 
### Tomahawk

By Zachary Adams
Copyright © 2016 Zachary Adams

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Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11
Chapter 1

"Fuck off, Mr. President."

Tomahawk "Tom" (Codename: "Hawk") Abrams slammed the phone down into the receiver. He hated being interrupted at work.

He looked around the office. His manager's chair—a black mid-back mesh with a large, cracked indent in the leather of the seat—was pulled away from the double-pedestal cherry desk. His manager had left in a hurry. Hawk didn't wonder why.

He looked up. There were pencils embedded in the popcorn ceiling. Being an utter man-child, his manager had bent staples, stuck them in the erasers of pencils, and flicked them at the ceiling, where they stuck easily.

By his estimate, there were more toys than actual work materials on the desk. There was a blue shark, standing on its fins, holding a projector in its jaws. Next to it, unsolved, was a Houdini lock puzzle. The chrome was heavily scratched from his manager's failed attempts to solve it. There was a beer glass with a pair of breasts on it—classy. A model NYPD car sat on top of some papers. There was glue everywhere. Hawk suspected that his manager had accidently glued the car to important documents.

A knocking on the window of the door behind him sounded.

"Tom, I hate to interrupt you, but the boring machine isn't going to bore itself."

Hawk narrowed his eyes and turned around.

His manager, a short pudgy balding man with pale skin and a constant stench, stared through the window into his own office.

"What have I told you about interrupting me, Bob?" Hawk said.

Bob cleared his throat and grabbed the door handle. "You're in my office, Tom. And my name is Bill. How did you get into my office? Did you fake that emergency in shipping so you could break in?"

"No. I suspect that was the Secret Service."

Bob laughed. "The Secret Service! You kill me Tom!"

Hawk didn't laugh. He picked up the beer glass with the pair of breasts on it, flipped it into the air and caught it.

"This is mine now," he said. "See you around, Bob."

"Yes, I'll see you."

Hawk made to close the door behind him as he left the office.

Bob shouted as he left, "Keep up the good—!"

Hawk slammed the door before Bob could finish.

He returned to his boring machine. Hawk's job was simple: he made small holes bigger by boring them. He worked for a manufacturing company that made easy-to-construct furniture, sold cheaply in the many locations of a large warehouse store franchise. His job was boring, which Hawk considered to be dull work. Sometimes he bored tapered holes, which was marginally less dull work. Sometimes he backbored, a manufacturing term that means going inside a small hole and boring the back of it, making it gradually larger. Backboring was the most boring he performed in a typical day at work, which suited him fine because it was the least dull work he performed.

Hawk was thirty-two years old. He stood just over six feet, weighed just about two hundred pounds, and had almost 120,000 hairs on his head, which he wore in style that Men's Fashion magazine called Waving Back. He also wore a mustache that some magazines called a Horseshoe, others called the Gunslinger, and his girlfriend called horrendous. He preferred to call his look "The Hawk", which was often confused with Hawk's least favorite hairstyle, the Mohawk.

Without all the fancy terms, he wore his medium-length hair combed back and his mustache formed three-fourths of a square around his mouth, shaved at his chin.

He placed the beer glass with breasts on it on the small stand next to his boring machine, and took a seat on the tall cushioned stool beside it. Leading to his station was a conveyer belt, and on the panel of the conveyer belt was a button. Hawk pressed the button, and the conveyer belt turned on. Coming through it were long two-by-fours with two small holes on the top and two at the bottom. All four holes on each two-by-four needed tapered boring.

He picked up a two-by-four and considered it in his hand. Should he even bother working? He'd pissed off the president. This whole facility was likely the target of a drone airstrike.

Damn.

He'd liked working here. He'd been enjoying his retirement.

The door to the manager's office burst open, and Bob came sprinting out, glowing red and panting.

"We have to evacuate now!" he screamed. "We've just been alerted! We're under attack! This facility is the target of a drone airstrike!"

Hawk sighed. He stood from his stool, strode past a perplexed Bob, and returned to the office. He slammed the door in Bob's face and picked up the phone, speaking into it without dialing a number.

"Call off the airstrike, Frank. I'm coming in."

Frank was livid. "You're damn right you are, you son of a bitch."
Chapter 2

Frank Garraghan, the President of the United States, or POTUS, slammed the phone into the receiver. The phone broke in two, which was unfortunate because it was the same phone Woodrow Wilson used to order the American spy in Sarajevo to have the Black Hand organization murder Sophie, Archduchess of Hohenberg, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It was unfortunate that the Black Hand organization targeted the Archduke as well and therefore sparked World War I, because all Woodrow Wilson really wanted was the assassination of Sophie Archdeacon, who ran Sarajevo's brothel and shorted Wilson fifty bucks.

And now the phone was broken, and Frank was pissed. Not because this ancient and historic phone was broken, but because he now had to shout for assistance from a Secret Service agent standing outside.

"Those goddamn aliens!" he shouted.

An agent entered the Oval Office. "Sir?"

"I broke my phone."

The agent shrugged. "What's that have to do with the aliens, sir?"

"They've forced my hand, and forced me to contact that jackass Hawk Abrams, and he upset me, and I broke my phone."

"We can get you a new phone, sir."

"I liked that one," Frank said. "Don't treat me like a child."

"Yes sir, sorry sir. Anything else?"

"Yes."

Frank stood up and walked around his desk.

"Any news on the aliens?"

The agent shook his head again. "They still hope to resume a diplomatic dialogue to help our two species have a long and fertile relationship."

"You agree that it's a load of bull, though."

"I'm not sure, sir. But I do agree that a technology as powerful as what they demonstrated is too powerful to be allowed to exist."

"Is Hawk on his way?"

"We lost track of him, but we expect he'll be here shortly."

It was just the two of them there, but a third voice entered the conversation.

"More shortly than you think."

Frank and the agent looked up just as Hawk Abrams flipped down from the ceiling.

He leaned against Frank's desk, his arms crossed. "You want me to infiltrate the alien mother ship and destroy some powerful technology, don't you, Mr. President?"

"Goddamn Hawk, how did you get in here?"

Hawk ignored the president's question and walked over to the alcohol cabinet. He lifted a full glass decanter to his nose and sniffed.

"Ah, you always get the good stuff, don't you?" he said. "Evan Williams. Nice."

He emptied the bourbon into his new beer glass with breasts on it, filling it to the brim.

"Classy," Frank said.

Hawk took three large gulps, downing a third of the glass.

The president pressed him. "Seriously Hawk, how did you get in here so quickly? This is national security we're talking about."

Hawk wiped bourbon off his mustache. "Elementary, Frank. After you said, 'You're damn right you are, you son of a bitch,' I asked you a question about Notre Dame's new quarterback, which I knew would keep you preoccupied for at least three minutes before you realized I wasn't on the phone and slammed it into the receiver, likely to break it. Which was plenty of time. I ran out of my factory, hopped on my motorcycle, and launched out of the parking lot at a hundred miles an hour. After dodging traffic for two and a half minutes, I was about fifty yards from the White House. At one hundred eighty miles an hour, I hit a ramp and flew through the air, launched off my motorcycle, and landed on the roof of the West Wing. I rolled backwards to hang off the edge so your snipers couldn't see me. Then, I shimmied across the wall to the Oval Office. I swung my legs up so I wasn't dangling and crawled upside-down over to the secret service agent you have guarding the left door. When I was close enough, I swung my body and landed on his shoulders, strangling him with a triangle choke and knocking him out. Then I watched you through the glass door as you spoke on the phone, and slowly opened it. As you realized you had just spoken for three minutes and I hadn't even been listening, you slammed the phone in anger—just as I expected. That was my moment. I snuck inside and masked the sound of the door closing with your phone breaking. And as you stared at your broken phone I quickly jumped on top of your drawers, scurried up the window blinds, and latched onto the ceiling. I used my grappling claws to remain out of L.o.S as we call it in the biz, or Line of Sight. Then, when I was ready, I dropped down—surprising you both. Just another Friday for Hawk Abrams, Master Infiltrator."

Frank furrowed his brow. "Well, when you say it like that you make it sound damn easy."

"How is Notre Dame's new quarterback anyway?" Hawk asked.

"Garbage. Now let's get down to business."

Frank snapped his fingers, and the inner door of the Oval Office opened. In walked Chief of Staff Dorsey Burwell, Vice President Stanley Childe, and Secretary of Defense Horace Florence. The three of them nodded politely to Hawk as they entered, and he nodded back.

But then a fourth man entered the room. Tall, dark skinned, and built, with a short Mohawk, a long beard, and round blue-shaded sunglasses. He reminded Hawk of a pirate. This man was Graven 'Codename: Raven' Attaway, the Director of the NRO and Hawk's former boss. Raven and Hawk eyed one another with contempt.

"Look here, our former COMM," Raven said. "Guess you were only ever good at one thing after all."

Hawk narrowed his eyes. "Raven."

Before he retired, Hawk's formal title was COMM, or the Communications Systems Acquisition Directorate. The COMM was a department of the NRO, or National Reconnaissance Office. The main aspect of the NRO was to stick a lot of satellites into the sky to spy on enemies below. But there were some areas of the planet that satellites couldn't penetrate, which was where Hawk came in. He would infiltrate highly secure enemy bases and plant cameras and microphones, all without being detected. His formal position was COMM, but he was often referred to as The Infiltrator.

Raven narrowed his eyes back at Hawk. "In our time of need, we relied on you Hawk. And you left us." He turned to the president and continued. "How can we trust he won't leave us again?"

"I'm glad you asked," Frank said. He turned to the left side of the room, opposite the side Hawk used to sneak in. From his pocket he withdrew a small button, which he pressed. Immediately the lights dimmed and the television turned on.

"This footage is privileged to only those in this room and a few others with the highest security clearance," Horace said.

On the television Hawk watched as a small squad of aliens disembarked from their ship. The sky was blue, the ground sand—they were in a desert, a military base somewhere. The president was surrounded by a platoon of soldiers. This was Hawk's first time seeing the aliens. As far as the general public was aware, there was an object in the atmosphere, large and bright, that the US government claimed to be the first microwave-thrust capable mobile observatory. But Hawk worked in government long enough to smell bullshit from the stool of his boring machine. He wanted nothing to do with aliens, yet here he was.

The aliens were surprising to look at, but Hawk supposed that any intelligent bipedal creature that didn't look like a human would look surprising.

"As opposed to all life on Earth, which is composed of carbon, we've learned that the aliens are an iron-based life form," Horace Florence said. "They are significantly denser than humans. So they are stronger, but considerably slower, despite the comparable dimensions of our two species."

They had large feet and two legs, thick and short, covered by the equivalent of human spandex pants. Hawk suspected that tipping one over would be next to impossible, and felt a pang of weakness on behalf of humanity. The aliens' torsos were long and thick, and they all appeared fat. At the base of where Hawk supposed their equivalent of the human cervical spine was, they had tails that reached down to the ground, similar to an elephant's trunk. Their clothing was comparable to spandex, and their tails were covered all the way to the base. They had two arms like humans, but their arms were longer. If they leaned over at a forty-five degree angle, their arms would touch the ground. Their joints were where Hawk would have suspected them to be.

Their faces, however, were the strangest part, because they were surprisingly human. They had hair, noses, eyes and mouths. Some of them even had facial hair. Two of them had Mohawks. All in all, they looked like NFL offensive linemen with trunks on the back of their necks.

The aliens approached the president and the alien in front, dressed in gold spandex and adorning a Mohawk, began speaking.

"The name of this individual is Jimmie," it said. "This individual hopes the English of the tongue of this individual is understandable to the tongue of humanity."

On the screen, Frank Garraghan nodded. "Yes, it is very good. You picked this all up from human radio transmissions?"

"The language of the tongue of humanity and the language of the tongue of the species of this individual are structured of a nature similar, and the group of this individual are the smartest of the species of this individual, as certainly the astronauts of humanity must be humans of intelligence that place above the intelligence average of humanity likewise."

If Frank had a difficult time understanding the aliens, he didn't let it show. "Yes, well I must thank you for how democratically you handled your arrival," he said. "A common conception concerning the arrival of aliens was that you would just land wherever and shock us all with your arrival. I appreciate you reaching out in secret and allowing us to device a strategy to best deliver the news to our public."

"The gratification you deliver this group of individuals is of a nature kind but unnecessary. When the introduction of the species of this individual first met life extraterrestrial, the species of this individual learned etiquette proper for introductions likewise."

"I understand. Before we begin actual important discussion, I just have to ask—your name isn't actually Jimmie, is it?"

"Jimmie is the name for humanity of this individual. This individual chose it from the program of the radio entitled The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen."

"What is your actual name? And what is the name of your species?"

"The name of the species of this individual is Rhaokin–" (He said this like Row-keen) "This individual is a Rhaokin. In the way of the Rhaokin, the length of the name is determined by the strength of the individual. The name of this individual is seconds long thirteen. In culture of the Rhaokin, the first sound of the babies of the Rhaokin determines the name of the individual. At the coming of every 'year', the individual partakes in the ceremony of renaming. The length of a name is political. The longer the name, the more 'alpha' the claim of the individual. Too alpha the name, the individual is targeted. Too weak the name, the individual is considered likewise."

"How does thirteen seconds compare to the rest of your species?"

"It is above the average."

Frank nodded. "Interesting. We can learn much from each other's cultures."

"That would be a situation amenable to us. As a sign of faith well intentioned, we have identified the species mosquito that your kind finds irritable, that is also unnecessary to the ecosystem of Earth. We have used the tools of the Rhaokin to eliminate the mosquito."

The screen went black.

Hawk turned to Frank, who still pointed the remote at the screen after turning it off.

"Those bastards are long winded," Frank said. "But you get the picture. Yes, what they said was true. They used some sort of alien bio-weapon to kill off every mosquito on the planet."

Horace Florence picked up where the president left off. "We understand that it was a gesture of good faith, but the fact that they have such deadly weaponry isn't something we can stand by and allow to exist. The Rhaokin suspect nothing. We continued diplomatic relations pleasantly."

"Let me stop you there," Hawk said. "That video looks fake as hell. Those alien costumes are shit."

"It's not fake, Hawk," Horace said.

"Those are actual aliens?"

"Yes."

"The way they talk is ridiculous," Hawk said. "It's like a bad movie."

Raven grimaced. "You think we invited you here for an analysis? For your insight?" He smirked. "You know the only reason you're here, Hawk."

Hawk frowned at Raven. "Well, let me make this easy for you all. I'm out."

Frank and Raven shared a look.

"What makes you think you have a choice in the matter?" Frank said with a sneer.

"What should make me think I don't?"

"Only this—"

Frank turned back on the television. Instead of the alien confrontation, however, Hawk saw something else. Security camera footage inside what looked like an interrogation room. In the middle of the room, sitting on a chair, was a woman with her head down. Her hair obscured her face.

"What the hell are you showing me?" Hawk said.

The woman looked up. Although the footage was slightly blurry and only in black and white, Hawk recognized their captive immediately.

"Sharline Taul! My girlfriend, a once struggling actress who only recently landed the lead role in the Latin television kids show sensation, Ángele, about an angel in disguise that just began college!" Hawk shouted. "You bastards! Let her go!"

Frank shut off the television. "You know what you have to do."

"Or what, you'll kill her?"

"Maybe we'll just cancel her television show and break her heart, along with the hearts of thousands of young Latin children."

Hawk paced around the room angrily.

"Breaking into the alien mother ship is insane."

Now Raven spoke. "Hawk, you know I think you're unreliable. You don't play by the rules and I just flat-out despise you. But damn it, you're the best we've got—maybe the best I've ever seen. We need you out there, and we're fresh out of options. Will you rescue humanity, one last time, for old-times' sake?"

Hawk turned away, chugged some whiskey and slammed the glass down on the president's desk. He hunched over, leaning on his hands, and looked out the window.

"Hawk?" Frank said. "We've explored all our options. This is it. You're all we've got. You have my word that nothing will happen to Sharline. And if something should happen to you, we'll ensure that she lives the rest of her life like royalty."

Dorsey Burwell approached and spoke for the first time. "It was my idea Hawk. I met with all our experts. There was a huge conference at Cambridge a few weeks back. They said the risk is very real but it is impossible to control. But then they said, 'well almost impossible.' We all knew what they meant. Impossible, but for one man. They meant you Hawk. You're our only hope."

Frank handed Hawk his phone. "It's the prime minister," Frank said.

Hawk took the phone and listened. The voice on the other end sounded old and British. "Hawk? This is Sir Basil Herbert Silberfanny Cummerbund the Third, the prime minister of the United Kingdom." He paused for a couple seconds, then continued. "Now listen here, you miserable cunt. You're pissing in the wind if you think we're just twiddling our Jacobs and waiting for those jolly space twinklers to fiddle our cunts and pin the tail on the slags. Those cunts was muddling their panties and prancing with their pricks in the honey, but I'll bet two Rogers to one that you can spouse their tim-toms, and you was the only cheeky cunt who could. Bloody hell, if I knew we was kicking around a bleeding mug I would've shit the bed and cocked up a kidney. But we wasn't, and we're still dodgy, and we expect the same from you."

He hung up the phone before Hawk could reply. Hawk handed the phone back to Frank, somewhat stupefied.

"Hawk," Horace Florence said. "We have everything you'll need. You depart in a week. We have a single captain stealth orbiter that you'll man. Your EVA suit has dual thrusters and a grappling ray to home you into their landing dock undetected. From there, you just have to do what you do best—break in, disable the machine, and break out without being detected."

"Do we have any other intel? Do we know where they keep the machine, or what it even looks like?"

"I'm not going to bullshit you Hawk. We don't even know if it is a machine. But this is our only chance, and it's a chance we're willing to take."

"We've started making arrangements, Hawk," Frank said. "You're rich and off the grid after this. Somewhere where even I won't be able to find you. You do this and you're out of the game for good, with nothing to worry about ever again."

Raven shook his head and smirked. "I know you Hawk—probably better than anyone on this whole damn planet. You're not going to do this for the riches or the girl or the world. But you are going to do this and here's why: This will be the greatest challenge of your life, a challenge that you can't just walk away from. You walk from this and you'll always wonder if there truly was a mark that you couldn't infiltrate. You want to prove you're the best? You want to be the Master Infiltrator? Well, here's your chance."

Hawk finished off the rest of his whiskey, still looking out the window. "Shut up," he said. "Just shut up. You had me at hello, you motherfuckers."
Chapter 3

Somewhere in the middle of the Mojave a gray fox tracked a shrew between shrubs under a blazing summer sun. The shrubs were tiny explosions of life, as if the desert sand compressed the seed until it burst with force to the surface. The hot sand shifted beneath the fox's paw. The sky was too bright to look at for more than a few seconds.

But the gray fox pursued the shrew until it casually crawled into a hole beneath a shrub to disappear, completely unaware of the gray fox stalking it from behind. The fox's curiosity made it linger when it should have attacked, and now lunch was delayed.

A strong wind picked up from above. Sand lifted off the ground, at first lightly, but then heavily as the wind increased in strength. The gray fox looked up—above it was the largest bird it had ever seen.

It ran.

"Cool looking fox over there," Raven said.

Hawk looked over the side of the helicopter. But the gray fox was gone.

"Where are we?" Hawk asked.

"Our base in the middle of the Mojave. This should look familiar from the video."

Hawk looked around.

"You're right. But then why are we here? Don't the aliens know of this place?"

"I suppose they do. But we launch satellites from here all the time. We're certain that your shuttle looks identical to our satellites and they won't know the difference."

The helicopter touched down. Hawk wore running shoes, slim fit denim jeans and his tried and true black cowhide welding jacket, worn, burnt, and unbuttoned, over a white tank top. The heat was overpowering, and cowhide welding jackets were heavy as they were, so he took it off as Raven followed him off the helicopter. Horace Florence was the last to disembark.

"Good you've kept your physique," Raven said.

"Burritos for breakfast exclusively."

"I'm not your friend, Hawk. I still despise you."

Hawk shrugged. "I forgot you existed until a few hours ago."

He withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook the pack open. A cigarette stuck out further than the others. He took it out with his lips, then with his other hand sparked it with a Zippo.

"Those things will kill you," Horace said.

"So will the aliens."

The helicopter blades slowed to a stop.

Hawk took a drag of the cigarette. "I forgot my glass with boobs on it on the helicopter."

Raven shoved Hawk forward and growled. "Fuck off."

Horace kept a straight face. His tie and jacket waved with the wind. "I'll keep an eye on it for you."

"So where is this base anyway?" Hawk said.

"You'll be surprised," Raven said.

Hawk looked around, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in sight. He took a second drag of the cigarette. "The base is underground," he said. "Makes sense."

Raven shook his head. "The base isn't what's underground."

Horace withdrew a remote from his pocket and pressed a button.

At first nothing happened. But then the sand on the surface in front of them started shaking, a square area of about fifteen yards. Then, that square started to shift, and like a garage door, it opened to reveal a vehicle underneath.

"This is the shuttle that is going to take us to our base," Horace said.

"The base is in space," Hawk said. "Makes sense."

He dropped his half smoked cigarette and smothered it with his shoe.

Raven shook his head and smirked. "The base isn't what's in space," he said.

"So what's in space?" Hawk asked.

"What makes you think something has to be in space?" Raven said.

"The shuttle, dumbass."

"This is just where we park our shuttle," Horace said. "The shuttle is taking us to a different location."

The three descended the stairs. The shuttle could fit four people—a pilot and co-pilot, and two passengers. It looked like a sedan with wheels folded outward, parked standing on its trunk. Hawk suspected that at one point it might have been a car, repurposed. Then he saw the rear and realized that it wasn't a sedan at all. It was much worse. It was a crossover.

"No," Hawk said. "No. Hell no. Is this a Pontiac Aztec?"

Horace nodded. "It is. Pontiac Aztecs are shuttles. You must have realized that."

"Wait. You mean...?"

"Yes." Horace nodded. "Most all Pontiac Aztecs are actually shuttles driven by government agents or other special agents. We suspected no citizen would actually be interested in purchasing or leasing a model of the car. The goal was to be hidden in plain sight. Unfortunately, for some reason, some people actually like the look."

"So this is going to take us to the base?" Hawk said.

"Yes."

Hawk sighed with disappointment as the Horace entered the driver's side and Raven took passenger. He pulled open the car door and stepped in awkwardly. The seats hadn't been adjusted at all, so when they were seated they were supine on their backs, parallel to the ground.

Horace gave the car a bit of gas and the car lifted off the ground.

"Systems are all reading, numbers are good. The capacitor is rerouting power to the impulse thrusters now."

He turned to Raven. "Everything look good?"

"I think we're good."

"Alright, we're off!"

Horace pounded the gas. Hawk's head shot backward against the cushion as they surged into the air. In a matter of seconds they were ten thousand feet above sea level. Horace leveled the car, and they flew level over the Pacific Ocean.

"Oh, the base is underwater, hidden in the Pacific Ocean," Hawk said. "Makes sense."

"Not even close," Raven replied.

"So the base isn't underground, in space, or underwater."

"Of course not," Horace said. "Too obvious."

"So where's the base?"

They seemed to be flying further and further away from the mainland. Hawk had no idea where they could be going.

"The first thing you need to understand is we're not going to a base, but instead to one of many bases," Horace said. "The Planetary Observation Network of Thrust by Impulse Augmented Cars."

Hawk figured out the acronym in his head. "You mean... Pontiac?"

"Precisely," Horace said. "An acronym."

"I thought it stood for something else."

"It all began in 1924," Horace said. "That's when the Soviet Union founded the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel. In 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. Things might have gone differently if during that time we had a less cool president, but as fate would have it, we had the coolest president of all time. President Lil C-Cool, Calvin Coolidge, indisputably the coolest president the United States has ever had. He worked together with Robert Goddard and General Motors to found the PONTIAC, conjecturing that the first nation to have flying cars would be the coolest nation on the planet. For decades, Pontiacs have been driven almost exclusively by government agents, Air Force pilots, and Steve McQueen villains. They couldn't fly at first, but they could leap over pretty large gaps. But as years passed, the cars improved. Finally we created the pinnacle car, the car that Lil C-Cool dreamt while drinking scotch, smoking cigars, playing pool, and being a generally chill dude all those years ago. The Pontiac Aztec. We were sure to make it hideous, so that no consumer would actually consider buying it. Because Pontiacs are engrained in the human psyche, we hoped that the general public would just mark the Aztec down as an abomination and forget about it, allowing us to observe the planet, hiding in plain sight. Unfortunately some people actually wanted to buy a model, so we were forced to commission models without impulse thrusters. But make no mistake—ninety-nine percent of Pontiac Aztecs are shuttles in disguise, observing the planet."

"That makes no sense," Hawk said. "How could Calvin Coolidge have known about impulse thrusters, which is a relatively new invention, in 1926?"

"This is a history lesson, not an interrogation, Hawk," Horace said.

Hawk grunted and looked out the window. They were over the Pacific Ocean still, flying west, and quickly approaching an island. "Hawaii. Got it. So the base, I mean bases, are hidden inside volcanoes. Makes sense."

"Obviously the base isn't inside a volcano," Raven said. "Do you know much it would cost to insure a base inside a volcano?"

"Probably a pretty penny," Hawk replied. "It's too obvious, anyway."

The Aztec began lowering. Clouds spread across the sky as if smudged by a wet finger. The air was crisp, the wind strong. Below, he saw a large lot surrounded by trees. A single road ran parallel to the lot, and in the center of the lot was a large office building with a unique oblong shape.

They seemed to be in the suburbs off the highway. As they descended closer and closer to the ground, Hawk began to notice something strange about the parking lot. The cars were parked in a pattern, with similar looking cars parked next to each other.

"Wait a minute," Hawk said.

Raven huffed with a smile. "Now you're getting it."

"We're at a car dealership—we're at a Pontiac dealership." Hawk shook his head and sighed with extreme disappointment. "Your base is a Pontiac dealership."

"You bet your ass it is," Raven said. "Problem?"

"I'm starting to root for the aliens."

"It gets hard not to."

The car touched down gently in the parking lot and the three men stepped out. The air was crisp and warm, and the wind ruffled Hawk's Waving Back hair as he looked around. There were Pontiacs everywhere, and even dealers walking around showing cars to customers.

"Are those real dealers?"

Horace nodded. "Most of them. With real customers."

Hawk watched a dealer who wore an expression on his face that could only be described as pure horror enter the passenger seat of a test car about to be driven by a five-foot-tall sixteen year old with a Mohawk, pierced ears and nose, and glasses. The Mohawk gave him an extra three inches in height. The test car was a yellow sedan, and as soon as they sat down the car lurched backwards and skidded to a stop. Hawk could hear the dealer inside the car scream, "Gently! Gently!"

Horace nudged Hawk. "This way," he said.

Hawk followed Horace and Raven into the dealership. The floor room was filled with about fifteen display model cars that gave Hawk the feeling that they were touring some kind of theme park museum.

Straight ahead of him, in a strange circular carpeted area were eight round high-top wooden tables. Seated at one was a man in a white stained t-shirt, reading a newspaper with a cup of black coffee in a Styrofoam cup. For some reason there were balloons everywhere, as if some kid decided that this Pontiac dealership was where he wanted to throw his birthday party.

Horace walked away to take a phone call. Raven and Hawk shared a contemptuous glance, and then walked off in opposite directions.

"What the hell are you celebrating?" Hawk asked a nearby dealer.

The dealer grinned condescendingly. "This is the Solar Eclipse Super-Special Zero-Down Lease Giveaway Extravaganza! Right now you can lease a brand new Aztec with zero-down and a ten-year, one hundred thousand mile warranty with an Aztec hybrid battery lifetime guarantee and three point nine percent APR for fifty months! Did he say fifty months? Fuck yes he did! Don't tell my manager I cursed or I'll get fired! Want to take one of these babies for a quick spin around the block, my man?"

"I'd rather shoot myself," Hawk said.

"Listen my brother, I'm not supposed to do this, but my boss is out for lunch, so I don't care. I'm a couple thousand away from my sales quota and I need to sell a car quickly. If I can get you to in one of these bad boys today I'll throw in one thousand dollars purchase bonus cash, no questions asked."

Horace walked over, done with his phone call, and Hawk turned to him and said, "Can I shoot him or is he a special agent?"

The dealer looked at Horace wide-eyed. "Horace Florence?"

"That'll do, agent. Drop the act."

"It's an honor, sir. We haven't seen coats here in years. What's the occasion?"

The two shook hands. Hawk stared at both men incredulously. "Remind me again what's stopping me from shooting the both of you?"

"Your patriotism," Horace said.

"Don't count on it."

Horace nodded his head to the dealer. "This is Gary Davison. You might be seeing a lot of one another, so play nice. Gary, this is Hawk Abrams. Yes, the real Hawk Abrams."

Gary held out his hand, "Whoa. I've heard a lot about you Mr. Abrams. It's great to finally meet you."

Hawk shook his hand, but narrowed his eyes. "You're off to a bad start, bucko."

Hawk let go and watched Gary pretend that his hand hadn't just been crushed. Gary looked at Hawk with a strained smile. "Can I call you Hawk?"

"No."

Raven returned. Gary took a look at him. "Raven himself! I should've recognized you sooner."

Raven growled at him. "Shut up. Let's get moving."

He walked over to a display car in the center of the floor room and wordlessly pulled open the driver's side door and sat down and buckled in. Hawk looked at the others. Certainly they weren't going to drive the model car out of the floor room?

But the others followed suit. Horace took the passenger seat and Gary a seat in the back.

Hawk grumbled and entered the backseat after Gary. The three others were buckled in.

"You're going to want to buckle in, Hawk," Horace said.

"Why the hell are the four of us grown ass men sitting in a display car in the middle of a showroom?"

"You'll find out in a second if you just buckle your seatbelt."

Raven pretended he didn't hear their conversation. "The coast is clear. Here we go," he said.

He put a key in the ignition and twisted.

With a sudden lurch, Hawk was thrown against Gary, and then thrown against the ceiling of the car. His world was literally turned upside-down. The instant Raven turned the key, the floor below the car had rotated, and their vehicle rotated beneath the floor. The four of them were now upside-down in the sedan, except Hawk, who was supine on the ceiling, his head bent at an awkward angle, and his hip in Gary's face.

"What the hell was that?" Hawk shouted. His head hurt from being slammed against the ceiling, and his hip hurt from smashing Gary's nose.

"The secret entrance to our secret base," Horace said.

"A little warning would have been nice," Hawk replied. He shifted on the ceiling to lie more comfortably and crawled for the door.

Gary lifted a hand to his nose and touched it, then looked at his fingers and saw blood. "Nobody panic, but I think my nose is broken."

"Nobody cares," Raven replied. He swung open his door, then with one hand on the seat and another on the belt buckle, he released himself and rolled deftly out of the car, landing on the floor four-feet below.

"We definitely need a better secret entrance," Horace said. He released himself from the seatbelt gently, and worked slowly to rotate his body in the car to reorient himself upright.

Hawk swung open the door and summersaulted out, landing on both feet.

"I'll catch up," Gary said. "I'm losing a lot of blood. I think I need a quick nap."

Hawk looked around the facility. It looked like a small warehouse surrounded by a lot of offices. In the center of the warehouse was a blue tarp covering a sedan-shaped object. Against the back wall was what appeared to be a futuristic weaponry rack, and next to that rack was another with an array of high-tech gadgetry.

A man wearing a light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into black pants approached the group of them and held a hand out to each of them one at a time.

"Horace, Raven, Hawk. Good to see all of you."

Horace and the man shook hands. "Gentlemen," Horace said. 'This is Boris Ivanov."

Boris continued. "We've already been briefed on the situation. Unless there's anything else, we can take it from here."

Raven looked at Hawk. "I think I've handled as much of him as I care to for the next fifty years." He held out a hand to Hawk. "Good luck, Hawk. I may hate you, but you're our only hope, so don't screw this up."

Hawk grabbed his hand for a second. Horace put a hand on Hawk's shoulder.

"Hawk. This is you verses them now. You can forget everything else but that."

He and Hawk shook hands. Then the two of them walked back over to the car and climbed in, which took a few moments because they had to rotate their bodies into the seats of an upside-down sedan stuck on the roof.

Boris held out a hand towards the weapon rack. "Shall we get started, Hawk?"

"In a moment, I have to see this."

Hawk watched as Raven and the others got settled. Raven put the key in the ignition, and a moment later the car rotated on the ceiling again and disappeared to the floor above, and where it was an identical empty car appeared.

"That's cool," Hawk said. "But also incredibly bizarre."

Boris nodded his head. "You'll find that a majority of the gadgets and gizmos we're equipping you with can be described exactly the same way."

Hawk turned and looked at Boris. He was a few inches shorter than Hawk, but then again, most men were. He had brown hair that stuck about one inch straight up and long sideburns. He wore thick-framed glasses and had a decent build with a slight gut.

"You don't have much of an accent," Hawk said.

"I was born in the States. You wouldn't understand a word my folks say though."

Hawk nodded and looked around the facility. "So what's the plan?"

"We teach you how to use the equipment you'll need to sneak onto and subsequently off of the alien mother ship, and give you the tools you'll need to disable their weapon."

"So you know about the aliens."

"We were briefed about ten minutes ago. Not that any of us were surprised. We are a division of NASA after all and it would be pretty embarrassing if NASA didn't notice a gigantic spacecraft in our exosphere."

"I suppose it would be."

"Alright so let's get started. The schedule is to have you up in the air within forty eight hours, which probably won't be enough time to teach you how to handle high-tech weaponry, how to navigate through space in a powered exosuit for your necessary EVAs, how we suppose you'll break into the alien mother ship and subsequently leave, how you'll eventually disable the equipment, and most importantly and most difficultly, how you'll fly up to space and land back down on Earth. But we'll do the best we can."

Hawk nodded. "Sounds doable. So where do we begin?"

Boris beckoned Hawk to follow. "Let me show you to your quarters first."

They walked to the back of the warehouse. At a small lab table stood a man and woman, twins, wearing lab coats. They worked on one of the devices from the wall. The device looked like a syringe. It made a strange tick noise, and the twins cursed simultaneously.

"Those two are Jordan and Casey. They make sure all the devices work properly."

Jordan and Casey looked at Hawk.

"You must be Hawk."

"He looks like a master infiltrator."

"He's taller than I was expecting."

"We should introduce ourselves."

The man walked up. He had short brown hair, thin wire-framed glasses and had a smaller, slightly feminine look about him. "The name is Jordan."

The woman approached next. She had long brown hair set in a ponytail and thick plastic framed glasses. She was an attractive, obviously feminine version of her brother. "He's kidding. I'm Jordan. He's Casey."

"Guilty as charged."

"Guilty of having a name?"

Hawk held up a finger and they both immediately fell silent. He pointed at the man and then the woman. "Thing One. And Thing Two."

Casey looked at Boris. "Are we hooking him up to the brain destroyer?"

Hawk shook his head. "I'll take this one, Boris." He looked at Casey. "No. The answer is a no."

"It's a misnomer," Jordan said. "We prefer to call it the mind destroyer."

"Still a no."

"Still a misnomer," Casey said. "We're going to teach you kung fu. We hook up nodes to your head and when you wake up tomorrow you'll know kung fu."

"I already know kung fu."

"So what are we teaching him?"

Boris pointed to the sedan with the tarp over it. "How to fly Tweety."

"Ooh that's a good one."

"A personal favorite of mine, personally."

"That was redundant."

"Not since we amped up the code."

Hawk interrupted them. "What's Tweety?"

"A prototype," said Boris. "We'll get to that tomorrow. First things first—"

"My quarters. Right." He looked at the twins and nodded to them both. "Thing One and Thing Two."

"Hawk," they replied simultaneously.

Hawk and Boris turned left at the back wall and entered a thin hallway. In the center of the hallway on the left wall was a large metal door with a peephole in the center.

"Well, this is it," Boris said.

"Honestly Boris, I don't need a room. And considering how much I have to learn, I doubt I'll have much time to sleep."

"Sleep is how you'll learn. We are going to knock you out cold for the next forty-eight hours broken into two sessions, and upload a montage of everything you need to learn into your brain. When you wake up, you'll have downloaded approximately two hundred gigabytes of data."

"Including kung fu?"

Boris shook his head. "We can't actually teach kung fu or anything with the body. We can teach fundamentals, but most of that sort of thing comes down to experience, instinct, and training."

"Good," Hawk said. "I like that better. I don't want someone being able to simply download what I've been training to do my whole life."

"I agree. Our system is actually crap and never works as intended. But we're short on time and it's the only way we can possibly have you prepared in forty-eight hours, so we feel comfortable risking it."

"Well, I am certainly relieved that you feel comfortable risking damaging my brain."

Boris opened the door to the room. "Glad you feel that way. Go inside and relax. The twins will be with you shortly."

Before Hawk could reply, Boris walked off. Hawk sighed and grumbled, then walked inside and took a look around.

The room looked as if it had been underwater for some time and had recently been drained. Every metallic surface was rusted. But despite the age of the furniture, all the equipment was new and state-of-the-art. There was a twin-sized bed against the wall, and on the other side of the bed was a desk with a computer. The computer was hooked up to what looked like a salad bowl with wires sprouting from it like hair. Dangling from the salad bowl helmet was a chinstrap. Hawk doubted he'd be able to fall asleep for even a minute in that thing.

There was a knock on the door. Hawk walked over and looked through the peephole. Outside stood the twins, holding their faces strangely close to the door, so that the fisheye lens of the peephole exaggerated their noses and eyes.

Hawk lifted the latch and pulled open the door.

Jordan handed Hawk the phone. "Phone call."

"Who is it?"

"The president."

Hawk took the phone from Casey's hand and raised it to his ear.

"Hello?"

He heard Frank Garraghan on the other end. "Hawk?"

"Speaking."

"Don't fuck this up. And go fuck yourself." Click.

Hawk turned to the twins. "That was pleasant."

"He sounded angry," Casey said.

Jordan shook her head. "I wouldn't call it angry."

"Furious?"

"Incensed."

Jordan and Casey entered Hawk's room and continued their conversation as if he wasn't there.

"Interesting word."

"How so."

"Incense, the holistic kind, is allegedly calming."

"Never used any myself."

"Neither have I, but that's not my point."

"You have a point?"

"Naturally."

"Not always."

"If you were to use incense in a room to calm someone, and they became incensed, then your incense failed."

"Have you brought our non-holistic incense?"

Hawk began to grind his teeth.

"Hawk."

Jordan said his name, but Hawk couldn't hear her over the grinding in his mind.

"Hawk?"

He shook his head. "Yes. What?"

"We need to light our variation of incense. It relaxes your mind, allows our machine to do its thing more effectively."

"How does that thing work anyway?"

"It resets the dorsal cerebral proton resonance with an antimatter nanosphere," Casey said.

"Really?"

"No. He made all of that up," Jordan said.

"You think I'm going to waste time explaining a machine that took decades for us to understand, which has no relevance to your life whatsoever, when we're already short for time, to a man who won't understand any of it anyway?"

Hawk stared at the both of them for a few pronounced seconds.

"You realize I can kill you both in ten different ways with just my pinky, right?"

"We are well aware," Casey said.

"Don't, however, bother explaining how," Jordan said. "Our brains are full enough as they are."

Hawk grimaced. "Just hook me up to this machine and let's get this over with."

"That's the plan," Jordan said. "Forty-eight hours from now and you'll be an expert on machines you've never touched or seen before."

Casey patted the mattress. "Take a seat, make yourself comfortable. My sister will take off your pants."

Hawk took a seat on the bed. "I've watched the X-rated version of this."

"I'm sure you've watched plenty of pornography, Hawk," Casey said. "Now scoot back over here so I can put this salad bowl on your head."

"So that's an actual salad bowl?"

"I'm guessing this is where real life and your videos deviate."

Hawk smirked. "You'd be surprised."

"I'm more surprised that you're this drunk on a Tuesday afternoon an hour after meeting with the President of the United States."

"It was his liquor."

Jordan began unbuckling his belt. "Not anymore," she said.

"Evidently," Casey followed up. There were bolts on either side of the salad bowl. As Casey twisted them, the bowl tightened on Hawk's head.

Jordan grunted as she yanked his pants down towards his ankle. "You have extremely pale thighs."

Hawk winked at her and smiled. "I get that a lot."

"You should turn off the lights when you sleep with women."

"Should probably turn off the engine as well but then you lose all the fun of doing it on the highway."

"You can take your pants off while driving a car on the highway?"

Hawk looked at Jordan and smirked. "I could do that in my sleep."

Casey and Jordan, for the first time, didn't reply immediately. They looked at each other with an awed sort of nod.

"Now I'm impressed," said Jordan.

"Wait until you take off my boxers."

Casey knocked on the salad bowl. It echoed loudly and Hawk winced. "We're all set," Casey said. "And that's not happening."

"At least let me change my relationship status to 'it's complicated'."

Jordan ignored him and took some sticks of incense out of her lab coat.

Casey withdrew a glass holder and a lighter from his. He took the incense from his sister, set them up beside the bed and lit them. "Try not to dream," he said. "Sleep tight. See you in forty-eight hours."

He turned off the light and closedshut the door. The room dimmed as the door shut, and when it closed it was pitch black. Hawk looked around, although he couldn't see anything, and breathed in. The incense smelled faintly of fresh-mowed grass and strawberries. As Hawk continued breathing in, his brain seemed to grow heavier. He allowed himself to lie back on the bed and focused on the air going in and out, in and out, in and—continued to breath in.

"Wake him up!"

"He's out cold! We set it to forty-eight hours!"

"The upload is still in progress, it's not a good idea."

"None of this is a good idea."

"We're fucked. We're so totally fucked."

"Snuff the incense!"

"Pry his eyes open!"

"Unhook the salad bowl!"

There was noise all around him. He was trying to sleep. Now he had a massive headache. What was going on?

Hawk opened his eyes. The light was on. Boris and the twins scrambled around him. Jordan was over him, unhooking the salad bowl, Casey was delicately trying to snuff the incense, and Boris was struggling to put back on his pants.

"What's going on?" Hawk asked. But his words came out as just an exaggerated vowel.

"He's up! Sort of."

Hawk tried to sit up. "What's going on?" he asked again.

"Sit him up," Boris said. "Give him the coffee."

Casey handed a cup to Hawk. He took it and took a sip.

"Keep drinking. That's an extra-sweet black eye. Chug it."

Hawk lifted the cup and drained the coffee, strong and sweet.

"Have you finished with the salad bowl, Jordan? Can you help him with his pants? I have to brief him quickly."

"Sure," Jordan said.

Hawk wanted to say something witty, but his brain wasn't functioning yet.

"Hawk, we've had a major setback. We thought President Douchebag said forty-eight hours, but what he actually says was 'four to eight' hours. Eight hours passed thirty minutes ago. We need you in the air thirty minutes ago."

Hawk squeezed his eyes with his fingers. "Ain't that some shit."

"Can you move?"

Hawk pushed himself upright and shifted to the edge of the bed. "Not the first time I've been drugged and forced to move."

With an extra heave, he pushed himself to his feet.

"How's it going with the pants, Jordan?"

"He keeps moving, sir."

"Funny you should say that," Boris said. "Considering we have plenty of time for your bullshit excuses. Oh that's right. We don't."

Hawk laughed as Jordan frowned. "Why doesn't he put on his own pants?"

"You're doing a stand up job, doll," Hawk replied. Jordan shot him an angry look.

She got the pants to his waist. Hawk buttoned them, then buckled his belt.

"Alright, brief me. Let's walk and talk."

Hawk pulled open the door and walked into the hallway. Boris turned to the twins. "Grab the arsenal."

"He won't know what any of the devices are!" Casey said.

"He'll figure it out."

Jordan sighed. "He knows roughly sixteen point two repeating threes percent of what he needs to know to use any of the equipment."

"I know how to kill a man using ten percent of my fingers," Hawk said. "I can figure out a way to use the weapons with sixteen."

They arrived in the main warehouse room and Casey grabbed a crate of gadgets from their lab table. Jordan grabbed a gadget from the top and showed it to Hawk.

"This is the most important gadget," she said. "You'll need it to disable the alien weapon. Do you know how to use this?"

Hawk stared at it. It looked like a hammer.

"That looks like a hammer."

"It is a hammer. But it actually has alien—"

"I'm pretty confident that I know how to use a hammer."

Boris shoved Hawk along. "Good enough. Hawk, take off your shirt."

Jordan reached into the crate and pulled out a torso-long metal centipede looking device with hundreds of needles along where the legs would be. Hawk looked at it "Um. Why?"

"Do you know the effect of outer space on bare skin?" Boris asked.

Hawk shook his head, still eyeing the device. "I wasn't aware that we've sent bears to space."

"Not bear skin. Bare skin. As in your naked flesh."

"No idea."

"You would pretty much freeze and boil simultaneously. This device prevents that from happening."

"How's it work?"

Boris narrowed his eyes. "I look like a scientist to you? Take off your damn shirt."

"Well she does."

"None of us have time to explain how this highly technological piece of machinery works, Hawk," Jordan said. "Just accept that it works and move on."

"That's a very flimsy excuse to avoid explaining a strange piece of equipment that seems like an integral part of this plan."

Boris shouted. "Stop stalling and take of your shirt!"

Hawk frowned. "Fine. This better not hurt. No touching." He looked at Jordan. "Except for her. She can touch."

He took off his shirt. Jordan approached with the centipede device. "That's the plan," she said.

"Don't think I'm not aware that this is going to hurt," Hawk said as Jordan placed the device against his spine. "I've seen how Alfred Molina acted in this scene."

Casey raised an eyebrow. "Who just casually namedrops Alfred Molina?"

"Guess how many times I've seen Spider-Ma—OW."

The device stuck its hundreds of needles into Hawk's back in a matter of seconds.

"How's that feel?" Jordan asked.

"Painful."

"Do some Master Infiltrator techniques or something to make sure this doesn't hinder your movements."

"Some infiltrator techniques?"

"Yes."

"Whatever that means..."

Hawk looked at the others, who were looking back at him expectedly. He sighed.

"Fine."

He threw himself forward and summersaulted. Then he summersaulted again, and again, and then rolled onto his back and wiggled around, looking up at the ceiling with his feet and hands in the air.

"What the hell sort of technique is that?"

"I call it 'Dog Scratching Its Back on Carpet.'"

Hawk kicked up from his back to his feet. "Device doesn't hinder me at all. I barely feel it."

"Good," Boris said. "Next, quickly..."

Jordan handed Hawk a ring that bent on the sides, as if it were the frame of a clock from a Salvador Dali painting.

"That goes around your neck," Jordan said. "It's a helmet for oxygen. Press the button on the ring to engage and disengage it."

"Try it now," Boris said.

Hawk placed it around his neck. The curves conformed to his shoulders. He pressed the button, and a blue-tinted force field-esque helmet wrapped itself around his head.

Hawk looked around. "Cool."

His voice had a hint of static to it.

"Oxygen is flowing good," Casey said.

"Flowing well," Jordan corrected

"Well," Casey said a split second after his sister. "I know. Damn it, Jordan."

"If you know don't say it wrong."

Hawk pressed the button again and the force field disengaged.

"What's next?" he asked.

"You'll like this," Boris said. "Last thing before you're off. We're almost forty minutes late now. You'll have to figure the rest out once you're up."

Boris walked over to the sedan-shaped vehicle underneath the blue tarp. Hawk and the twins followed.

Boris grabbed the tarp. "Ready for this?"

Hawk nodded.

With a dramatic flair, Boris ripped the tarp off the vehicle.

Hawk stared for a few seconds.

"I don't understand," he said.

Boris looked as if he were expected a different reaction.

"What do you mean?"

"Raven said my shuttle was supposed to look exactly like our satellites..."

"Yeah, and?"

Hawk stared at him incredulously. He then looked at the muscle car body of the shuttle—with its long black body, crosshatch pattern grille, cabin roof, and hood scoop.

"My shuttle is a freaking special edition 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am..."

"Wait until you see our satellites."

"This is my shuttle?"

"You were supposed to learn how to fly it during the mind destroyer, but we had to end it early. How much do you know?"

Hawk looked at the Firebird. It looked somewhat familiar to him.

"I think I know a little bit."

"We programmed the Firebird instruction first," Casey said. "It jumps around a lot, but he should know a bit more about piloting the Firebird than he knows about any of the other devices."

"Good enough for me," Boris replied. "Hop in, Hawk. Let's get you in the air."

Hawk hopped in and sat down. Casey handed him the box of gadgets, which he took and placed in the backseat. Boris tossed him the key. Hawk inserted it into the ignition and twisted. The Firebird roared to life.

"We call her Tweety," Boris shouted over the roar of the engine. "She's the only one of her kind. She sacrifices the ability to hover for incredible speed. The only way to launch is to go fast enough and hit an embankment of some kind, so that you can launch into the air. You land her like you would an airplane. Once you're in the air, pull back on the wheel and you'll engage the thrusters. Push the wheel back in to disengage the thrusters and have the wheels return to their normal positions. Any questions?"

"Can I keep her?"

Boris grinned. "Get moving. You save the world and we'll talk."

He pointed a small remote at a large garage door along the opposite wall. "Follow that tunnel," he yelled as the garage door opened. "At the end is a ramp. Hit it with enough speed and you're golden."

Hawk put the car in reverse and backed out of the spot, then put the car in neutral and revved the engine. Somehow he knew which button to press to close the cabin windows.

He looked at the twins and Boris and gave them a thumbs-up. Then shifted the Firebird into drive. The tires screeched as he slammed the gas. His head shot backward with the force of the acceleration, and in a second he was roaring down a pitch-black tunnel.
Chapter 4

The only light in the tunnel came from holes on the left and right sides. The holes of light shot past as Hawk tore forward, flying by faster and faster as the Firebird roared forward. Those lights were the only true indication of his actual speed, and judging by their frequency he must have been approaching three hundred miles an hour. The Firebird screamed in the dark.

He saw a light at the end of the tunnel. It began as a speck in the center of the darkness. But as he sped forward the light expanded like an umbrella opening.

A moment later he burst into the sunlight. The Firebird lurched as he hit the incline, but the suspension kept the front bumper from scratching the pavement. The car began climbing, the incline steepened.

Then he launched. At over three hundred miles-per-hour he hit the ramp and shot into the sky. He soared into the sky, forty feet, eighty feet, two hundred feet. But just shy of three hundred feet the car began dipping, its acceleration slowed.

Then he began falling.

"Shit. Shit!"

Hawk couldn't remember how to make the car fly. But then, instinctively as if he'd done it before, he pulled back on the wheel, and the impulse thrusters engaged. The back wheels rotated to face backwards, and the front wheels rotated inward to face the ground, and with a burst of energy he continued into the sky at incredible speed.

Seven hundred, eight hundred, one thousand miles an hour. He climbed faster and faster, gaining speed. Then he heard a pop, and realized that he'd broken the sound barrier. The sky, once blue, grew darker and darker. He could see the line of the atmosphere, and drew closer as if swimming upward to the surface of a pool.

He pulled back harder on the wheel, and escaped the atmosphere of Earth. The box of gadgets in the back of the car floated into the air, and the gadgets leaked out, bouncing around the interior cabin. The hammer flew into Hawk's head and ricocheted off. He pushed the wheel into the console a little and the car slowed down, but remained hovering in mid air and moving forward.

"Houston, we have successful liftoff," Hawk said to himself.

"Well done Hawk," a voice replied from his radio.

"Boris?"

"At your service."

"I didn't realize there was a radio in the car."

"All cars have radios."

Hawk shook his head. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah I do. You're connected to a lot of ears, so watch what you say. You've got a lot of eyes on you."

"The President on?"

"I suspect he is."

"Frank?"

"Go ahead Hawk," Frank replied.

"Go fuck yourself."

"Will do."

"So where do I go now?"

There was silence for a moment.

"You should see three big floating things," Boris said. "The first one is the moon. The second one is the International Space Station. Both of these you should recognize for what they are."

Hawk grimaced.

"The third one, that looks like a giant neon green water tower? That's the alien ship."

"How do I get on it?"

"I'll take this one," Raven said. "Hawk..."

"Yes."

"Are you a master infiltrator or not?"

"I'm risking my ass up here for you dicks."

"Are we hurting your feelings?"

"That would be a first."

Hawk looked at the alien mother ship. It looked exactly like a giant floating water tower, or like a large jellyfish with completely straight legs. In the center of the legs was a thicker leg, and all the smaller legs had connectors that attached to the large center tube.

"Alright guys, I'm closing in. Over and out."

Hawk turned the steering wheel and hit the gas. The Firebird shot forward toward the bottom of the legs.

The speed of the Firebird was incredible, and in seconds Hawk had approached close enough to observe more detail on the ship. Lining the outside of the legs were hundreds small circles, about four feet in diameter. If every leg had a circle, there might have been three thousand circles total. The center tube seemed to be one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The head of the ship was huge, incomprehensibly so.

As Hawk drew closer, he saw that there seemed to be a landing dock at the end of each leg. He flew closer and confirmed what he saw. Some sort of landing dock tube that looked as if it connected to smaller vehicles. Some of the other legs had vehicles attached but the leg closest to Hawk did not. He piloted the Firebird forward.

"I found a point of entry," he said. "I'm going in."

He piloted the Firebird to the entrance and docked alongside it with the driver's-side door of the Firebird against it. He shifted the steering wheel to the left and lightly tapped the gas, and the Firebird slowly made its way closer and closer to the leg.

He bumped against the docking bay. He'd assumed that he would lower the window, engage his helmet, and float through, but that wasn't the case.

As soon as he made contact, the tube shot out and suctioned itself against the car, creating an airtight seal. Air then rushed into the chamber, lights turned on, and the machine stopped.

There was a round door at the end of the tube. Around the tube, above the round door, was a bright neon sign that, when the lights turned on, showed some strange green symbols.

Then the green symbols disappeared, and replacing those symbols appeared the words, "Welcome, Humanity!"

Hawk blinked a few times.

As quickly as it had come, it disappeared and the original symbols took its place.

Hawk kept staring. A few seconds later, the symbols disappeared and "Welcome, Humanity!" returned.

This kept alternating, and didn't appear to have any intention of stopping.

Hawk shook his head. Something didn't feel right. He had no idea what to expect, but this was far off from even his wildest expectations.

He returned to the gadget box and looked at the gear. He found a utility belt that looked like it had a different holster for several different gadgets. Taking his time inspecting everything, he hooked each gadget to the holster. Some of the gadgets felt faintly familiar, but most were completely foreign. There were ten in total. Six strapped to the belt, one gadget for each leg, one strapped around his bicep, and another around his left wrist.

His jacket concealed the gadgets decently enough around his waist. Once Hawk wore anything or equipped anything, it became tactical. A utility belt was now a tactical utility belt. A pen became a tactical pen. A tactical knife became a tactically tactical knife, having even more uses than it was designed to have once in his hands.

"Alright, I'm going in," Hawk said.

"Your watch is a communicator," Boris replied. "Keep us updated. Good luck. We're all counting on you."

"Right," Hawk said.

He twisted the key out of the ignition, then pressed a button on his helmet. The force-field raised. Opening the door to the car, he took a deep breath and then launched himself out.

As soon as he crossed the threshold from the Firebird to the tunnel, gravity kicked in and Hawk crashed hard onto the ground.

He allowed himself to lie on the ground for a moment. "Off to a great start," he said.

"Hawk?" his watch buzzed. "This is Jordan. Your medical readout says you just sustained a significant blunt force trauma. Are you alright?"

He pulled his watch to his mouth. "Yes I'm fine. I just tripped."

"Okay that's a relief."

"Hey Hawk!"

This time it was Casey's voice.

"Your environmental analysis on your watch reads that you are in an Earth-like environment. You don't need your mask, you should be able to breathe the air just fine."

Hawk pushed himself to his feet and pressed the same button on the mask. The force-field receded, and he took a breath.

"Yep, tastes like air," he said into his watch. "Over and out."

The hallway was white. It appeared to be lit with a sort of dancing orange light that darted around inside a clear tube. At the end of the hallway was a round door, and at the center of the door was a large wheel.

Hawk walked forward and grabbed the wheel with both hands, and with a giant heave turned it.

It gave relatively easily, and with a final shove the door opened. The room outside the door was considerably darker than the hallway, and it took Hawk's eyes a moment to adjust. He stepped through the threshold and shut the door behind him.

"Finally, you're back. You've been gone for ages," a voice behind him said.
Chapter 5

Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, or eight-second 'Eyy' piloted his ship back from the asteroid that he just spent the last six hours meticulously dumping waste upon. As he drew closer to the cabin, he saw that, where the crew ship was normally supposed to be docked, a Pontiac Firebird had taken his place.

"Great," he said to himself. "There's another hour to this damn assignment."

Hawk, inside the ship, turned around.

"You're not Eyy," the voice behind him said. The voice said 'Eyy' for eight seconds. "Wait a minute. You're a human!"

Hawk was face to face with a seven-foot-tall Rhaokin dressed in spandex. He had no idea how to reply.

"Yes, it appears that I am a human," Hawk said, nodding.

"So does this mean you accepted our terms?"

"Probably. Maybe. What terms?"

"So I guess that's a no. So you are just an independent checking us out?"

"An independent?"

"I mean your government didn't send you."

The number-one rule of infiltrating was lie all the time. As an infiltrator with years of field experience, Hawk knew exactly when a well-placed lie was necessary. "No, yeah. I flew up here myself."

"Gotcha. It happens."

"What do you mean, 'it happens?'"

The Rhaokin shook its head. "How far along are negotiations anyway? Has Jimmie even presented the contract to your president yet?"

"Contract?"

"Oof, weOy. We are way behind schedule. Alright grab a cleaning kit, I'll explain as we clean the rooms."

The Rhaokin motioned for Hawk to follow. They entered what was obviously an alien janitorial closet. On the walls were brooms and mops and vacuum cleaners.

"I recognize pretty much all of this equipment," Hawk said.

"I suppose you should. These devices don't really improve much after their initial invention. That mop over there self dries, which is pretty advanced. Aside for that, this equipment is pretty dated."

"What should I grab?"

"Just take the feather duster. Don't want you to think the Rhaokin are jerks on your first encounter."

Hawk reached for the feather duster and grabbed it off the shelf.

"Well now that I think about it—I've seen the footage of first contact between Jimmie and our president. Why aren't you talking strangely like he was?"

"Good question with a simple answer," the Rhaokin replied. "Walk with me."

Hawk followed the Rhaokin down what appeared to be the leg of the ship. Inside it was obviously a hallway.

"So to explain the basics first," the Rhaokin said. "This ship is pretty much the equivalent of what humanity'syou humans have for cruise ships. I'm a custodian. We have about forty-two hundred passengers and six hundred crewmembers. All of the passengers are incredibly rich. Being the first to tour a new planet costs quite a bit, as you can imagine I'm sure."

"Sure, sure," Hawk said.

This was getting stranger by the minute, and for all intents and purposes of an infiltration mission, this was going horribly.

"About Jimmie. He is our ambassador. He's done this about eight times. Not all ambassadors do what he does, but he maintains that species get a little confused when we arrive and speak their language perfectly."

"I admit it is a little strange hearing you talk so well."

The Rhaokin nodded. "I know. And I'm just a custodian. But the competition for even this job is ridiculous. Every worker on this ship has at least the Rhaokin equivalent of a Bachelors degree. They call this job entry level, but it requires certification in Alien Dialect. And I also sympathize that it's weird hearing oneself referred to as an alien. Not all of the passengers on this ship will speak English perfectly, or at all. They will call you an alien. Don't be offended. It has thrown off other species in the past."

"This is getting stranger and stranger," Hawk said. "I'm Hawk, by the way. What do I call you?"

"My actual name is Uhh," the Rhaokin said, saying 'Uhh' for about eight seconds. "But you can call me Golf."

"Golf?"

They arrived at a door. Golf knocked twice. No answer.

"I enjoy the sport," Golf said. "I know it's not a common name, less than a decimal point of a percentage of your population uses the name, but I like it."

"It's a fine name. So this is a space cruise, and your species intends to tour Earth?"

"Tour Las Vegas, specifically."

Golf took a card from his belt and swiped it against a door sensor. A light on the sensor turned green, and Golf pushed open the door.

"Why Las Vegas?"

They entered the room, which was by far the strangest room Hawk had ever seen. It circled the outside of the hallway entirely. The white floor spread from the door like the track of a curving roller coaster. It curved to the left. On the opposite end of the door, connected to the curving floor, was a large circular window that looked out at space. Hawk quickly realized that the circles he saw along the legs of the ship were windows of different rooms.

Golf walked into the room and his body quickly became perpendicular to the floor as he walked along the wall and walked right up to the window. He knelt down, grabbed a spray bottle and a towel from his belt and began spraying and wiping the window.

"If you've never been in a space station I can see how this is disorienting," Golf said. "Just imagine yourself standing on the incline of a hill, and walking through the door is just walking over the hump and to the declining side."

"Easier said than done," Hawk replied. But he took a breath, then allowed himself to walk forward. Surprisingly, the gravity felt the same and each step he took was as if gravity reoriented itself to push him downward.

"The hallway outside isn't parallel to the outer walls of these tubes," Golf said. "They are positioned at a forty-five degree angle. Technically you can walk on the wall with the door as easily as you can walk on the floor. We just position it like this to keep it as natural as possible, but it takes some getting used to for everyone. The tube you entered this room from enters this area at a forty-five degree angle, although I'm sure you naturally assumed you entered perpendicularly. That's how everyone gets disoriented at first."

"I appreciate the explanation," Hawk said. "You would be surprised at how many things I experienced today that had a one sentence explanation with no precise details."

"It happens. Now come dust off the furniture while I continue explaining."

Hawk looked around the room. On the wall with the window was a bed. Past the bed was what appeared to be a kitchen. Then there was some sort of living room with a table, and beyond that was a bathroom. The place just ended there, and Hawk realized he had gone the full circle around to back where he entered. He walked back and started dusting off the area around the bed. The family staying here consisted of obvious slobs, and Hawk was forced to dust around half eaten piles of unrecognizable mush.

"So how this works is first we find away to allow our species to visit your planet safely, if at all possible," Golf said. "Which means first evaluating the atmosphere and the environment, and then potential hazards, and finally the alien species themselves. Then we make contact. Everything goes smoothly, we present a contract."

Golf smirked and shook his head. "The contract isn't the fairest of practices, but it's the nature of business. Hopefully your species is savvy enough to know not to accept our initial contract. Despite how cavalier Jimmie will act, you have us by the reproductive organ. We have forty-two hundred guests aboard this cruise who will leave us nasty reviews if we get this far, stay here this long, then fail at the final step—negotiations."

Golf looked at Hawk and shrugged, then said "I shouldn't be telling you this, but whatever. The initial contract will be exclusive visitation rights to our company, for roughly ten thousand units of space currency per Earth year. To put that figure in perspective, each guest onboard this cruise paid sixty thousand units of space currency to be here. You should be able to negotiate a much higher—or a completely different contract. You probably do not want to accept exclusive visitation rights either. And definitely don't tell anyone I told you all of this. I'll get fired immediately if they knew I told you this."

Hawk nodded. "I appreciate you telling me, and if asked, we've never met. But answer me this: What was the deal with showing off that fancy weapon with killing off mosquitos?"

At this, Golf laughed. "Weapon? Would you call that bug spray machine a weapon?"

"I'm not following."

"That machine is a high-tech version of bug repellant. Yes, we have annoying lower life forms on our planet too. Every planet has them. It just so happens that your mosquitos carry thousands of diseases that would make any Rhaokin very sick very quickly. The guys upstairs must have determined that they were unnecessary to your ecosystem, so they eliminated them. We can't have our guests touring and getting incredibly sick, now can we? Bad for business."

Golf began vacuuming the floor. It was a very quiet vacuum, surprisingly quiet. "That's amazing," Hawk said.

"I guess it's pretty cool that we can isolate a single—"

Hawk interrupted him. "No not that," he said. "The vacuum. It's silent."

"This? This is what you're shocked by?" Golf frowned. "You're aboard one of the largest space cruises in the universe and you're impressed by a silent vacuum."

Hawk smirked. "It's a little more tangible to me than all of this."

"Wait until you see our automatic soap dispensers."

"We have those already."

"But you don't have silent vacuum cleaners?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

Golf took a moment to reply. "You have one backward civilization," he said.

Hawk shrugged. "Maybe. So why Las Vegas?"

Golf raised and eyebrow. "Imagine this: Forty-two hundred filthy rich tourists who have no idea how your gambling games work, packaged and delivered to the door of your largest gambling city." Golf paused to let the image sink in, then smirked. "Yeah, I'd call that a win-win for everyone involved. Except for, perhaps, the tourists."

Hawk laughed. "I can get behind that."

At that moment the door swung open and another Rhaokin opened the door.

"Someone parked a Pontiac Firebird in our spot," the Rhaokin said as it entered. It then saw Hawk and stopped itself. "Oh."

Golf looked at Hawk and then the Rhaokin. "Hawk, this is Eyy—" (he said 'Eyy' for eight seconds) "But his 'human name' is Omega. Omega this is Hawk. He's an independent."

Omega walked up to Hawk and held out a hand. "This is what you humans do right? Shake hands?"

Hawk grasped his hand and they shook. Omega didn't squeeze his hand at all, but Hawk assumed that Omega could easily crush his hand if he tried. "Yeah that's right," Hawk said.

"I should have shaken his hand," Golf said. "Damn."

"Does that make me the first Rhaokin ever to shake hands with a human?"

Golf kept shaking his head. "Damn damn damn."

Hawk nodded. "Yeah I think so."

Omega grinned. "Radical!"

"I think that makes you the first alien to ever shake hands with a human," Hawk continued.

Omega grinned even further, showcasing a large set of eerily human-looking teeth. "Contact me when the first statue of us shaking hands is erected in your finest city."

Golf cast Omega a disapproving look. "Finish off this room, Omega. I'm going to get Hawk geared up."

Omega nodded. Golf motioned Hawk to follow him out of the room. They reentered the hallway.

"I'm going to set you up as a custodian. It's not exactly a textbook practice, but every custodian does this with pretty much every independent boarder unless they seem hostile. You'll pretty much be able to come and go as you please, except for the flight deck and bridge and science lab and all of that good stuff upstairs where none of us are authorized to go."

He opened the janitorial closet and handed Hawk a cardkey and what appeared to be a fanny pack. Which was now a tactical fanny pack.

"You have some basic janitorial tools in there. Nothing should be that unrecognizable. All I ask is that you make our jobs slightly easier by cleaning a thing or two here and there. Feel free to socialize with the guests. Anyone asks who you are, you tell them Golf hired you. Most of them will try to talk with you and test their English, so try not to be rude. Sound good?"

Hawk strapped on the tactical fanny pack and hooked the cardkey to his belt. This was turning into the easiest infiltration mission he'd ever had. And the least typical.

"Sounds good."

"One last thing," Golf said. "You need me for any reason, there's a radio in your fanny pack. It looks like a cellular telephone. Just hold the button and ask for Golf and I'll hear it and know it's you."

Hawk nodded. "Cool."

"Oh yeah, and if you're approached by someone and they speak don't speak English, just say: 'English é vrosk tru'unk á vost.' That roughly translates to 'I only speak English.' Which should be enough."

Hawk closed his eyes. "English ayvrusk trunk avast."

Golf laughed. "Close enough. You have a very strange accent."

"I would assume so."

Golf held out a hand. "It's about time I became the second Rhaokin in history to shake hands with a human."

Hawk clasped his hand and they shook briefly. "Thanks for all your help," Hawk said.

"You're welcome. See you around, Hawk."

Golf walked down the hallway, used his cardkey on a room further down, and disappeared.

Hawk waited a moment to ensure the coast was clear, then entered the janitorial closet and shut the door.

He raised his watch to his lips. "This is Hawk. Over."

"We read you loud and clear Hawk. Go ahead. Over."

Hawk recognized Boris's voice.

"The Rhaokins are completely friendly. This ship is pretty much a cruise ship. They killed all the mosquitos just to protect their guests. It only affects lower life forms. We have nothing to fear. I'm coming back to Earth. Over."

"That's a negative, Hawk. Continue on with your mission. Over."

"You must not have heard me correctly. They are completely friendly. They mean us no harm. Their weapon isn't even a weapon. This is a group of rich tourists. Over."

There was a ten second pause, and then Boris spoke again. "Understood. Carry on with the objective. Over."

"Not understood, evidently. They are harmless. I'm returning to Earth to discuss further. Over."

There was no reply for a few more seconds. Hawk tapped his foot on the ground, growing impatient. Then his radio buzzed. It was no longer Boris, instead he heard Frank Garraghan's voice.

"Hawk, I'm going to make this easy. You finish your objective or your girlfriend has an unfortunate drug overdose in a club tonight. Over."

Hawk clenched his jaw. "You son of a bitch."

"And we kill your dog. You have twenty hours or we discuss other options. Over and out."
Chapter 6

Hawk ripped the watch off of his wrist and made to smash it on the ground, but at the last moment he stopped himself. As much as he hated all of them, he needed to remain in contact for his girlfriend's sake. He reluctantly strapped it back on.

He shook his head. Fine. He'll disable the weapon. If the Rhaokins were telling the truth, which he was sure that they were, there was no harm in disabling it. Perhaps he could convince the Rhaokins of his situation and they would understand.

He shook his head. Or perhaps they wouldn't.

Not worth the chance. The greatest infiltrator on Earth shouldn't have a problem disabling an alien device in a locked off part of an alien cruise ship. And with about five thousand possible suspects aboard the craft, if he performed well enough humanity wouldn't even be a suspect.

He left the closet and walked down the hall. The hallway stretched so far down that it disappeared into a black dot. The walls were white and the floors some sort of black marble. He kept forward, past the door where he'd cleaned with Golf, and past the following door where Golf was currently cleaning.

"There must be some sort of shuttle," he said to himself.

The prospect of showing his face to too many Rhaokins wasn't alluring, but his options were limited. He continued onward, looking for any sort of backdoor or air vent, anything he could utilize to remain unseen.

A few more doors down the hallway dynamic changed. All the doors had so far been on his right, but there was no a hallway opening to his left. He turned the corner.

Here was what he was looking for. Reminiscent of a subway platform, he was now standing in a larger room with a track lying parallel to the hallway. The platform was completely empty, much to Hawk's relief.

On his left was a large tunnel. He shifted his perception. It wasn't a tunnel—it was a hole. He had to force his brain to recognize the ship differently than his mind naturally wanted to perceive it. Despite the fact that he stood perpendicular to the track, he had to force himself to recognize it less like a subway and more like an elevator. And for the sake of his sanity, he had to come to terms with the fact that he was walking on the inner walls of an upright water tower-shaped ship. Where he needed to go, the area that was off-limits, was not at the front of the ship, but at the top of it.

It made him nauseous just thinking about it. The track was a long metal stripper pole, although considerably thicker, and from what Hawk could see, it ran from the bottom of the ship to the top of it.

The vehicle shot by unbelievably quickly. It was shaped like a long doughnut. All the legs of the water tower or jellyfish shaped ship connected to this center hub, which was the equivalent of an elevator lobby.

He walked forward and found a button. He pressed it, but it was just shaped like a button, and didn't submit to his touch. He kept trying it, but nothing happened.

"Dumbass," Hawk called himself. He took his cardkey from his waistband and swiped it against the button. It now glowed yellow.

A moment later, the donut shot past him again, this time from the opposite direction. It had glass walls, so he was able to make out the Rhaokins inside. And from his quick glimpse, a few of them saw him for a second as well.

He swiped his card against the button again, but it didn't react. He tapped his foot.

Then the elevator shot back up and stopped on his floor. As soon as the doors opened, something strange happened. Hawk was immediately lifted off his feet, rotated gently in midair, and gently placed down on the inside center of the elevator, so he was looking up at where he'd just been standing moments before.

This time he couldn't hold it in. He puked, and it flew out of the elevator and landed where he'd been standing.

The doors didn't close. The elevator wouldn't move. Then a mechanical alien voice spoke, pleasant and feminine.

It sounded like similar to the Rhaokin phrase Golf had taught him earlier. A second after, the feminine voice spoke again, this time in English.

"Please step off the docking platform. Thank you. Please step off the docking platform. Thank you."

Hawk realized the ship wouldn't move until he did. At the bottom of the elevator were buttons. He didn't want to mess with those, however, so he just stepped off the docking platform and hoped that the elevator would just move on its own, similar to a human elevator.

A second after he stepped off the platform, the doors shut and the elevator shot forward.

Through the glass window above him he now saw into space. Around him were clearly the other legs of the ship, and between them he saw nothing but empty space and countless stars. He wasn't facing Earth, and from his angle he couldn't make out any identifiable space objects.

The floor of the elevator circled around the stripper pole track. Hawk couldn't stomach walking while in motion, but he suspected that if he followed the ring he would walk in a circle around the vehicle and return right where he stood now.

He arrived at another lobby sort of room, looking almost identical to the room he had been in a minute prior, but the elevator shot straight past it.

At the next stop he wasn't so lucky. The vehicle slowed to a stop. But he didn't see anyone enter from the lobby he could observe, and on his left and right the doors remained shut as well.

The doors closed and the elevator continued upward.

To his horror, he heard two voices conversing in the Rhaokin language.

Hawk kept perfectly still. He barely moved. He kept his breathing slow and deliberate.

Then he heard footsteps. They were walking toward him.

Stepping with an impossible lightness for a man of his size, Hawk walked the opposite direction, to keep the direct center floor of the vehicle between himself and the Rhaokin. He glanced at his back a couple times to gage the speed of the other occupants—and almost walked directly into the back of another Rhaokin.

This one was obviously female. Considerably smaller than her male counterpart, she stood a few inches short of six feet, had long hair, and a considerably smaller frame.

She gasped as he approached, then said something unintelligible in Rhaokin.

Hawk responded quickly. "English ayvrusk trunk avast."

The Rhaokin woman paused for a second, appearing to think very hard. Objectively, she had a pleasant, softer face than the males Hawk had met.

"English bad."

There was a second Rhaokin in the elevator, the one that had began to walk toward him earlier. It paused at the two of them and looked for a second, then spoke.

"I'm assuming, from your custodial equipment and badge, that you've already met a fellow custodian?"

Hawk nodded. "Yeah, Golf got me set up."

"Did he shake your hand?"

Hawk nodded and smiled. "Yeah, both him and Omega."

"Damn."

The female Rhaokin said something intelligible to the Rhaokin, and he replied in their language. Then he turned to Hawk and continued in English.

"So are you a member of your government or an independent?"

"Independent."

"Did Golf fill you in on everything?"

"Yeah pretty much. From what he told me, I'm guessing that she's a guest?"

"Yeah that's right. Good thing he taught you that phrase too. The guests aren't as used to alien invaders on our ship as we are."

The female spoke again. Then the male replied. Hawk tried to listen to them speak, to pick up patterns and repeated phrases, but nothing clicked. They spoke too quickly. The female spoke again. The custodian replied with a short, "Rah" sound. The female said "Cruoe'um" and the custodian replied again with "Rah," shaking his head. The female gave him a pleading look, and the custodian sighed, then turned to Hawk.

"I'm really sorry about this." The Rhaokin sighed and shook his head, then continued. "She wants me to ask if you would consider having intimate relations with her."

Hawk blinked a few times. "Um... What?" He avoided looking at the female.

The custodian shook his head. "This is... I've heard of this happening, but I never thought..." He stopped for a moment, then continued. "It's rare, not as uncommon as you'd think, but rare, that alien species look and behave in a similar enough manner that we can recognize facial expressions and motions. Our species are very similar in that regard. We even shake our heads in the same manner to indicate a positive and negative response. That gesture isn't as uncommon as you would think either, but yeah. I'm rambling a little bit. To get to the point, she is thrilled that you are relatively attractive, and undoubtedly wants to be the first Rhaokin in history to have intimate relations with a human."

Hawk had no idea how to reply. She definitely appeared to be softer than the males, and the general shape of her body seemed feminine, aside for the shorter legs, the longer arms, and the trunk like thing extending from the back of her neck. If he had to guess, she probably weighed about a buck sixty, which wasn't unreasonable.

Why was he even considering this? That would be crazy. He shook his head. It would be crazy.

The female spoke again. The custodian translated. "She says she'll pay you."

Hawk blurted his reply without thinking. "How much?"

The custodian looked at him for a few seconds with a raised eyebrow. Then he shrugged and turned back to the female and spoke. She replied and the custodian translated. "She says twenty thousand units of space currency."

Hawk rubbed his forehead. He knew he couldn't resist replying—his curiosity was getting the better of him. "How much is that, relatively?"

The custodian grinned. "A bit more than I make in a year."

Hawk squeezed his eyes with his fingers and sighed. "What am I doing?" he said under his breath. The custodian spoke again. "Are you actually considering this, or should I let her down easy?"

"I don't know. That's the scary part."

"Well, if it makes your decision any easier, to our species she would be considered very attractive."

"The scarier part is that I can sort of see it."

"I see it with your females too. It's definitely bizarre."

The female spoke again, now smiling. The custodian translated. "She's negotiating now. She says she'll pay you ten thousand to strip for her, and another ten thousand after the deed is done."

"I feel dirty."

The custodian laughed. "I'm glad you do. I was starting to question the integrity of your species for a minute there."

"I'm not, by any means, a typical example of a good human."

"You don't have to justify this to me. This is new territory for us all."

Hawk sighed and shook his head, looking at the floor.

Then he looked at the female. "Fine," he said. "Yes."

She smiled. "Yes?"

Hawk nodded. "Yes."

"Yes!" she said again. "Yes yes!"

She scanned her cardkey on the elevator and a different button lit up.

"Is this a mistake?" Hawk asked the custodian.

"I guess we'll find out," he replied with a grin.

The elevator stopped two places later. The female stepped onto the docking platform, and was gently lifted and rotated out of the elevator. She looked up into the vehicle at Hawk expectedly. Hawk turned to the custodian and shrugged, then followed onto the platform. He was lifted off his feet and pulled out of the elevator. He rotated in midair and landed on his feet outside.

It took him a moment to regain his bearings. He took a deep breath, then smiled at the female Rhaokin.

"What's your name?"

She smiled back, but wore a confused look.

Hawk pointed to himself. "Hawk."

She pointed to herself. "Hawk."

"No." Hawk shook his head. He pointed to himself again. "Hawk."

She pointed at him. "Hawk."

He nodded. "Yes."

She pointed to herself. "Weeeeee," she said for about eight seconds.

Hawk pointed to her. "Weeeeee," he replied, for the length she said it.

She motioned for him to follow her. "Hawk," she said. "Yes. Hawk."

He followed. "English? Yes?" he said, hoping to learn what other words she knew.

"English bad," she said. Then she added, "I drink water."

Hawk laughed. "You drink water. Good to know."

She smiled and kept at it. "I like space."

"So do I," Hawk said. "Space is fun."

"What is the time," she said, saying it as if it were a fact instead of a question.

Hawk looked at his watch. "It's close seven at night."

"I eat a red apple. You are welcome," she said. He could tell by the way she spoke that she barely knew what the phrases she spoke meant. And likely didn't understand a word he was saying. He wondered what the "Introduction to English" course was like as taught by aliens.

They walked down the hallway. This one looked exactly like the one Hawk had been in previously. Then he remembered that this was the same hallway, just closer to the top than he had been. The hallway ran parallel to the elevator. Thinking about it made his head swim.

There was a door on there left that Weeeeee stopped at. She used her key to open the door then she entered and looked back at Hawk expectedly. He nodded and followed her inside.

The room looked similar to the one that Hawk had helped clean earlier, except more personalized. He wondered how long this cruise ran for. How fast did it fly—how far away was the Rhaokin planet?

But he couldn't ask Weeeeee those questions, unfortunately. He saw personal items scattered about the room. There were clothes hanging from the walls, but in a way that made it look intentional. In the kitchen area were dirty dishes. They had plates and cups, and silverware that resembled human silverware except, by his quick glance, they had no spoons, just two-pronged forks with serrated edges for cutting.

Weeeeee sat down on the bed and watched Hawk as he looked around. Curiosity was a factor in his investigation, but he was also stalling. Sleeping with an alien? That would be something. It might kill him. For all he knew, females might rip the heads off of the males after coitus like praying mantises.

Weeeeee called after him. "No shirt and pants," she said, her voice soft and slightly nervous sounding as well.

Hawk looked at her, and she waved him close to her. He walked over and she pointed in front of the bed.

"No shirt and pants," she repeated, but this time as a question. Hawk nodded. He understood what she meant. She wanted him to strip naked.

He stood where she pointed and took a deep breath. "Here we go," he said. "Let's make history. Bow chica-wow."

He took off his jacket first. He had a tight white shirt on underneath. Both the gadgets on his arms were exposed, but she clearly didn't think anything of them. The tactical utility belt was also exposed but, again, considering the circumstances, she evidently didn't think twice.

Next he unstrapped the tactical fanny pack first and then the tactical utility belt. They hung at opposite angles across his hips so that the bands formed a cross in the front and back.

His heart raced. He'd slept with enough women that this nervous feeling had subsided, but despite how hard he tried to align this with those other hookups, his brain wouldn't bite. This, by no means, was an ordinary hookup.

He placed the belts down on the same chair he tossed his shirt over. Now to his pants.

Weeeeee stared intently. It seemed her curiosity had overtaken her nervousness. Then again, she wasn't the one stripping.

He couldn't take it. "It's like ripping off a Band-Aid, I suppose," he said. And without hesitation, pulled down his pants and boxers simultaneously.

She gasped. And didn't respond.

"Well?"

Her eyes widened.

"Well?" he said again, significantly less sure of himself.

"No," she said. "No no no." She kept her eyes glued on his junk. "No no no no no."

She stood up, pointed at him, and mimed putting back on pants.

"What's the problem?" he said. "Hey, what's the problem?"

"No no," she kept saying. She walked over to the counter and picked something up, similar to a purse. She rifled through it, pulled out a wad of thick cards, about the same size as playing cards, and handed it to him. She did not make eye contact, and kept her eyes off him, repeatedly saying no.

"What's going on? What's the matter?" Hawks said.

She picked up his clothes and items off the chair and handed it to him as he fiddled with the button on his pants. He caught his items in his arms.

She walked to the door and opened it, then stood at the doorway, obviously waiting for him to leave.

He didn't move. "What's the problem?" He felt embarrassed, but was unsure why.

She shook her head. "No no no."

With her arm she motioned for him to leave.

He walked past her and stood in the threshold of the door. "Was it something I said? Is it how I look?"

She kept shaking her head and wouldn't look at him.

"Am I weird looking? What's the problem? Speak English damn it!"

She looked scared now. Hawk sighed and took two steps backward, and as soon as he was out of the way of the door she closed it and quickly locked it.

He sighed and bowed his head, topless, his clothes and items in his arms and a large wad of foreign currency in his hand.

"Not the first time, eh Hawk?" he said to himself, then sighed again. He pulled up his pants, pocketed the money, and began putting on his shirt.

His watch buzzed. "Great," he said to himself. "Just great."

He pressed the button on the side and said, "Go for Hawk."

"Hawk? This is Jordan. Your heart rate has been at one sixty B.M.I for the past minute or so. Is everything all right? Have you been discovered? Over."

Hawk's shame quickly turned to anger. "As I already told you guys, the Rhaokins are no threat. I just got into a little situation. Over."

"Did it involve something sexual? Over."

Hawk paused. "What? Why would you say that?" He waited a second for a reply, then remembered to add, "Over."

"Your reading suggest that you were sexually ar—"

He cut her off. "That's enough, thanks. No, I just... forget it."

When he let go of the button she continued, evidently not realizing he'd cut her off. "—to your groin area. Over."

Hawk waited a moment. "Thank you. Jordan. Everything is fine here. Over and out."

He was about to drop his wrist when the watch buzzed again. He pressed the button, and said with weariness, "Go for Hawk."

"Hawk this is Casey. Your increased heart rate might be due to dehydration. In your utility belt there is a black cloth bag with a syringe inside. Inject that intravenously for a pressurized saline and iron boost. Also good for shock, if something should happen. Over."

"I'll keep that in mind," Hawk replied. "Over and out."

All of his clothes back on and items equipped, he walked back the way he came, down the hallway, to return to the elevator. "Let's see what's in the head of this jellyfish ship."

The custodian from earlier, followed by Golf, turned the corner up the hallway and ran towards Hawk. He stopped, and when they saw him they stopped running.

"Crap, we missed it," the custodian said. "Did you already do it?"

Golf continued, "Solar came and retrieved me as soon as she took you. So what happened? Did you do it?"

Hawk grinned. "Is your species normally this candid about sex?"

Solar and Golf both laughed. "Not normally, no," said Golf. "But these are extenuating circumstances."

Hawk laughed. "I suppose they are."

"So what happened?" Solar asked. Hawk wasn't adept at reading the Rhaokin emotions yet, but if he had to describe it we would call the pair of them giddy.

"She took one look at my," he nodded downward, "...Me, and kicked me out."

Golf and Solar burst out laughing. Hawk couldn't resist laughing along with them, despite the fact that the whole situation had been uncomfortable.

"That's great. That's just fantastic," Golf said. "Well, how about this? We know your species is almost as fond of alcohol as we are. Let me buy you a mrúrk, an alcoholic drink. Probably most similar to your beer."

Hawk grinned. "You guys really know your humans."

"We've been watching your species for longer than we care to admit," Golf said. "We are pretty familiar with your culture."

"About fifty years," said Solar. "Not as bad as Golf makes it sound."

"Doesn't make a difference to me," Hawk said. "Lead the way, fellas."
Chapter 7

Hawk and the two Rhaokins entered the elevator.

"So fifty years, eh?" Hawk said once the doors had shut.

"Fifty years," Golf repeated. "We sent minor probes first, small enough that you wouldn't notice. A few of our larger satellites were spotted, but so infrequently and by so few that those who had observed us were just assumed to be crazy by the rest of you."

"What about the nuts who claim alien abduction?"

Golf and Solar exchanged a shameful look. "Yes, well, as you have criminals in your species, we have in ours as well," Golf said. "It is highly illegal, but we have had a few, what you would call 'poachers', come to your planet and mess around with humans. But we have caught all of them and they are locked up on prison planet Jericho Twelve.in jail. And we have used our advanced medical technology, that I don't claim to understand, to fix up the abductees as much as possible."

Hawk shrugged. "Well that explains a lot."

"We've been there. A couple hundred years ago, I think about five hundred years, we had same as you have—UFOs, abductions, unexplainable events. But we weren't as lucky with our first extra-terrestrial encounter as you humans are—not to sound boastful."

The elevator stopped, but Solar and Golf didn't move. Other Rhaokins boarded, and a female Rhaokin with a male stopped and did double takes when they saw Hawk, but they didn't say anything and kept to themselves. The male whispered something to the female, but it was in their language. Golf and Solar saw but didn't react.

Solar continued, "Our first encounter was with the Vruhayn Wags. Their language is extremely strange, almost telepathic. Sounds like they're purposely mumbling. They approached us as allies, but then tried to bargain with us. They wanted, our natural resources for their technology. We tried to deny them, but they kept at it. Negotiations became fierce, and what followed was a fifteen-year war, which in Earth time would be approximately thirty years or so. Their technology was far superior, but they are kind of weak, so we were able to fight back with our weaponry, although we suffered huge losses. Then, miraculously, the Woolfereens arrived."

Hawk raised an eyebrow. "Did you say wolverines? Like the animal, superhero, and University of Michigan college football team?"

Solar and Golf did not smile. Their faces were grim. "It sounds similar, but it is spelled differently," Solar continued. "We still aren't sure how they arrived when they did—they claim it was luck, but they made contact and helped us fight off the Vruhayn Wags. Which is an extraordinary series of events, considering that our civilization and the Vruhayn Wags were the first aliens they had ever met. We're not sure what made them decide to take our side either, although we are grateful for it. They showed us technology and went on their way. Every decade or so, they revisit our planet and we discuss technological advances. This has been going on for about five hundred years. Since then, our army has not been able to locate the Vruhayn Wag home planet. And we have not heard from them since."

The elevator stopped again and the male and female Rhaokin couple stepped off, stealing one last glance at Hawk before they exited. The doors shut and the elevator continued its ascent.

"So then, when we gained the technology to do so, we began exploring the universe," Golf said. "We've discovered five advanced civilizations before you and a few other planets with basic life forms. Earth is definitely the most similar planet to ours of all of them to ours, but your planet is much more beautiful."

"That's kind of you to say," Hawk said.

"You don't understand how serious we are about that," Golf said. "Your snow is white. Imagine it as literally any other color. Yellow, for instance."

"Blue wouldn't be too bad." Hawk shook his head. "I don't understand one thing, though. You are visiting Earth for the first time. Why is it as a vacation, instead of with some version of a government agency or something?"

"Space travel is incredibly expensive," Golf said. "Our government can't afford it. We have two great nations—as opposed to the great many you have on Earth. Our nation is more similar to the United States. The other nation is more similar to China. The other nation has tried to send their government on actual sponsored discoveries, but their equipment is so cheaply made that they never get very far."

Solar continued, "Humanity will discover soon enough that the best way to fund an intergalactic exploration mission is to have a private company build a large, extremely safe ship and then sell rooms on that ship for a large amount of currency."

"Intergalactic travel is expensive," Golf said. "There comes a point when it's a waste of government resources."

Solar motioned all around them. "That's when the private companies take over."

The elevator stopped and opened up. They were in another lobby, almost identical to the others except the floor was a gold color.

"Here we go," Golf said. "This is going to impress you."

He stepped onto the platform and rotated in midair off the elevator, same as usual. Solar followed and then Hawk followed him. This room's hallway placement was towards the bottom of the room instead of the left or right side, and there was a door separating the two. Hawk made towards the door, but Golf stopped him. "That's back the way we came," he said.

"So where do we go?"

Solar pointed at the ground and grinned. Golf pressed a button.

"I don't get it."

But a moment later he did. The whole lobby detached from the elevator shaft and began moving down, towards the outer wall of the jellyfish head.

Hawk gasped as they pulled further from the elevator. There was no ceiling.

Looking up, Hawk saw what could only be described as a city, lining the inner walls of the jellyfish head. Lights of all colors—reds and neon greens and blues, yellows, and violets—shined all along the inner concave wall of the ship. They marked the signs and windows and maybe even the vehicles of aliens going about their business.

"It's like a city in here!" Hawk said.

Golf and Solar just grinned.

It must have been about one or two miles around. There were buildings and intersections, and from the elevator in the center of the room Hawk looked down at all of them, from all directions. It was dark in there as well, but floating in the center was what appeared to be a giant chandelier light bulb.

Their platform moved closer and closer to the ground, or the outside wall.

"This is amazing," Hawk said.

"Wait until you see it during the day," Golf said.

"Drinks first," Solar said. "Let's go to, well, as it's called in English: The Space Compost."

Hawk blinked a few times.

"It's funnier in our language," Golf said.

"In our language, compost means trash or garbage, but it also refers to someone who eats or drinks a lot, so the name is a pun." Solar said.

Hawk nodded. "Got it."

The moving platform stopped at a station, similar to the above ground stations that city shuttles use.

There were several Rhaokins waiting to get onto the moving platform, but they waited for Hawk and his two companions to step off first. The boarding Rhaokins stared at Hawk. One of them said something to Golf, and he replied back in their language.

"Asking about you," he said to Hawk. "Asking if they're allowed to tour Las Vegas yet. I said not yet, that you are an independent."

Hawk nodded. "Figured it was something like that."

They descended the stairs to leave the station and entered street level.

The ground consisted of a strange black tile, similar to marble with a similar glossy surface. It was about the width of a two-lane street. Similar to a mall, there appeared to be kiosks, although now empty, dotted along the center of the road. To his left and right were shops and buildings.

"How many rows of these streets are there? Seems like you could fit a lot," Hawk said.

Golf looked around "In the direct center here is the shopping district. Moving that way—" he pointed in the direction of the jellyfish legs, "you have the food district, then the living district. Moving that way—" he pointed to the top of the jellyfish head, "You have more shops, then the Wall. On the other side of the Wall are the science and captain and navigation areas, strictly off limits. Then above that is the engine room, then of course you have the actual engine and the thrusters."

Hawk scrunched his brow. "Wait, so are you telling me that that way—" he pointed to the jellyfish legs, "is the front of the ship and that way—" he pointed to the jellyfish head, "is the back of the ship?"

"Yeah that's right," Golf said. "Come on, let's get those drinks."

They began walking and Hawk followed.

"Alright now I'm even more confused," he said. "Does this ship land on planets?"

Golf shook his head. "Definitely not. You see how this thing works? We walk on the walls. If this thing felt the effects of a gravitational pull we would be falling off the walls all over the place and dying. It would be bad."

"Okay. So excuse my frankness, but to just conceptualize this craft I've been comparing it to a jellyfish."

"A jellyfish?" Solar said.

Golf turned to him. "Ocean creatures. Pink. Bulbous heads, with tentacles. I can see it."

"Oh okay."

Hawk nodded. "So yeah, I've been picturing this thing as a jellyfish."

"I see what you're saying," Golf said. "Yeah, it is more like an upside-down jellyfish."

"Understood."

The street looked similar to a human street except it curved upwards, which made walking feel more exhausting than normal. The shops had lights and doors and display items, although most of the display items were completely unrecognizable to Hawk.

"I think you'll like this shop up ahead," Golf said. He pointed at a shop a block ahead.

Hawk could barely make out the sign. It said something in the Rhaokin language, but then below that it read in English, Novelty Humanity Items.

"Novelty Humanity Items?" Hawk read.

They walked inside the store, and Hawk looked around. Immediately he saw a garden gnome and nodded. "Yep. Definitely novelty humanity items."

He saw lawn darts and an American flag umbrella. There were novelty wine holders, such as a miniature dog in a Hawaiian shirt and a miniature wedding couple holding bottles of wine. He saw wind-up toys like cars and dogs and even grannies with walkers. There were mugs, countless mugs with phrases on them. Classics like "Worlds Best Dad," and "Number One Boss," but also less common ones like "Have a Nice Day", and even one that said "Go Fuck Yourself."

And along that line, there were tons of shirts, the same kind often seen at beachside tourist shops, filled with bad puns and euphemisms. "I'm not short. I'm just low to the ground for speed and accuracy!" one said. Golf and Solar laughed at that one, but Hawk rolled his eyes. They had the classic busty woman's body and muscular men's body shirts. They also had the classic "FBI: Female Body Inspector" shirt. They had a couple that Hawk had never seen, such as an "If Monday had a Face, I would Punch It" shirt. Golf asked him to explain that one.

"The work week starts on Monday," Hawk said.

"But isn't that a good thing? I thought humans all want jobs and work."

"We do."

"So if you have to work on a Monday you should feel happy."

"It doesn't work like that."

"Why not?"

Hawk shrugged. "An age old tradition, I guess. If you work nine to five, you have to complain about it."

Golf exchanged a look with Solar and they both shrugged.

Hawk moved on past the shirts and kept looking around. He saw a lot of Elvis Presley gear, like tote bags and mugs and purses. He saw welcome doormats. One of the mats read, "Ask not for whom the dog barks. It barks for thee," which Hawk really liked. There was another one with a squirrel that said, "Nuts Welcome!" that Hawk didn't like as much.

Then, on a nearby shelf, he saw it—the shelf with beer. Beer glasses with breasts on them.

Hawk walked over and grabbed one. "Nice," he said. He examined it further. "You guys have the G-rated version of the glasses though."

Solar shook his head and looked at Golf. "G-rated?"

Hawk ran his thumb over the plastic breasts. "What I mean by that is that the breasts on your beer glasses don't have nipples."

Golf looked at the beer mug and raised an eyebrow. "And you want to purchase that?"

"Obviously. I lost my last one. Which had nipples. There's the important distinction." He examined the rest of the mugs. "None of the breasts on your mugs have nipples."

Then he looked around, but there was no cashier to be found. He turned to Golf and Solar.

"How do I pay for this?"

Golf looked at the beer mug and raised an eyebrow. "You want that?"

"Obviously. I lost my last one."

Golf took a secondmoment to reply. "You just scan the item by the door and insert the amount of money it asks for."

"What happens if I just walk out with it?"

"Alarms go off, door closes, and you're trapped inside until someone lets you out."

Hawk shook his head. "Damn."

He walked over to the machine they referred to. It looked like a soda dispenser. He put his glass where a glass would go if it were a soda dispenser. It scanned the items then flashed a symbol on the screen.

"That's five units of space currency," Solar said.

Hawk withdrew his stack of cash and looked through the cards, but he had no unit that looked like the unit on the screen. He inserted one of his cards anyway. The machine churned, and then six cards came back out. Four of them had the same symbol.

"Alright lets go," Hawk said.

Golf and Solar followed him out, and they kept walking the same way as before, Hawk now with the beer glass with breasts on it.

A couple feet ahead, Hawk saw a Rhaokin standing outside an establishment waving his arms at them. Upon further inspection, Hawk realized it was the Rhaokin he met earlier, Omega.

"What took you guys?" Omega asked as they drew closer.

"Stopped at the novelty store," Solar replied.

"So what happened?" Omega asked, looking at Hawk. Hawk didn't know what he was referring to. Golf jumped in.

"She made him strip, then saw his genitals and forced him out of her apartment. We found him standing half naked in the hallway with his clothes in his arms."

Omega burst out laughing and held out a hand to shake with Hawk again. Hawk thought that was an awkward gesture, but shook his hand anyway.

"That is great. Hopefully that doesn't appear in humanity's future history textbooks," Omega said. Golf and Solar laughed with him. Hawk forced a grin. He liked these guys. It was going to be awful to have to betray them.

Omega held open the door for the other three and led them inside. "Come on, let's get some drinks. As you human's say, that I'll admit we've started saying: first round is on me."

They walked over to a table and sat down. The average table height was about a foot higher than tables on Earth, but the chairs were about a foot shorter. This, Hawk realized quickly, was due to the Rhaokins' longer torsos but shorter legs. Which made sitting at the table annoying for Hawk at first. His knees bent high in the chair and the table reached his chin.

"This is ridiculous," he said. He took a second stool from another table and stacked it on top of the first stool. This made a sort of high top chair that was a little too high for Hawk's feet to reach the ground. But due to his superb balance, he still managed to sit comfortably, although now he sat much higher than Golf or Solar. With a look of amusement, they had watched Hawk do all of this.

"I got us some high concentrate," said Omega. "You humans call these shots. I'm interested to see how our alcohol compares to yours on Earth."

"Thanks," Hawk said as Omega placed a drink in front of each of them. They were the only ones in the bar at that point, but Hawk suspected, due to how clean it was, that they were there early, as opposed to late—assuming the Rhaokins had a similar drinking schedule as humans.

Solar almost took a sip from his small glass, but Golf stopped him.

"It is common courtesy to say a toast before we drink in human culture, is it not?" Golf said.

Hawk shook his head. "We do often, but you don't have to."

"Well, don't forget the insult packet we got," Solar said. "It said to say a toast unless we are in the presence of a Jehovah's Witness. So it might have been wise that I didn't offer to toast."

"Except the packet also said that there are three hundred million people in the United States and only one million of them are Jehovah's Witnesses, which means that we had less than a one percent chance of insulting him."

Solar turned to Hawk. "Are you a Jehovah's Witness?"

"No." Hawk shook his head. "You have packets about what can insult humans?"

"Yes. Everyone on the ship has read it. We wouldn't want to accidently start an intergalactic war, now would we?"

Hawk shook his head. He was impressed. "No, I suppose not." And then he remembered why he was here again and frowned.

"Let's do one," Omega said. "Lead us off, Hawk."

Hawk was still lost in thought. "Do what?"

"A toast!"

Hawk nodded. "Right." He thought for a moment, then said, "To Honor. Get on her and stay on her."

The four of them clinked their glasses together. But the three Rhaokins looked confused. Golf stopped them before they drank.

"My apologies. I don't get it, Hawk. What does that mean?"

Hawk shook his head. "It's a pun. Honor sounds like on her. So I say honor, and you think it is a legitimate toast, but then it is actually just about sex."

The three didn't reply. Hawk continued. "By sex I mean intercourse."

Golf grinned. "I get it," he said.

"Explain it then," Omega said.

Golf shook his head. "If you don't get it then you just don't get it."

"Forget it," Hawk said. He raised his glass again. "Cheers!"

The others clinked their shot glasses against Hawk's and they drank. The three Rhaokins made faces, but as Hawk swallowed the cold and sweet drink, he frowned.

"No offense, fellas. But this is pretty weak. That's your strong stuff?"

Golf nodded, still looking as if he was in pain. "Two percent alcohol. This stuff will mess you up."

Hawk couldn't believe it. "Two percent? Are you joking?"

The three looked mildly insulted now. "What do you humans drink on earth?"

"Our beer is about six percent. Our liquors are like forty percent."

Golf's eyes widened. "Did you say forty percent?"

Hawk nodded. "That's no problem for us either. We have a liquor called Bacardi 151 that is pretty much seventy five and a half percent alcohol."

"Are you joking?" Golf asked.

"No."

"You can literally use your alcohol for combustion and to disinfect. You drink utility alcohol casually."

Hawk grinned. "Yeah, easily." He stood up and walked over to the bartender and placed his beer glass with breasts on it on the counter. The bartender had been wiping down the counter, but had also been watching them. He wore an outfit that was reminiscent of overalls. Behind him were an array of different liquors, but most of them looked creamy and strange. The higher shelf bottles had blazed neon intensely.

"I watched you drink with the others," the bartender said. "Have you shaken hands with them yet?"

Hawk nodded. "Yeah I have."

"Damn. Well if what you're saying is true, that's impressive."

Hawk nodded his head toward his glass. "Fill me up to the brim with that stuff you gave us." He pulled out his deck of cards. "I shouldn't have a problem paying."

The bartender took a bottle and began pouring it. It wasn't meant to be poured that quickly, so the bartender twisted off the top and dumped the remainder of the bottle into his glass. "This would normally cost you one hundred units, but just give me that twenty you have there and we'll call it even."

Hawk grinned and gave him the card on top. "Thanks a lot," he said. "Could I also get three more tiny ones for my pals?"

The bartender nodded and grinned, and lined up three more shots. Hawk handed him another twenty units, then took the four drinks back to his table.

"Don't tell me you're going to drink that," Omega said, looking at his glass.

"That would send even a heavy drinker straight to the infirmary," Solar said.

"The infirmary, eh?" Hawk said. He raised his glass up. "Watch this..."

He raised the glass to his lips and chugged. Golf, Solar, and Omega began whooping wildly. They leaned way back in their stools, supporting their weight with their neck trunks, and hooted at the ceiling while stomping their trunks on the ground. It was weird.

A few seconds later, Hawk finished off the glass and slammed it on the table. It shattered immediately. He was so taken aback by what the Rhaokins were doing. , that he'd allowed himself to lose control and slam the glass with far too much power.

Clearly he had just blown the Rhaokins' minds. And shattering his glass had only proven to rile them up more, because immediately after he did so they lifted their minds, but theglasses and shattered them on the table as well. Then they continued doing that strange whooping and stopping. The way they were acting was the least human behavior he'd witnessed from a Rhaokin so far. Finally they sat back up.

"You humans are unbelievable," Golf said, his eyes red. "That would literally kill most Rhaokin."

"You mean the glass shattering or the alcohol?"

Golf gave him a confused look. "The alcohol. Obviously."

Hawk shook his head. "I'm not even close to tipsy yet. That's nothing."

The three others had finished off their second shots, and Solar looked a little drunk. "You humans are so puny compared to us. That is unbelievable."

"I sort of feel bad," Omega said. "This is a little humiliating."

"Let's make some units off him," Gold said. "Hawk, would you mind if we showed you off a bit and made some units with you?"

"I wouldn't mind," Hawk said. "What's the plan?"

Golf grinned at the others. They appeared to already know what he was thinking.

"I think you're going to like this," he said.
Chapter 8

Hawk woke up on the floor of the bar, light streaming in from outside. Around him were countless unconscious Rhaokin bodies, and he shook his head. He had a massive hangover. There were empty bottles of liquor everywhere. He had to use a bathroom badly.

Despite the number of bodies originally being countless, Hawk counted them anyway and totaled forty-six. Forty-six unconscious bodies—breathing, but not moving. Hawk was more than proficient in several different styles of martial arts, but he had never taken out forty-six enemies single handedly. But that wasn't what happened.

Hawk closed his eyes and steadied himself. He looked at the bar and noticed that literally every single bottle was gone and empty.

It had started off relatively tame. Aqua, a friend of Golf, entered the bar. After making introductions, Golf put the challenge simply: fifty units that Hawk could out drink Aqua. Aqua, being a Rhaokin and having almost eighty pounds on Hawk, accepted immediately.

"Check this out," Golf said. He went over to the bar and got a shot for Aqua, and filled Hawk's glass with breasts on it with the same liquor as earlier. He brought both back to the table and sat them down.

"Where's the human's glass?" Aqua asked.

Hawk grinned. "This is my glass."

He lifted the glass and chugged, to Aqua's horror. He started whooping like the others had as Hawk set the empty glass down on the table.

"You guys—you know—you... What's the word?"

"Hustled," Golf said. "We hustled you."

"Yeesh yeah you did." Aqua shook his head. "How many of those you got in you Hawk?"

"This was nothing to me. On Earth, our beer is three times as strong as this stuff, and I can knock out a twelve pack in an afternoon no problem."

Aqua grinned. "Alright, well I want my money back, so I'm hustling the next guy."

The others agreed. Hawk didn't mind—free drinks, after all.

About forty Rhaokins later and a lot of drinking on top of that, Hawk blacked out. Still, somehow he was better off than all the aliens around him, despite him having drank more than them by far. Even by his standards, last night had been a crazy party.

But what happened after he blacked out? He had some vague flashes. He remembered pulling out items from his utility belt and handing them out, saying he had no idea what they were. He checked his utility belt.

Everything was gone aside for the syringe, the taser looking thing, the Gameboy looking thing, and the hammer. He took out the syringe from out of the little black bag and studied the contents. This was the stuff that was pretty much an instant IV. The saline and iron boost. Using the strap of his tactical fanny pack tactically, he created a sort of tourniquet around his upper arm and injected himself.

He felt the effects immediately. His hangover was gone, his headache, the spinning—all gone. He would have to get a box of these from Boris when he returned to Earth.

He closed his eyes, now remembering the previous night clearer than before.

There had been a high-ranking crewmember at their party. Someone who worked in the lab at the very end of the fish head—the room where he needed to go to disable the machine—had gotten drunk with them last night.

Hawk looked around. But he couldn't find the scientist. He couldn't even remember which one the scientist was. The problem was, he was so unfamiliar with Rhaokins that he had trouble differentiating one from the others. Even Golf, Omega, Solar, and Aqua looked similar to him, and he'd spend a majority of the night bonding with them.

He felt a light vibration on his wrist. The watch! The team! He pressed the display. Five missed calls. Shit.

He stepped out of the bar but quickly darted back inside. There were Rhaokins everywhere. It was daytime now—or at least the lights were on. Luckily, no one saw him, but he couldn't make a call outside the bar right now. He looked around. There was a door on the left side of the bar. He stepped over bodies on his way to it and made to open it, but there was no handle. He found the bartender, unconscious behind the bar, and found his key hanging from his waist. As delicately as he's always done, he unhooked the key without disturbing the bartender and used it to open the door.

It closed behind him and lights turned on. Surrounding him were shelves with boxes upon boxes everywhere. Bottles of liquor sat on top of the boxes, distinguishing the boxes' contents. He pressed the button on his watch and almost immediately Casey's face appeared. He looked exhausted.

"Thank God you're alright," Casey said. "We thought you might've been killed."

Hawk shook his head and thought back to last night. "No I was just in a tight spot. Couldn't take a call without revealing myself."

"Gotcha. So how's it going?"

"Well. I'm about to retrieve what I need to access the device." Hawk paused for a moment and sighed. "I suppose it's wasted effort to reiterate how harmless and friendly the aliens are."

Casey nodded. "Sorry, Hawk. Top brass is dead set on you completing your objective."

"Thought so. How much time has passed?"

Casey closed his eyes. "Seventeen hours, Hawk. They've started to discuss other options."

"What are these other options?"

"You don't want to know. Just complete your objective and get back here!"

"Casey, what other options?"

"Hawk please."

"What other options?"

Casey sighed. "They're talking about nuking the ship."

Hawk almost raised his voice, but remembered where he was and lowered it to an angry whisper. "This is a tourist ship! There are thousands of innocents here!"

"Understood, I promise. But they think they're doing what's best for humanity."

"I promise you they're not."

"What do you expect me to do about it, Hawk? Change the president's mind? He's unwavering, and so are the others."

"What about you."

"What about me?"

Hawk narrowed his brow. "Do you believe me?"

Casey shook his head. "I believe that this tactic is way to drastic."

Hawk paused and didn't respond.

Casey shrugged. "They have your girlfriend. I don't think you have much of a choice. They are going to nuke the ship if you don't finish in twenty hours, with or without you on it. They will not hesitate, and they have no intention of warning you prior."

"Won't you get in trouble for telling me this?"

"I suppose I would, if they found out about this call."

Hawk took a breath and scratched his cheek. "I appreciate you telling me."

"Sure thing."

"Alright. Tell them I'm close to completing my objective." Hawk paused for a moment. "Actually, tell them I completed my objective. Yeah, do that! Tell them I did it! Tell them I disabled the machine!"

Casey shook his head and frowned. "No can do, Hawk. We would know if you completed your objective."

"How?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Casey."

"Hawk, I can't tell you. I don't know. Jordan and I didn't construct the hammer device. They constructed it after their second meeting with the aliens."

Hawk frowned. "There was a second meeting?"

"Yes. I can't tell you what went on in that meeting. It was between Boris, POTUS, and the aliens."

"Boris told me he found out about the aliens ten minutes before I arrived at your facility."

"Yeah, well—he lied."

There was a knocking at the door behind Hawk. He looked at Casey. "I have to go now."

There was another knock on the door.

"Hawk, are you in there?"

Hawk dropped the watch and pressed a button beside the door. It lifted open. Standing there was Aqua.

"Hawk, you alright?"

Hawk grinned. "Yeah, just looking for the bathroom."

Aqua didn't grin back. "I thought I heard you talking."

Hawk nodded. "Yeah you did. I'm actually here because my buddies back on Earth dared me to fly up here."

"Dared?"

"Yeah, oh yeah, that means challenged me, something that they thought I didn't have the courage to do. I was just telling them about last night, how I drank forty-six of you under the table."

Aqua grinned. "Great, now humanity will think we're lightweights."

"You are lightweights."

"So that's all you spoke about?"

"Yeah."

"Your conversation sounded different."

"Well, it ended on a different note."

"I hope you don't mind me prying."

Hawk shook his head. "No problem. But, I have to ask. How many times has your ambassador met with our president?"

"Twice, I think."

"I only heard about one meeting," Hawk said. "What was the second meeting about?"

Aqua shrugged. "It was just to advance discussion, but it didn't get very far, I'm sure that's why you haven't heard anything."

"What happened?"

"From what I heard, there was a second meeting, but our ambassador was attacked by a crazed human. Your president had the attacker arrested and apologized profusely."

"Attacked? How?"

"Nothing serious," Aqua said. "A guy on one of your off-road vehicles drove up to the meeting spot and hit our ambassador with a hammer, then tackled him. Your people pulled the guy off and arrested him. Frankly, our ambassador has suffered much worse on other planets. Your president was terribly embarrassed. I'm sure that's why you haven't heard anything."

Hawk nodded. He was skeptical, but he didn't let it show. "Yeah, sure."

"Alright Hawk. I have to get back to work. You good? You need anything?"

"Nah I'm alright. Thanks."

Aqua held out a hand, and Hawk shook it. "Okay. See you around."

Aqua walked off. He stopped drinking pretty early in the night, although he had still gotten wasted. The others, Hawk thought, would be out for a little while longer.

Three hours on the clock. Hawk left the storeroom and looked around. He had to find the scientist crewmember and steal his key, then sneak into the science and engineering room and disable the machine, all within three hours' time.

He looked around the bar. All the Rhaokins looked the same to him. What did the scientist look like? What distinguishable feature did he have that would allow Hawk to recognize him from the others?

The previous night was a blur. So much drinking. He'd gone to the restroom at least ten times. One time he'd gone to the restroom with the scientist. He remembered that their toilets were very similar to human toilets, except the water was a dark, almost black color, and there was no tank. They had sinks as well for washing hands, and they'd used the sinks at the same time. Then Hawk remembered—the scientist had some sort of tribal tattoo on his right wrist. He'd seen it as they were washing their hands. The scientist spoke English as well as the other crewmembers.

He looked around the bar. A few Rhaokins were groaning now—he had to move quickly.

Deftly, Hawk hopped over bodies and examined wrists. To create confusion that would mask his impending theft, he occasionally took loose room keys and switched them around. That way, when the scientist realized his key was missing it wouldn't be an isolated incident.

It felt as if he'd checked every single Rhaokin, and that the scientist was the last he checked, but finally—eventually—he found the key. He replaced the scientist's key with a neighbor's and stood up.

"Hawk?"

Hawk spun around. Golf sat up on the floor, looking out of it.

"Hey Golf. How are you feeling?"

"Sick." He laughed. "You?"

"Same. About to find a bathroom. I'll hook up with you later."

Golf didn't reply. He closed his eyes, curled up his trunk tail, and rested his head on it, falling back to sleep almost instantly."

"That's cool," Hawk said. "So you don't even need pillows."

Golf didn't reply as his breathing became rhythmic.

He had the key. Now came the hard part—sneaking into the off-limits quarters. And he had a distance to travel as well. The terrain he had to traverse, in under three hours, was like a heavily trafficked strip mall. He had to go from one end of the strip mall to the other, without being seen, in under three hours. He would have to sneak past at least two-thousand aliens, all of whom would immediately recognize him as human the moment they saw him.

This would likely prove to be his most difficult, his most challenging, his most impossible infiltration yet.
Chapter 9

Hawk looked up at the Wall and rested his hands against it. Stretching up about ten stories high, and forming a full circle around the inside of the jellyfish head, it was large and imposing, but that wouldn't stop Hawk now that he'd used his incredible infiltration skills to make it this far. He used the scientist's key to open the door. This was one of many doors he had to pass through to eventually reach the engineering room.

Crouching low and covered in sweat, he snuck inside. He entered what looked like a waiting room for aliens, or a security area. And across the room, behind a shield of glass, sat a Rhaokin security guard, who stared at Hawk wide-eyed.

"What the—!" the guard said. "A human? How did you get in here?"

Hawk let out an exasperated sigh. He hunched over with his hands on his knees and took a few deep breaths, and raised a finger. There was an open door to the right of the Rhaokin. The floor was blue and the walls were white. Behind the Rhaokin was a console and screens. To the left of the console was another door, this one small and closed. The Rhaokin raised his radio to his mouth, but Hawk interrupted him.

"Simple, my dear Rhaokin," Hawk said. The Rhaokin guard lowered his radio. Hawk continued. "Last night I got drunk with forty-six Rhaokin friends of mine. During the course of the night, a scientist who works here gave me his key. This morning, I needed to travel the three miles along the course of the jellyfish head, or whatever you call this part of this ship, to reach the Wall. That meant remaining undetected by all of the Rhaokins on board so I could complete my mission all the while remain undetected."

The guard was enraptured, and Hawk continued. "I waited until the coast was clear, then left the bar. It was lucky that the windows and door of the bar are tinted, as otherwise those passing by would assume that I incapacitated forty-six Rhaokins."

The guard raised an eyebrow. "Did you?"

"Of course not. Well, at least not directly. It turns out that the Rhaokin alcohol tolerance is significantly weaker than humanity's tolerance, so I wound up drinking forty-six Rhaokins under the table, which was undoubtedly one of my crazier nights out. So, either way, I wake up surrounded by forty-six incapacitated Rhaokins, and I leave the bar."

"Let me stop you there," the guard said. "You keep saying Rhaokins. The plural of Rhaokin is just Rhaokin. There is no 'S' at the end."

"Right. My apologies. So anyway, I step out of the bar and luckily I'm alone. So I think to myself—this area is strikingly similar to strip malls back down on Earth and so I went to investigate. But there is no obvious way to access behind the shops, so I had to get creative. Naturally, I utilized my skills as a master infiltrator to scale the side of the bar onto the roof. Once on the roof, lying prone, I rolled across to the opposite side and dropped down.

"Here I was, in an area that was clearly not meant for normal foot traffic—however there was a significant amount of traffic by crew and shop owners, so I had to hide. Unfortunately, I am on a strict time constraint, so I didn't have as much time as I would have preferred to fully investigate and weigh my options. But I did notice something consistent with the back alley—the dumpsters. I saw a truck approaching from my rear as well, heading towards the Wall. It appeared to work like the dump trucks back home as well. It lifted the trash and dumped it into its bin, or whatever that part of a dump truck is called—"

"The vapor bin I think."

"Yeah. Would've been nice to know that beforehand. So anyway I considered this method. Hide in the trash, wait for the truck to pick me up, then jump out when I reached the Wall. But I had a problem. I didn't know how your trash system works. So, naturally, before jumping in head first, I investigated to make sure I wouldn't be immediately killed."

"Naturally."

"Naturally. So it turns out, as luck would have it, that your dump trucks appear to be relatively gentle with their trash loads. There was still a matter of the crewmembers who drove the dump truck. But as a master infiltrator, I've snuck past trained guards who were specifically on the lookout for me. So sneaking past a few unsuspecting crewmembers was no problem, and I hid myself in a dumpster, and waited to get picked up.

"That part of my plan went off without a hitch. I was gently placed inside the dump truck. But little did I know then that your trucks, once full of trash, close and lock the lid and vaporize the trash inside into dust. And little did I know that the trash I'd hidden inside was the last load of trash before a vaporization session."

"The vapor bin."

"Yeah, exactly."

"I told you."

"You told me two minutes ago."

The guard shook his head, not noticing Hawk's barely perceptible movement of his right hand. "How did you get out of that one?"

"It was all chicken but the gravy," Hawk said. "I withdrew my silenced twenty-two Beretta and shot out every vapor ray in the truck. I saw them begin to glow blue, and assumed that those were vaporization beams, so with one shot each I took them all out. But now I had another problem: The crewmembers were alerted that the vaporization had a complete failure."

"Uh oh."

"You would think. So there I was, in the back of a dumpster—"

"The vapor bin."

"Yes I know!" Hawk sighed. "So anyway, I'm surrounded by mounds of trash, and about to be discovered. I didn't want to fight them—as for one, I'm not sure how strong your species is, and two, that would still raise suspicion, so I was in a pickle."

"In a pickle in the trash?"

"No. In a pickle is a phrase that means I was in a jam."

"A different food item?"

"No. Sorry. In a jam and in a pickle mean the same thing. I was in a tight spot. I was between a rock and a hard place. I was in trouble, with no obvious escape."

Hawk took a deep breath and continued. "So to explain my escape, you have to better understand the design of the garbage truck—"

"Vapor bin."

Hawk paused for a few seconds and glared at the guard. Then he sighed and continued. "The ceiling of the vapor bin opens and closes by sliding and then folding to the right side of the truck. It lifts off the ceiling enough for someone of my size to sneak through. So I used my grappling claws and stuck to the ceiling. When they opened it, I slid right on through, then stuck to the ceiling between the right wall of the truck and the ceiling. I heard one of the drivers walk by to check the back. They began talking, and I could hear them. They were saying that it looked like the vaporization beams had been sabotaged. The other one suggested that there had been something volatile in the last batch of trash, that exploded and took out the beams. The other one agreed. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"So they hopped back in their truck and drove to their facility, which was close to the Wall. I hopped off when they got close, snuck around, lurked around a bit—you know, made myself invisible—and when the coast was clear I hopped off and snuck to the door, opened it up with the scientist's key, and here we are."

The Rhaokin shook his head. "That doesn't sound that complicated. In fact, that story was pretty unremarkable."

"I'm aware of that," Hawk said. "I just needed to distract you while I tied you to your chair and hid you somewhere."

The Rhaokin looked down at himself. There was a black wire wrapped around him multiple times, constraining him and keeping him immobilized against his chair. "Not bad," the Rhaokin said. "But I'm not in a closet."

"Haven't gotten around to that yet. And thanks for the heads up about the closet. I just need to keep you out of sight for an hour. I'm sorry about this. I'm under orders."

"What are you planning to do?"

Hawk looked at his watch. "Sorry. Time's up and I'm on a curfew. Nothing personal."

"You can't do this to me!" The Rhaokin said. "My name is is Rahhhhh—"

He continued saying his name as Hawk pushed him into the closet and shut the door. Hawk counted the seconds he said his name.

"Thirteen seconds. This guy is important." Hawk cracked his knuckles and shrugged. "Oh well."

The minute hand on his watch seemed to be moving faster than normal. It had taken him two hours to sneak inside this facility and then distract and dispose of the guard. He had one hour to complete his mission. He looked around.

Surrounding him were metallic consoles that seemed to hum and vibrate in place like little old men. They emitted smoke in tiny little bursts, and Hawk felt like he was at a shuffleboard competition in a nursing home. Every few seconds a random console would emit a series of beeps, and then a second machine would repeat back the series of beeps, then a light would ding and turn either blue, yellow, green, or red. Between the consoles was the desk where the guard had been sitting. Upon the desk sat a cup and a plate with crumbs. There was a pamphlet with alien words on it. There was art as well, and Hawk got the gist of it pretty quickly.

At the top of the pamphlet was large lettering that read "Las Vegas", and below that was a hologram picture of a slot machine. The hologram was as simple as the kind sold for sticker books. Hawk placed the paper back down and walked deeper into the facility. The hallway turned left sharply, and the floor became the wall from the previous room, although Hawk didn't feel a shift in gravity at all. Down this hall was a door. Hawk swiped his key and the door opened.

"What was that?" a Rhaokin said. Hawk ducked down behind a surprisingly large trashcan.

"Nothing," a second Rhaokin said. "Door does that all the time. All right come on. What's another one?"

"Jackass."

"Jackass? Is that a variation of the one you told me before, 'ass'?"

"I don't think so. I think a jackass is more like a dumb person."

"Is 'dumb' a good one?"

"Not from what I've heard. It's sort of childish."

"Okay what else?"

"You want to know the best one?"

"Sure."

"Fuck."

"What's that one mean?"

Hawk poked his head over the trashcan. They were two female Rhaokins—Rhaokin, that is, both somewhat larger than the other female he'd met. There had been a couple female Rhaokin at the bar, but drinking seemed to be a male activity. They stood behind a large transparent screen that had four sides—one screen in the middle, then screens attached on the left side, right side, and top, which caved inward slightly.

"A lot of things depending on the context. I wasn't going to tell you this one until you understood English a bit better, but it's important for you to know it."

"How do I use it?"

"Generally, you say 'fuck you', but you have to be careful. If you use the wrong words with it, your insult may come off as homophobic."

"That makes no sense to me. What's a Rhaokin equivalent?"

"We don't really have one." The first Rhaokin paused. "Well actually, how about 'Peenup'."

"Now I understand. So when you say to someone 'fuck you', you're telling them to go masturbate."

"I don't think so. Honestly, I'm not sure. Rahhhhhhhh was the one who taught me all of these, we'll have to ask him."

Hawk held his breath. Fuck. Rahhhhhhhh was the alien he just disposed of. If they went looking for him now, his cover would be blown. The first alien lifted her radio to her mouth.

"Rahhhhhhhh are you there?"

There was no reply.

"Rahhhhhhhh?"

Hawk opened the door behind him and quickly ran out. He ran back down the hall, made the sharp turn, ignored the disorientation, opened the closet door, and grabbed Rahhhhhhhh's radio.

The guard looked angry. "You better untie me right now or else—"

Hawk shoved the empty bag that had held the syringe into the guard's mouth.

"I'm really sorry about this," Hawk said. "This is not like me. Desperate times."

He raised the radio and coughed a few times, then did the best impression he could of Rahhhhhhhh's voice. "What's up?"

"Nice one, Rahhhhhhhh," the alien replied. "So do you know what the insult words 'fuck you' actually mean?"

Hawk paused for a moment. He didn't really know. "It means go have sex with yourself. But it's just sort of a stand alone insult now, not to be taken any other way."

"What about 'screw you'?"

"Same thing."

"You know any other English insults?"

Hawk, of course, did, and really wanted to participate. But unfortunately, the clock was ticking. "No," he said.

There was another pause. Hawk looked at his watch. Fifty-two minutes remaining.

He strapped the radio to his belt and ran down the inverted hallway a third time, then swiped the door open and rolled inside behind the large trashcan.

"That's enough for today's lesson, I think," the first Rhaokin said. "We'll pick it back up tomorrow."

"That's fine. I need to get back to work anyway."

The second alien walked off. The first took a seat at a screen and began working by moving her hands around.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Hawk crept around the trashcan and underneath a nearby desk. He looked around. The alien tapped her foot to a waltz-like beat a few feet from his face.

On Earth, Hawk could crawl so silently that the average human, even when a foot or two away, couldn't hear him. This skill saved his life countless times, most notably in situations involving Russians wearing those hats with the dog-ear flaps and, in some dire situations, his ex-girlfriend. But it was different here. These were no humans, and his ex-girlfriend was likely hunting small children and animals for sport, or whatever she did with her spare time.

He watched the alien for patterns—a critical skill in the arsenal of anyone who has ever done any infiltrating. A pattern could be anything: finger tapping, leaning back after typing a few sentences, the rubbing of eyes after yawning—anything really. In routine situations, humans rely solely on muscle memory and habit to get them through the day, and in this regard Hawk hoped that the aliens were no different. He had no idea how their hearing differed from a human's. And without any background sound to mask his movement, trying to sneak past this alien undetected would be too risky.

He studied the Rhaokin intently, as he would a human target. She had four monitors, and she could only look at one monitor at a time. She looked at the middle monitor first, then checked something on the right monitor, then looked at the left monitor and moved her hands around in a sort of typing motion. Alongside the wall that held the door Hawk had entered from were several different large metallic computer-like consoles, similar to the ones in the security room. When the Rhaokin did her hand motion and pressed the last key, the second console made a beeping noise, emitting a puff of smoke, then made a ding noise like a toaster and a light flashed yellow. The Rhaokin then looked at the top monitor, moved her hands in that mid-air typing motion again, and then looked up at the ceiling and sighed heavily.

After watching this routine three times in a row, Hawk made his move.

The Rhaokin checked the middle monitor first, then the right monitor. She was about to check the left monitor and move her hands. Hawk counted down. At the exact moment she turned her head, he rolled sideways from under the desk, past her chair, and landed in a crouch behind her. He was about three feet from her rear and held his breath. If she heard him or if she moved, he would have time to attack quickly enough to hopefully knock her unconscious.

But she didn't hear or see him at all, and continued moving her hands in mid-air.

He crawled on his hands and knees to the back door, scrambling quickly. He had about two seconds to—

"Hey!"

Hawk looked up. The Rhaokin was looking right at him.

"Hey!" she said again.

Hawk stood up, brushed himself off, and quickly narrowed his brow to look angry and condescending.

Whenever caught, the wise infiltrator knows that the number one rule to infiltrating is to deny everything and make convoluted counter-accusations.

"Why don't you 'hey' yourself," Hawk said. He frowned. "What do you think you're doing?"

The Rhaokin looked around, confused. "What?"

"You heard me," Hawk said. "There was a spike in the quasi-phasal flux manifold. They sent me, and I see you here, evidently casually scrambling the vector emissions. Care to explain?"

"I was doing no such thing! I don't even know what that means!"

She went to move, but Hawk quickly raised a hand. "Don't move! Don't touch your workstation. Let me see what you've been doing."

He walked around her desk, standing behind her and looking at her screen. It made no sense to him whatsoever.

"Hmmm," he said. "Everything appears to be in place. Alright, continue what you were doing while I watch, and explain everything you're doing as you do it."

The Rhaokin shook her head. "Am I in trouble?"

Hawk nodded. "Grave trouble. I gather you're not the kind of worker who is privy to authorization towards human consultants, are you?"

"I was not privy to that information, no. I can barely understand what you're saying, to be honest."

"Your fate rests in my hands. I'm here to determine whether you purposely or accidentally sabotaged the system and caused Golf down in maintenance to lose an eye."

"Golf lost an eye because of me?"

"Why else would I know a maintenance worker's name?"

The Rhaokin didn't respond.

"What's your name anyway?" Hawk asked.

"My human name or actual name?"

"Both."

"My human name is Lilac and my actual name is Sherrrrrrrr."

"Hmmm." He rubbed his chin. Her name was about seven seconds long, which gave Hawk the confidence he needed to keep berating her with meaningless jabber. "Alright get back to it. After disabling the flux-manifold, what did you do next?"

Lilac moved her hands to a violet box in the top right corner of the middle screen. "I didn't do that, I don't think. I hit this box, and that makes the yellow light over there ding and a puff of smoke comes out. If the puff of smoke doesn't come out, I have to quickly mash cancel within five seconds or risk a complete system failure and my work station gets blown to smithereens, and me with it."

She hit the button, then looked at her monitor and held her breath. The light turned on. She waited. Then it dinged, and the puff of smoke emitted. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"How often do you have to do this whole process a day?" Hawk asked.

"About one hundred and ten times."

"How often does the puff of smoke not come out?"

"About once every one hundred times."

Hawk scratched his head. "So once a day you have to mash the cancel button or risk dying?"

"Yeah, about."

"Wow. Talk about stressful jobs."

"I can't really talk about stressful jobs."

Hawk paused. "What?"

Lilac didn't reply. She just stared at Hawk with a look of concern. Hawk stared back with a look of confusion. Each stared at the other for a few slow seconds.

"Screw this," Hawk said. From his tactical utility belt he withdrew a black device with two prongs that looked exactly like a taser. He pressed it to the back of her neck in a swift motion and pressed the button. It zapped her, and she fell heavily into her chair.

"Sure hope that was a memory eraser, and not a taser," he said to himself.

Leaving her, he walked through the door behind her.
Chapter 10

Hawk entered the engineering room. He could tell it was an engineering room because on the other side of a twenty-foot tall plate glass window he could clearly see what was a hundred-foot-tall engine. Above the hundred-foot-tall engine was a fifty-foot-long sign that had both English and Rhaokin words. The English word read "Engine."

This was the room where he would find the weapon.

He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes remaining. Plenty of time.

There were a few Rhaokin in sight, but they all had their backs to him, and none of them turned at the sound of the door opening. Luckily, the opening mechanisms on the doors here were greased up nicely.

The lighting was dim—the single source from a lone bulb overhead. The room was completely metallic, and all the computer-like equipment had a sheenpolish, slightly reflective. It was enough to be a nuisance, and enough to make keeping out of line of sight, or L.Oo.S as it'sit is called in the biz, that much more difficult.

As soon as Hawk took a step, he immediately noticed his reflection on the wall of a computer that looked like the type of trashcan Oscar the Grouch would live inside. Hawk dive-rolled behind a desk, and remained crouched, holding his breath.

None of the Rhaokin moved. _Good_ , Hawk thought. _Their senses aren't anything spectacular_.

Hawk looked around the room for his target. He had no idea what the bug spray machine looked like. But it was definitely in this room.

Across from him was another reflective machine. This one looked like the giant metallic tray that fast food places use to store burgers and chicken nuggets. And between each of the tray areas, clear as day, Hawk saw three reflections of himself, crouched behind the desk.

"Fuck," he said, much louder than he intended. He dove underneath the desk and held his breath.

No Rhaokin moved. None even shifted.

Hawk crawled out from underneath the desk and shimmiedcrawled prone on the floor, up against the far wall. At this point, if they hadn't noticed him, they certainly wouldn't notice him now.

He crawled across the right side of the room, looking to his left, searching for a machine that in some way resembled insect genocide.

The Rhaokin didn't notice him. They didn't move. They stared resolutely, stubbornly ahead.

Actually, that wasn't the case. They stared ahead... and slightly upward.

Hawk crawled a bit closer.

There, in the center of the room, he saw frayed wires of different colors, sparks flying from where they'd been severed. There was space enough between them for a machine, and the space crackled angrily.

But Hawk didn't focus on that.

His attention was drawn towards the thick purple waterfalls flowing down the necks of the twenty Rhaokin in the room.

Hawk approached, but knew before he had visual confirmation that his suspicions were correct.

The Rhaokin were dead, all of them. Their necks were slit, and they stood upright only because of the trunks at the top of their spines.

This wasn't just bad. This was apocalyptically disastrous. Humanity would be blamed for this. He'd been spotted by enough Rhaokin, he had to backtrack, and quickly. He couldn't be seen.

Hawk sprinted from the room. The door shifted open, and he ran through. The Rhaokin whose memory he'd modified sat at her computer, unmoving, in a daze.

That's what he had to do. Erase the memory of every Rhaokin who'd seen him.

He ran out of thethat room, down the hallway and into the security checkpoint. Kicking open the closet door, he spotted the security guard still restrained.

"Sorry about this, again," Hawk said. He withdrew the memory erasing device that he wasn't convinced wasn't actually a taser and pressed it to the back of the Rhaokin's neck, just above the trunk. It sizzled, the Rhaokin twitched for a second and then slumped.

He placed the device back into his tactical utility belt and ran out the door.

The door to the Wall opened up before him. He was back in the city. Now he just had to reach his car without being seen. In broad daylight, in the most heavily trafficked part of the ship, as a human, he would have to cross through an over-populated shopping mall, then somehow figure out how to get back to the residential sectorportion of the ship, then figure out which of the jellyfish legs of the ship was the one he entered, then sprint all the way back or use the elevator all the way down to the base of the leg where he left his car, where, hopefully, it remained. It was impossible, even for him. There was absolutely no possible way to do that.

And then he remembered the most difficult part—he would have to modify the memories of about fifty Rhaokin. The ones he drank with, the ones he hung out with, and the one that he almost slept with. He would have to somehow recognize them and find them within a crowd of about four thousand other Rhaokin.

All in under thirty minutes.

It wasn't just impossible—it was _extremely_ impossible. It couldn't be done, not even by him. There was just no way that he, Hawk Abrams, Master Infiltrator, could possibly do all of that without getting caught by a single Rhaokin. It was insane. It was insurmountable. It was _literally_ the most incredibly, insanely, ridiculously, most impossibly impossible mission that he ever—
Chapter 11

Hawk, sweating, returned the sizzling taser-like memory device to its slot in the tactical utility belt. His shirt and pants were ripped, and bruises and cuts covered his body. He was back in the white docking tunnel, and he approached the Firebird, still attached to the other end. He withdrew the keys from the utility belt and clicked the unlock button. The Firebird beeped back, and Hawk pulled open the door.

He looked at his watch. One minute remaining. He raised the watch to his lips as he sat inside. He shook his head in disbelief. Those last twenty-nine minutes would be a story for the ages.

"Mission, this is Hawk," he said. ". Do you copy? Over."

There was a pause. Hawk stepped into the Firebird and sat down.

"Hawk, this is Frank," the watch buzzed back. "Are you at your objective? Over."

Hawk was about to reply. He opened his mouth, intending to emit sound that he would shape into words.

But then, a voice interrupted him from the backseat.

"That's all the proof I need," the voice said. "I don't believe it. I don't want to believe it."

Hawk turned around. Sitting in the backseat of the Pontiac Firebird was none other than Golf, the only Rhaokin he couldn't find earlier.

"Golf, let me explain."

Hawk's watch buzzed again. "Hawk? Are you at the machine? You haven't done anything to the machine yet, have you? Over."

Hawk, still eye to eye with Golf, raised the watch to his mouth again. "That is what I'm calling about. The machine was _already_ destroyed—or stolen—before I arrived. Over."

Golf stared at Hawk furiously.

The watch buzzed back. "Hawk, we do not copy. Did you say you already destroyed the machine? That was not your objective. Your actual objective was to insert the hammer device into the machine. Inside the hammer is Rhaokin DNA. Your actual objective was to destroy the Rhaokin species. Do you copy? Over."

Hawk, still looking at Golf, was surprised by how similar Rhaokin and human faces looked when enveloped in utter fury.

"I trusted you," Golf said, his voice pitched down to a growl.

Hawk's watch buzzed again. Hawk made to shut it off, but Golf stopped him. "Don't."

"Hawk," the watch buzzed. "I understand you are probably upset that you were lied to about the nature of your mission. But if you do not do this, we will kill your girlfriend, and your family, and your dog. You have ten seconds. Over."

Golf growled at Hawk. He held a, radio in his hand. "I'll speak in English so you can understand me." He raised the radio to his lips. "This is Golf. I have positive confirmation. The humans killed our engineers. There is no need to delay. Use the Biomatter Displacer on the planet."

"The what?" Hawk said.

Golf opened his door and stepped out of the car. He began to walk to the other end of the white tunnel. Hawk followed. "What are you doing?"

Golf shook his head and turned around. "I didn't tell you everything, Hawk," he said. "Sometimes we come across beautiful planets that are inhabited by an uncompromising threat to our species. In these cases, likenow such as this one now, we have another piece of technology. This one is much more powerful than the bug repellant equivalent that you killed twenty peaceful engineers to destroy. It is called The Biomatter Displacer, and it has the power to instantly teleport entire civilizations to another planet. In this case, the cold, barren, and desolate prison planet, Jericho Twelve."

Hawk's watch buzzed again. "I have a gun to Sharline's head, Hawk. This is not a game, you will complete your mission or we pull the tri—" A strange buzzing interrupted the signal. There was silence for a few second. Then the watch buzzed again, but instead of Frank calling, it was Boris.

"Something is happening!" Boris said. "Hawk, the president just disappeared! Raven too! Sharline is gone!" Hawk heard a screaming in the background. "Hawk something is happening! Jordan and Casey just disappeared! People are disappearing all over the country! Hawk—"

The buzzing continued, but there was nothing but silence on the other end.

Hawk raised the watch to his mouth. "Boris? Boris!"

Golf shook his head. "They're gone, Hawk. Every human is, by now, stranded on Jericho Twelve. That is—every human aside for you." Golf looked upset. "Earth is ours. You brought this upon yourself. Your people brought this upon themselves."

"Golf!" Hawk said. "Please put us back. I swear I had no idea that this was the mission, and more importantly, I swear that I didn't kill those engineers! What I said was true—when I arrived there, your engineers were all already dead, and the machine was already gone!"

"Why should I believe you?" Golf replied. "You've already lied to me."

"How could I possibly know what the machine looked like? If I stole it, then where is it? Golf, I swear it wasn't me, and I swear that you have an actual killer on your cruise! I am not a killer."

"If not you, then another from your species did this," Golf said. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter." He paused. "How did you manage to get into the engineering room, kill the engineers, then get all the way back here, erase all those memories, and find your car, all without being seen, and in under thirty minutes anyway?"

"I didn't kill those engineers," Hawk said. "The rest was elementary to a man such as myself." Hawk paused, histook a moment to think. His mind racingraced as he attempted to devise a way to save humanity, while simultaneously stalling Golf for as long as he could.possible. "So I took the engineering key from one of the scientists we drank with last night. Then, I had to figure out how to get to the wall without being seen, which was a—"

Behind Golf, the round door at the end of the white tunnel opened. But no one was there. No one walked through the threshold. Hawk shrugged and kept talking.

"Which was a task in of itself. Long story short, I used the dumpsters and the dump trucks to—"

Golf interrupted him. "Vapor bin."

Hawk grimaced. "Right. The _vapor bin_. Which I used to—"

This time, it was someone else that interrupted him.

Actually, not someone else. _Something_ else.

Because at that moment, an eight-foot tall bipedal lizard monster with blond curly hair materialized out of thin air. It stood half a foot behind Golf. It wore what appeared to be leather armor. On both eyelids were strange black piercings. Its eyes were shrouded in black. At the end of each finger on both hands were what appeared to be three-inch long daggers. Its right arm was raised around Golf's neck.

Hawk, startled, took a step back and shouted, "Golf look out!"

But it was too late. Golf hadn't even time enough to turn his head before the lizard monster, with one swift swipe of its claw, slit his throat. Golf fell back, but remained upright from his neck trunk as blood poured from the fresh deep cutwound.

The lizard monster shoved himGolf aside, and the Rhaokin. He fell, dead before he hit the ground.

Then, the lizard monster looked at Hawk but made no move forward. Instead, it spoke. It appeared to be mumbling, but Hawk heard it speak as clear as day in his head. "You are not the Master Infiltrator, Hawk Abrams. ," it said. "That prestigious title belongs to me."

There was a split second pause, with the creature and Hawk locked eye to eye. Then, in the blink of an eye, it vanished.

Hawk didn't hesitate. He spun on his heelsturned around and dove headfirst into the Pontiac Firebird. He grabbed the handle and, slammed the door shut, revved the engine, and hammered his foot onto the gas.

The engine roared to life and the car shotburst forward. Hawk was thrown back against his seat as he shot away from the Rhaokin cruise and the lizard monster.

Hawk glanced in his rear-view mirror. The doors of the docking tunnel were closing, but he could still see the monster. It stood on the platform and looked at him for a moment. Then, it turned around, opened the circular door, and returned to the cruise.

Hawk kept staring until the docking platform doors shut completely. He had no idea what to do now. That lizard monster had legitimately scared him. And how did it know his name? And how did it know that he considered himself a master infiltrator?

But then he looked down—and his eyes widened.

Because there, in the cup holder, was a beer glass with breasts on it.

He picked it up to examine it, confused, because he had smashed his last glass. He was sure of it.

While wondering how it was possible for the glass to be in his car, he absentmindedly rubbed over the plastic breasts with his thumb.

But then he felt something—something that enveloped him with dread. He stopped and looked down. There was no mistaking it. A cold sweat coated his skin like plastic. His breaths became heavy.

There had been one key difference between the beer glasses with breasts on Earth and the beer glasses with breasts on the Rhaokin cruise. One crucial difference that made Hawk feel more helpless and overpowered than he ever had. One cataclysmic difference that meant game over. One catastrophic difference that proved, without a doubt, that Hawk, and Earth, had been out-played.

...Nipples.

