing directly behind us.

  There was no place to run. Nowhere to hide. There was one road, and it led directly to the throne. The orbs filled the dome so fully, we couldn’t even go up. Just forward. And there was no back. Not with the psycho-cult-alien standing right behind us.

  That’s when it moved forward, sliding closer, pressing us towards the throne. Kat jumped in front of me, acting like my protector. I wasn’t having it. Ultra or not, I was going to act like a man. Sexist maybe, but it was my job to protect the love of my life. I moved Kat back behind me as the robot pressed against my chest.

  “Back off!” I yelled.

  “The throne awaits,” it said, pushing me.

  I tried to shove it backwards, but it didn’t do anything other than make a small thunk off its chest, the thing outweighed me by at least five hundred pounds.

  It pushed me backwards. I had no choice but to step back or be steamrolled by the walrus, and I was sure it had not an iota of hesitation about rolling over me, squashing me like a pancake.

  It was probably hoping I would stand my ground so it could run me over and hear the satisfying sound of my bones cracking and guts oozing out from my orifices. I’m sure it would love turning my puny human flesh into a stew of blood and guts.

  All it cared about was the Ultra. And it wasn’t going to be long before she was right where it wanted her. Back on the throne.

  The robot edged us backwards, step-by-step, toward the seat of power in the middle of the room. The closer we got, the more the spheres pulsated with light and motion like they were getting more and more excited the closer Kat got.

  Every step we took made them quiver and shift colors. As the robot forced us back, they started to make a sound. A deep, resonant hum. And again I thought of bizarre rituals, religious practices, and cults. As advanced as this species was, they seemed just as primitive in some ways as all species. Even us lowly humans.

  At least the walrus had shut up with its “The Ultra must remain” chant. It was quiet and focused now. Its only function was to get Kat on the throne.

  Why wasn’t the Ultra helping? Was this what it really wanted?

 
There had to be a way out of this. We were being herded like ancient cattle to the slaughter. One thing I knew for sure was the moment we got to the throne, they’d make me disappear into oblivion and start the process of extracting Kat from the Ultra.

  The Ultra was being infuriatingly silent and I had no clue what to do, but I had to do something. Anything!

  The hum was deafening now. There were only a few yards left before we reached the throne.

  Do something, the little voice yelled.

  “What the frak do you want me to do?”

  Anything!

  So that was what I did. Anything. Literally. I’d always been a believer that once in a while you just need to act randomly. Especially when you’re in a fight. Plans, organized attacks, all that stuff is great, but every now and again you need a random act that no one expects or can plan for. Basically, you need a pinch of chaos to shake things up. So that’s what I did. I brought chaos.

  “Frak you all!”

  Chapter Twenty

  I grabbed Kat by the throat and strangled her. She looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Shock, revulsion, and the worst thing I’d ever seen in her eyes: Betrayal.

  She fought back as expected, pawing and scratching at my face and arms, but without the Ultra’s aid she was no match for me.

  “Stop!” the bot-alien screamed. “STOP!” the entire choir of spheres screamed in unison. The pitch so high and deafening, I feared it would burst my eardrums or knock me unconscious. The last thing I wanted was to be unconscious. I had to stay the course. As sick as it made me. I held back my own retching and squeezed tighter and tighter.

  She struggled, desperate for air. Her eyes panicked and wild. Her body tense and bucking hard against my will. All of her biological forces fighting to live. All of them except the Ultra.

  “STOP,” the spheres yelled, but I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t.

  The bot-alien slid at me, grabbing my leg and trying to pull me off, but I fought back. I held tight. “Let go, or I’ll kill her and the Ultra.”

  It released my leg and that’s when I swung around, got behind Kat and moved my arm around her throat. She was weak, practically limp in my arms but could breathe again. Still there was no Ultra. Did it really want me to kill her? Was this part of the extraction?

  “Back off!” I yelled, and the bot hesitated a moment too long. I squeezed down on Kat’s throat. “Now, or I’ll snap her neck!”

  The bot-alien complied and slid backwards a few feet.

  “That’s better,” I said, but I didn’t mean it at all. It wasn’t better. Even if I got out of here alive, there was nowhere to go. The planet was theirs. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They’d find me. I couldn’t get back to the ship without their help, and even if I could, I still had nowhere to go.

  Shat!

  What could I do? The good news was that I was right—they needed Kat alive. If she died like this, it was going to mess up their leader, who wasn’t helping by the way.

  What the frak, Ultra?

  My plan was never to kill Kat. I could never do that. Not even if I had to. No way. No how. Never. I thought if I threatened her enough, her emotions would kick in and the Ultra’s powers would save her, and it would help us get the hellvian out of here. But as usual, my plan failed.

  I went for random and I got it. Now I was surrounded by angry super-powered aliens who wanted me dead, and the only leverage I had was to kill the love of my life.

  That’s why the Ultra didn’t help, the little voice said.

  “Why?”

  Because it knows you would never hurt her.

  “Shat, you’re probably right.”

  “But why didn’t the bot-alien know too?”

  It didn’t think highly enough about you to look inside your heart.

  A good point, and probably true. That thing had nothing but disdain. It might not have even thought highly enough of me to have disdain. Can you even hate a bacteria? Not to mention that the walrus’s programming must have jacked up its indifference for me by tenfold.

  Was it purposely trying to make the alien miss something so important? Was the walrus working from inside? It was definitely trying to thwart the alien. As much as it loved all the newfound alien data, I knew it despised having something controlling its programming. I was a hundred point point point zero percent sure it was working against the alien to regain control of its systems.

  I’d take all the help I could get. Sometimes the intention isn’t as important as the goal it achieves.

  With Kat’s throat still firmly pressing against my forearm, I turned my head toward her, hoping the bot wouldn’t notice. She saw me trying to get her attention and slyly moved her eyeballs my way.

  So far the bot was still too panicked and furious and borderline out-of-control to know what was going on. Was it trying to determine the odds I would kill Kat? Was it prying into the depths of the walrus’s programming to see if it knew? It didn’t. The walrus had clue about how to process human emotions. It used logic, not feelings. It would understand that people sacrificed and killed for their loved ones but it wouldn’t know when, why, or how to apply a probability matrix to it.

  “What is the probability that the primitive will destroy the Kat?” the alien would ask.

  “Unable to process that data,” the walrus would respond.

  “The primitive loves the Kat. How can it kill something it loves?”

  “Humans are illogical.”

  I was sure it was frustrating, if the aliens experienced frustration. I had to give the bot credit for holding its own against a super-powered alien. Though I wasn’t confident it would last, but so far the integration had been causing issues. Which resulted in yet another rampaging killer psycho-robot, this time with an alien puppeteer.

  Kat looked at me, and I gave her a wink so she’d know I wasn’t going to hurt her. I wanted her to understand this was all part of my plan. A bad one. A crazy Hail Mary last resort, but it was still a plan.

  I needed her to know I never intended to hurt her. I was surprised she’d put up such a fight when I was trying to strangle her. Ha. Funny thing to say, “Hey, I’m surprised you fought so hard not to die.” But I was surprised because she had to know I would never hurt her.

  Maybe she did know, and the dramatic death throes battle was just an act for the sake of the aliens. To get them to believe. I hoped that was the case, but I couldn’t be sure. And I couldn’t have her escaping. Not yet. So I needed the wink so she’d understand and either keep playing along, or start playing along if for some reason she actually thought I was trying to kill her.

  The thing about my wink is, it’s horrible. I can’t really wink. I also can’t roll my tongue, whistle with fingers in my mouth or wiggle my ears. Never been able to. Must be some bio-deficiency. My eye twitches, goes about halfway down, and that’s about it. It’s more of an eye spasm.

  Whenever I did it, Kat would burst out laughing hysterically. She loved it when I winked. Thought it was the goofiest thing she’d ever seen. “Please,” she’d beg when in need of a hearty belly laugh.

  “No.”

  “Please,” she’d plead with her cutest puppy dog face, and of course I always gave in. What choice did I have? Who wouldn’t wink-spasm to make a beautiful woman laugh her butt off?

  She almost choked herself into unconsciousness once when drinking Oolan tea. I never understood why she thought it was so funny, but did it really matter? It made her laugh, that’s all that mattered.

  The last thing I needed was for her to start laughing hysterically while I was trying to threaten a race of angry aliens. If she did, I’d have to hope they didn’t understand what it meant and I could convince them it was fear. If not, it would end my random kidnapping plan, I’d be evaporated, or worse, and Kat would be extracted.

  What would happen to Poka? I mean the Pokas. I wished they were here to save the day. If I could yell loud enough for them to hear me, they’d come rampaging into t
he throne room like the bulls in a china shop. I’d seen the damage one Poka could do. I couldn’t imagine what two would accomplish. They’d run around slamming into spheres, popping them like soap bubbles. An entire alien race destroyed by two crazy dogs. It could happen but it wouldn’t. The Pokas were way out of earshot, likely chasing bugs, if there were any on this universe-forsaken planet.

  Even if they did come to my defense, what chance did dogs have against these things? The best I could hope for was they’d knock the bot-alien on its keister and lick it until it threw up robo-oil.

  Kat acknowledged she had seen my infamous wink. I sensed she was about to smile, if not guffaw, so I quickly moved my forearm over her mouth to shut her up. I felt her lips quiver against my arm as she fought back the laughter.

  “What are you doing to the Ultra?” the bot asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just do what I tell you and no one gets hurt.” Yes, I had just spoken one of the cheesiest and overused lines in all of vid history. But the aliens didn’t know that. Unless they checked our database for old movies. But why would they ever do that? For them, it was the first time they’d heard it, and the impact did as intended. It shut the bot-alien up. Just like in the movies.

  We were now in full-scale, old school hostage negotiations. Only the aliens didn’t know it yet. They’d never experienced bank robbers, kidnappers, and hostage takers. Neither had I, but I’d seen it millions of times and I knew exactly what to do. Good thing they didn’t check the database, because then they’d realize all they needed was an old-fashioned sniper to take me out with one shot. I’d better hurry up with this crazy plan before they checked the vid-databases, just to be safe.

  Safe? Nothing about this is safe, The little voice yelped.

  “It was just a figure of speech.”

  Okay, so Kat was onboard with the negotiations. I’d ask her later if she was acting before or really thought I was trying to kill her, but at the moment it was time to do what all hostage takers do. Tell the cops what their demands are.