Making the Galaxy Great

“Stay in the car, Fleming.”

Jason was already jumping out of the car as McCauley whispered this into the Marjan device. He ran down the path he’d seen her take, switching off the hologram so he could see where he was going. As he stumbled along the path, he thought about Shelby. Then Evie. Why was he being an idiot?

In his ear he heard McCauley talking, but not to him. “L’harra, what are you doing? What’s going on?”

Jason reached the clearing just in time to see McCauley dive into some brush as L’harra fired a pulser at her. A small tree directly behind the spot where McCauley had stood burst into flames and was consumed in a second. Jason pulled up short, his shoes skidding on the loose dirt. L’harra heard him and turned. Before L’harra could shoot at him, he aimed the weapon he’d borrowed from Tina and pressed the small button. There was a bright flash and L’harra shook and cried out, then collapsed.

McCauley raced out of the brush. “Fleming, what the fuck? Where’d you get that?”

Jason approached L’harra warily. Tina had said the weapon was a sort of alien version of a taser and would disable someone for at least five minutes, but he wanted to be sure L’harra was really down. “Don’t worry; it’s not a pulser. It’s called a Ring Pop, or something like that.”

“A rinjot. I know what it is, Fleming. But I want to know how the hell you happen to have an alien weapon.”

Really? She’s scolding me? After I saved her ass?

“Long story.”

“I’m listening.”

Jason didn’t get a chance to respond. There was a sound in the woods. Not the sound of someone creeping; more like an army trampling through the brush.

“Run!” McCauley ordered.

Jason ran back in the direction of the car, but after a few yards he glanced behind and saw that McCauley wasn’t following him. As the image of his daughter popped into his head, he reversed course and crept back in time to see something not human — and not living — crash through the brush on the far side of the shed.

A robot?

It looked like a canister vacuum on three legs and with a single arm-like appendage on the front. Its skin, or outer material, was pale and plastic in appearance. It moved quickly and gracefully, like some sort of giant plastic insect creeping over the ground. It circled around the clearing, its top section revolving as if it were scanning in all directions.

When the lighted side of the canister happened to turn in Jason’s direction, it immediately pointed its arm, even though Jason was crouched behind a thicket of bushes in the near darkness. He took a quick breath and started to run, expecting to be incinerated. He heard the sound of something exploding and fell to the ground. Rolling over to see if he still had two arms, two legs and a torso, he spied McCauley running into the clearing, holding her pulser with both hands and firing again.

The robot was still upright until the second blast completely tore apart its torso, leaving two of the three legs to move about on their own for several seconds until they shut down and keeled over.

Jason returned to the clearing, to be greeted by his scowling partner.

“Fleming, you dumbass!”

She was about to elaborate when Jason, trying not to look her in the eye, spotted a movement in the trees and heard more thrashing noises. She shoved him to the ground and he nearly landed on on top of L’harra. Grabbing the pulser that was still in the alien’s slender, pale hand, he rolled over and peered into the woods, where he vaguely made out a silhouette with two eyes and antlers.

“Deer!” he shouted. “Deer. Not a robot! ”

McCauley held her gun steady, perhaps wary that there might be a robot lurking behind the deer. But after a couple more seconds, she lowered the weapon.

“I don’t think Bambi is armed,” said Jason.

McCauley turned toward him with a look that was fully armed. “There may still be another one of those out there.”

“And what exactly was that thing?”

“A Haku droid. They probably came here in one of their shuttles. That’s why we’re out in the middle of a damn forest.”

“This is fucked up,” Jason muttered, gazing warily around the clearing. “There are dead people here.”

McCauley nodded. “We need to get back to base.”

“What about . . . ?” Jason made a sweeping gesture toward the bodies lying behind the shed.

“I can call and get a crew here.”

A crew. The words seemed even less real to Jason than aliens.

“Help me grab L’harra,” McCauley directed.

L’harra was starting to stir. Together they yanked the Yrrean to her feet and McCauley placed something over each wrist that looked like high-tech handcuffs. They snapped into place automatically and a green light came on. L’harra stared at them with glassy eyes and they each put an arm around L’harra for the walk back to the car. When they reached it, McCauley asked Jason for the rinjot. Then she casually fired it at L’harra and shoved the unconscious alien into the back seat.

“I guess the handcuffs weren’t enough?” he said.

“L’harra tried to kill us.”

Jason shrugged. “Point taken.”

He got in the car and reached for his seatbelt, but McCauley grabbed his hand and glared at him with a fury that made her olive skin turn brick red.

“What the hell were you doing back there? When I said to stay in the car, what I actually meant was stay in the goddam car! You could have been killed!”

Jason pulled away from her. “I could’ve been killed? What about you? I’m sorry, I’m a little new at this, but I didn’t know I was supposed to let my partner get killed. Except I guess we’re not really partners.”

“If we’re partners,” McCauley snapped back, “then why don’t you tell me where you got this and how you knew something was up with L’harra?” She waved the rinjot at him.

Jason tried not to flinch. Could he risk telling her about Tina and Grace and what he’d learned that afternoon?

“It’s just that none of it made sense. The whole Haku, Chinese—”

Again she waved the rinjot, which was indisputable evidence, in his face. “Fleming! You know something. How?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t take this back to the Colonel.”

McCauley’s forehead crinkled. “How do I know before you tell me? What if you tell me that you’re part of some secret alien conspiracy?”

Jason groaned inwardly. This was a bad start. “Look, this is the part where you have to trust me, and I have to trust you. So I need you to listen to me all the way through before you jump my shit or make any snap decisions.”

After an uncomfortable hesitation, McCauley nodded thoughtfully. “Agreed. Go ahead. And start driving.”

Jason turned on the car. “Which way?” he asked. “The park’s bound to be closed by now, so we’re probably not going out the main gate.”

“Just keep following this gravel road. It has to lead to an exit somewhere.”

Jason didn’t share her conviction on that point; the maintenance road they were on was a winding, unlit path that seemed to simply disappear into the woods. He drove slowly, occasionally glancing at the cloud of powdery debris trailing them, illuminated by his taillights, while he recounted everything that had happened the previous day at the Oasis Mission.

McCauley was true to her word; she listened all the way through before she started berating him. “You’re telling me there are hundreds of undocumented, untracked aliens all over the place and you knew about it?”

“Only since yesterday.”

“You should have told me.”

“I promised them I wouldn’t. They’re afraid you’ll chase them down. They’re refugees, McCauley. Their planet is out of food and I guess even their technology can’t help any more. I don’t want you and your friends at A-69 to just round them up and send them back.”

“Fleming, are you serious? We can’t just have all these aliens — real aliens — infiltrating the U.S. Who knows what they’ll do? Start their own country? Take over ours?”

Jason frowned. The world infiltrated made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t sure if it was because it was inaccurate or too accurate. “I understand there are issues. But there has to be some way to help them. It sounds like they’re literally starving on their home planet.”

“I get that. I’m not a monster.” He could hear real exasperation in McCauley’s voice. “But we’re not the ones who get to make that call.”

She was right about that, of course. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know . . . we’ll think about that later. But I still don’t see how this connects to L’harra.”

There was a thud as Jason’s car bounced in a rut. Then he told McCauley about his food run to the mission earlier in the day.

“When I got there, they told me about one of the refugees at the mission who had a Haku boyfriend.”

In the car’s ambient light, he saw McCauley’s eyes widen. “That would be unusual.”

“Well, it’s kind of romantic, I guess. Kind of a Romeo and Juliet thing.”

“No, you don’t understand, Fleming. The Yrreans don’t have genders.”

It occurred to him that the only Yrreans he’d seen so far seemed somewhat female, but not really. “So, Yrreans are non-binary? What pronouns are we supposed to use? It? Them?”

“They’re not non-binary. They’re unitary. And therefore they don’t have pronouns in their language.”

“Well, maybe they’re not so unitary after all. Anyway, L’harra apparently hired the Haku boyfriend a few days ago. The Yrrean said he panicked and didn’t finish the job so he didn’t get paid.”

“That’s it?”

“McCauley, the job was to meet with L’harra in the parking lot of a bar that used to be a meat packing plant.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason watched the surprise and recognition on McCauley’s face.

“I think L’harra staged that whole incident the other night,” he continued, “where you and I first met.”

“Why?”

“To stop your idiot president from making a deal with the Haku bastards,” said a voice from the back seat. L’harra was awake again.