CHAPTER TEN
The Splashing Of Hoogort
I.
I take it the air is breathable?
I was stunned when I heard Nog say this, as I stood on a planet far from Earth that nobody knew anything about.
“Uh…” I sucked in some Bethani air and exhaled. It seemed okay to me - unless there was some sort of cosmic toxins infiltrating my lung space. “I think so.”
Good, ‘cause I forgot all about that. I wasn’t sure if you guys were going to need some breathing apparatuses or something.
I took another breath, a little nervous now, and looked around at my surroundings.
Tell me what you see, Scout.
I looked around – our environs were surreal. D.R. Fritz had landed us in a small clearing right in the thick of a heavily overgrown jungle. The trees, fat at the base, stretched unnaturally high into the sky. Vines as thick as baseball bats strung the trees together. Massive flowers, red and green in color, stood off the forest floor, taller than I was. The soil beneath us was a powdery red dust.
The ambience was quiet – dead quiet. Not a single sound other than the leaves blowing in the wind.
Bethani was beautiful, yet ominous in its own way.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, Professor,” I said.
I can see images now…D.R. Fritz is computing.
I forgot that Nog was going to be able to track our every move on the planet. It was nice to have another set of eyes watching out for us.
D.R. Fritz came walking down the ramp from the I.P.S. He was creepy – human-like, but not really. He was thin and colored with silver with black highlights. His glass eyes – too eerily similar to human eyes – never blinked, and his mouth was pretty much just a small, horizontal opening that never moved. His voice box was inside there I suppose.
“Rescue mission has commenced,” his robotic-ness said to us.
“You ready, Chuck?” I asked. Chuck appeared to be ready. He was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and he left his hair untouched from his early morning wake-up. It would have made more sense to have us dressed in some space gear or something. Like matching space uniforms to let everyone know that we were on a mission. I looked down at my NASA shirt, disappointed.
“Let’s do this,” Chuck said, pulling out his laser phaser from his belt holster. D.R. Fritz led the way, and started us through the jungle on one of the red, powdery trails that seemed to snake its way through the overgrowth.
As we left the comfort of the clearing that sheltered our shuttle, I couldn’t help but wonder what lied ahead for us. I just didn’t expect to see what we saw almost immediately…
II.
“Hey! What are ya?” A small, rough voice shouted from somewhere in the wilderness.
We were instantly on guard. I drew my weapon and held it out in front of me. I glanced over in Chuck’s direction and saw he was doing the same. D.R. Fritz came to a stop on the trail. “Computing mission disruption…”
We waited for Fritz to compute the situation, but before he could finish, the raspy voice shrieked again. “You’re all weird! What are ya?”
It sounded like it was coming from the left, my side of the trail. I aimed off in the woods and carefully searched the area through my sight scope. Behind a large, overgrown red flower, I saw a small, green head pop out, and then quickly retract.
“There it is!” I shouted. Chuck joined my side and we both aimed our guns into the thicket. “Behind that giant flower!”
The green head slowly appeared again and then quickly disappeared.
“Alien life form, twenty yards East.” D.R. Fritz computed out loud, a little late to the party. Our robot turned and faced the alien being.
It must have sensed, that – even though we held our weapons in a defensive, yet threatening manner – we meant it no harm. The being slowly looked over the flower again, then revealed itself by walking around it and into our view.
The life form was tall and slender, a dark scaly green with its’ ribs slightly protruding. Its eyes were large and black, it’s mouth small and narrow, and there were absolutely no signs of any anatomical business going on down there.
“Alien!” Chuck shouted and held his trigger down hard, shooting a concentrated green beam at the creature, and blowing it up. Green slimed slathered the trees and ground around the area. The huge red flower was now decorated in guts.
“Chuck!” I screamed. What was he thinking? “What did you expect to see here? Cows?”
“I…” Chuck had no words. His immediate reaction to blow the creature to smithereens was uncalled for. I lost a little bit of respect for the guy.
“Threat terminated,” Fritz echoed.
I shook my head, trying to accept what just happened. Our first contact with aliens on their home planet, and Chuck had to go and kill it.
The plants behind us rustled and we all turned to face the disturbance. “Thank you.” Another rough and raspy voice stated from the trees.
Another one of the creatures walked out from behind some large thorn bushes. This one looked identical, but held some sort of glass spear that was glowing purple at one end.
“Thank you,” The alien repeated. “Hoogort was on the run; murdered thirty-seven of our kind. His fate would have been fatality anyway.”
“Hoogort?” I asked.
“Yes. The one you just splashed on our foliage. He was a criminal.” The creature tightened his grip on his glass spear. “What planetary system do you things originate from?”
“The Milky Way,” I said, holding my hand up in front of Chuck, trying to prevent him from shooting another one.
“What’s…m-i-l-k?” the creature asked, trying to sound it out.
“It’s a drink. From cows,” I stated. “You speak English?”
“I speak however your brain allows me to sound. It makes it easier for interstellar communications.”
I didn’t know what to say next. This was first contact with this species, and I wasn’t even sure how to interact with it.
“What are you things doing here on our planet?” it said.
“Our planet was attacked by alien robots that came from here. They took three of our people, and we made the trip to bring them back,” I said.
“Oh,” the alien began, “You must be talking about the Frooginites.”
“The Frooginites?”
“Yeah. The Frooginites.”
“What are…Frooginites?” I asked.
“The Frooginites are a violent race of beings that live here along with our kind. They visit planets all over the universe and cause nothing but trouble. They kill, they steal, they kidnap – it’s their thing. I’m pretty sure they have a feud going on with another planet right now.”
I smiled. “That’d be us. My Professor and his team are in the middle of it now. That’s why we’re here. These Frooginites you speak of…they stole some of our people. Were here to get them back and to destroy whatever portal they use to come to our planet.”
The creature nodded. “I see. Do you know where your things are being held?”
“No, we just got here.”
“Let me explain some stuff to you things. The Frooginites are extremely violent. They have bases all over our planet. Your things could be at any one of them. They are heavily armed, the bases are heavily guarded, and one thing is for sure, if they see any kind of foreign beings like yourselves, they won’t think twice about blowing your butts off.”
“Our butts?” Chuck shouted, grabbing a hold of his rump cheeks.
“Watch your butts,” the creature said.
I lowered my laser gun and took a step towards the creature. “My name is Scout Brooks. This is my sidekick, Chuck Taylor. This robot here is D.R. Fritz. What’s your name?”
The creature stood his ground, not taking any chances. He was still a little unsure of us. “The name’s Blorf.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Blorf,” I said, holding back my laughter. These names were killing me!
“Scout, there’s a base not too far from here; maybe about a mile north of our current location.” Blorf said. “You should start there to look for your things. I’m in charge of our punishment division, so I’ll be around if you need me, correcting those who shatter the law.”
“Thanks, man,” I said.
Blorf turned and scurried back into the trees and we lost sight of him.
“Computing new information…” D.R. Fritz spoke. A few computer bleeps and bloops later, he had plotted a course for the nearest Frooginite base and we were on our way.
III.
Bethani must have been in their version of summer, because it was pretty hot. Chuck and I were sweatin’ bullets up on this planet. We trekked through the wilderness, not once leaving the powdery trail. There was no way we wanted to get lost.
We followed Fritz for about thirty minutes or so before he came to a stop. “Forty yards ahead. Frooginite base.”
Chuck and I moved ahead of Fritz and drew our weapons. We knelt down behind a convenient giant flower and looked ahead through the giant leaves and bushes.
I could see some sort of metal structure. It was hard to tell how big it was because of all the trees and stuff. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a pretty sweet pair of binoculars. I looked through them and saw that there were actually multiple metal structures. All of them had black doors, but no windows.
“We need to sneak over there and search the area,” I whispered to Chuck.
“Okay.”
“Don’t fire on anything unless we have to. It’d be pretty cool if we could just sneak in all spy-like and sneak out if we don’t find anything.”
“Like Mission: Impossible?” Chuck said.
“Yeah, just like it. We’ll be all spy-like,” I said again. “Fritz…stay.”
I wasn’t sure how to talk to the D.R. Fritz yet, but that seemed to work. He stayed put as Chuck and I hopped off the trail and moved swiftly and inconspicuously through the woods.
There wasn’t a single sound coming from the base area. It almost felt like it was abandoned. We came out of the woods next to one of the three large metal structures.
Chuck and I put our backs to the wall and slide down to the corner of building. I peered around to get a look at the whole base. The three buildings were placed in a triangular way. There were two side-by-side, maybe separated by twenty yards or so. The third one was straight ahead and stood in-between them. In the center of the ‘triangle’ there was a large black slab on the ground, imbedded into the red dirt almost like a pitcher’s mound would be. The slab had two futuristic-looking light bulbs on it, but they weren’t lit.
“Do you see anything, man?” Chuck whispered.
“No, man,” I responded. Aside from the structures and the slab, there didn’t seem to be any sort of activity. “C’mon.”
I lead the way, slowly, out from behind the structure and into the opening in the middle of the triangle. Chuck and I cautiously looked around, both of us gripping tightly on to our laser phasers.
“Professor Nog, we found one of the alien bases. It seems to be empty,” I said.
How many buildings?
“Three.”
Search them all. You might find something useful.
“Got it.”
I instructed Chuck to search the building closest to us, and I went for the other one at the base of the triangle. I approached the black door and it must have had some sort of motion sensor because the door opened with a ‘whoosh’ sound. I walked in, and it ‘whooshed’’ shut behind me.
The building was tall, really tall, but there wasn’t a whole lot to it. I assumed all three looked the same. They were very open with lots of computer systems and screens on the walls. In the center of the large open room, there was what looked like a grated drain; maybe some sort of door. I hugged the wall to my left and studied the computer screens and buttons. Everything was in an alien language, so it was impossible for me to really understand what was going on or what all this crap meant. So naturally, I started pressing buttons. Most of them didn’t do anything – that I noticed – but one of them flipped on one of the computer screens. I watched as the screen lit up.
It was security footage of some kind. It was stationed on one of the buildings at the base we were in. I watched the screen and then started to freak out – two of the alien robots, the Frooginites, walked in from the tree line and into the center of the base.
My God, I was hoping Chuck wouldn’t walk outside, otherwise he’d be dead meat. I watched as the two aliens stood in the middle of the base, next to the light bulb slab thing. They stood there, possibly speaking to one another, holding their guns.
I ran back to the door, which ‘whooshed’ open a little louder than I’d hoped. I snuck out of the building and ducked behind it, poking my head out in order to keep my eyes on the aliens.
I couldn’t hear if they were communicating or not. They were just standing there facing each other.
“Professor, there are two of the aliens in the base. I can’t get Chuck. Can you let him know to stay inside?”
Hold on.
I waited a minute and then Nog returned to my head:
He’s staying put. He also said he found something that might help you guys. Scout, listen carefully, it’s up to you to take these mother lovers down, all right? I need you to calmly open fire and blow the living crap out of them.
I was starting to think Nog didn’t care about our safety at all. We were expendable cannon fodder to him. “Are you sure that won’t attract more of them?”
There was no answer from Nog.
“Professor?”
Are you going to open fire or not, Scout? This is your moment to be that science fiction hero you’ve always dreamed about being.
Even though I had only recently started dreaming about being that hero, I knew what he meant. It was my time to shine. I needed a good line, and I needed to look cool. I took a deep breath and ran out into the center of the base.
“Hey!” I shouted. The aliens looked in my direction. I immediately held my gun sideways to look cool, but I froze when it came to shouting off a cool line. I pulled the trigger hard and blasted laser after laser in their direction. I don’t know if I was seriously that cool, or it was just beginners luck, but all of my lasers made contact and the two aliens were blown backwards, spraying green blood in every direction. They both hit the ground hard and ceased to move.
The biggest smile in the universe spread across my face like a disease. “Oh…my…GOD! I’m legendary!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I just killed some aliens!
Chuck came rushing out of his building and over to me. We celebrated my kills.
“You were awesome, bro!” Chuck shouted as we jumped up and down.
“You saw me?”
“Yeah, man! I was watching the whole thing through the security footage!”
“Aw, yeah! Did you see me hold my gun sideways?”
“Yeah, bro! I saw that! Awesome!”
Once the adrenaline calmed down, I realized it was time to get back to business. “Nog said you found some information that could be useful?”
“Yeah, man. There’s another base about fifty clicks west of here that has some major activity going on in it.”
“How do you know?”
“I started pressing random buttons in that building and a monitor turned on. There was a live feed being broadcasted from the base. There were aliens all over the place there. It might be a good place to look for Mandy, Radar and Farrow.”
“Good call. Let’s get Fritz and make our way there now.”
Chuck and I ran back through the trees and to the path where D.R. Fritz was.
“Let’s go, Fritz.” I said. Chuck and I started to walk the path, but stopped when we noticed Fritz hadn’t responded or moved. “Fritz?” I said again, walking back to him. He seemed gone – totally inanimate.
Chuck came up behind me and knocked on the robots head a couple times. Fritz stared straight ahead with his weird glass eyes. It was eerie. We didn’t know what was going on.
“Professor?” I asked.
What?
“D.R. Fritz isn’t responding. What do we do?”
Nog was quiet for a minute. I assumed he was checking into it. He finally returned:
For some reason, he’s not responding.
Duh…
I’ll try to work on it a little more. In the meantime, keep moving boys. Make me proud.
Chuck and I turned, armed ourselves, and continued down the path in the direction Chuck believed the next base was.