Short Stories

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Jeremy finally pulled up to my front curb. Boy, I thought I had something when I started to show off my new truck to everyone, but his car, man, it’s better than sittin’ in anything they would ever put on those NASCAR raceways. Who knows what his engine runs on, he says gas, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. The driver’s seat is in the middle and the passenger is right behind it. It kind of reminded my friends and I of a Viper or some weird ‘Vette. Still, I never thought it could be better than the rush of four-wheelin’ until today.

“So, where we goin’, Jeremy?” I blurted rushing down my porch.

“Eh, just out for lunch,” he mumbled, “who knows, maybe we’ll top this thing off today.”

“There’s some words I never expected to come out of your mouth,” I chuckled.

“Just hang on for the ride, James.”

“Okay, Jeremy,” I snickered as I climbed into the car.

We took off, but he never went into town. For some reason he kept weaving through my neighborhood.

“Hey, Jeremy, where we goin’?”

“I figured we try someplace new,” he said.

I still couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t head into town “What, did they build a new restaurant?” I inquired.

“Not exactly, you’ll find out, don’t worry.”

Well, he wanted to keep a surprise. I’m not much for surprises but I figured I’d play along.

We soon came to a pretty empty intersection. Once Jeremy stopped at the stop sign, something strange happened. We weren’t going forward, we weren’t in reverse, we weren’t turning, I couldn’t even hear the transmission going. To put it bluntly, we were going strait up. I had to rub my eyes and slap myself a few times to make sure there weren’t any drugs shootin’ out the AC. Needless to say, I got shaky to the bones. It took me about half ‘a minute to say something.

“Hey, Jeremy,” I stuttered, “If this is the rapture, where’s Jesus?”

“This isn’t the rapture James, I wish it was,” he said bluntly, “Just sit back in your chair.”

Before I could say, “What?!” a flight suit was somehow slapped on to me, just my size. Instruments all over the dashboard folded out. I saw radar, GPS, and few things I couldn’t point out. Suddenly a cross belt was over my chest, Jeremy handed me a helmet and an oxygen mask, “Put these on,” he said.”

I held them in my hand and broke out, “ Jeremy, what’s going on?”

“Right now, we’re headed strait up at 60 miles an hour, just a few more seconds and we can start the jet engines.”

“Start the WHAT?!!” I screamed.

Just as the words left my mouth a huge punch of inertia hit me. As I got dazed, I put the oxygen mask on; it seemed I had a little help from a mechanical arm. Once I was fully conscience again I saw streams of clouds streaming by. Because of the breathtaking view I saw, I didn’t even bother to ask again what was going on. Soon the sky turned from bright blue to a midnight blue. We were still going up.

“Jeremy, where are you taking me?” I stressed.

“Just give it a few minutes,” he calmly said.

In a few minutes the horizon had completely left my sight and the moon was getting bigger and bigger.

“The moon?”

“No way,” Jeremy hollered, “There’s nothin’ ta eat there.”

When the moon had practically filled our window, Jeremy jerked the ship into a 180. I flopped back into my seat, and peaked over Jeremy’s shoulder to see the buttons he was tapping. The next thing that happened was very strange. A sphere of fire or lava engulfed the spaceship.

“Jeremy your car’s on fire!” was the only thing I could think of saying.

“Just relax James, this is the easy part,” he said coolly.

The flames seemed to be moving faster and faster—soon I couldn’t bare to watch, it was making me dizzy. Soon, metal blinds covered all the windows. As it got to a crack, a tremendous burst of light shot through along with a sound that could be described as a continuous gunshot.

Soon after the blinds shut, a strange feeling shot me. I felt like I went to sleep and woke right back up. It was like a CD skipping. When the blinds opened, I saw the fiery sphere slowly dissipating. In front of us was earth, or, so I thought. It looked exactly the same except we were on the other side of the moon. The thing that told me that this wasn’t earth is that the sun revealed a massive fleet of spaceships jutting toward the planet.

Jeremy flipped down the visor on his helmet and took off at full speed towards the heart of the fleet. It only took a minute to get halfway there, and I could begin to see the outlines of the ships and the large cannons they carried. Most of them looked like pyramids with their bellies stacked on top of each other, some others were cubical or triangular in shape, but one in particular caught my eyesight: the one the fleet seemed to be protecting, it was massive. Shaped like a mallet in all respects except the head was not as large in comparison and the width of the nine engines put together exceeded the width of the body. The closer we closed in on it, the more my bodied shivered at the size of this starship.

I was still bewildered at the fact that I was in outer space looking at what probably was an alien war fleet. I know I wasn’t dreaming the scenery was much too beautiful.

Jeremy turned on a radio, and I heard strange sounds. It sounded like bubbles raising from the ocean. Jeremy hit another switch and a computer began to translate these signals.

“Thank you for your allegiance. Your timing is precise. The enemy weapon is almost in position.”

“I copy,” Jeremy responded, “Cover me, I’m gonna start my operation.”
We slowed to attack speed. Four saucers appeared on our wings as we dove into the fleet.

“Oh, those are the bad guys, that changes things,” I said for a lack of better words.

“James, put that helmet on and flip down that visor,” Jeremy ordered as it were.

As soon as I flipped my visor I could see all the enemy ships being targeted and the mallet ship was colored red.

“Alright James listen up,” Jeremy instructed as a joystick and a plasma screen popped in front of my lap, “There’s a targeting screen and a joystick in front of you. By pressing the hat switch you will activate a weapon with enough power to destroy that big ship. Target the ship and fire once I tell you to. Once you fire for long enough, the computer will target the ship automatically. The joystick will vibrate to let you know when it has a lock and you can let go after that. When I tell you to, press the button again to deactivate your shot, got all that James?”

“Yea, sure Jeremy.” I understood what he said, I just thought it should have been more complicated.
Once we flew close enough, the screen turned on and I put my crosshairs on the mallet ship. How can such a small weapon defeat such a large ship, I thought to myself.

“James, fire now!” Jeremy yelled. I fired and held the button down. A strange white stream of who-knows-what came out of the cannon. After a few seconds, the joystick vibrated, and I let go. The weapon was firing from the belly of our ship so Jeremy kept the ship flying in circles around the mallet. I could still see the four saucers defending our fire with strange weapons of their own.

Keep in mind that this battle was very different from anything I’ve ever seen from television or Star Wars. It wasn’t the sights, but there’s no sound in space. The only things I heard was our fire, the enemy’s fire hitting our ship, our engines, and of course the radio. I knew if we lost our radar we would never hear the enemy coming.

“Deactivate!” Jeremy spurted. I pressed the hat switch and the weapon stopped. Jeremy pulled the ship around so he could see the ship. The entire ship turned white and instantly turned into glowing milk to describe it best. Soon after all the debris disintegrated.

I couldn’t believe it. The weapon couldn’t cover as much surface as a nuclear bomb but to completely disintegrate something as big as the Sears tower was simply amazing.

After that everything went mad. All the enemy ships started to fly around like and angry beehive.

“I did my job,” Jeremy said into the intercom, “Have I finished my obligations?”

“We need all the help we can get,” the other side pleaded.

“Alright, get a recharge station ready, that last run almost drained my battery.”

I looked over at the dashboard and he was right. It looked like we didn’t have enough fuel to keep the engines hot. Jeremy stopped inside of a tunnel shaped spaceship. Once we did, huge yellow beams were directed at our ship. The energy bar filled up quickly and our shields were topped off. We jetted out and headed toward the midst of the battle.

“James, you’re gonna use your stick and screen again. This time you’ll be armed with a basic quick-shooting gauss cannon. It’s so basic it’ll strip the metal right off a’ these creeps.”

The white, milky weapon was impressive, but I got excited over using the good old bullet weapons again. I might have been the rear gunner but I had 180 degrees more than any other gunner. Once again it was very strange firing with no other noise but my ammo leaving the cannon.

The battle took a while. My adrenaline was rushin’ the whole time we jerked back and forth to take down those machines. We warped back to home planet earth when Jeremy said, “Now that we’ve had a day of fun, let’s drop by McDonald’s.”

We dropped into the atmosphere and did a few stunts. Jeremy actually let me do a few loopy-de-loops and barrel rolls on the way. Jeremy stealthed his way into a parking space and we went in for a couple Big Macs. As I ate I thought about what I went through. I might have had some fun, but what happened was war. I didn’t know what I killed up there, but I got that feeling that you would expect to find near pools of blood.

Jeremy saw the dreary look on my face and interrupted, “Now, James, I when I called you yesterday I just wanted to have a good lunch with you, I just thought that, that, up there, was just somethin’ just worth showin’ ya on the way.

“I know whatcha mean,” I said barely above my breath.

The ride back to my house wasn’t as nearly as quiet as lunch. Jeremy dropped me off at my house with his normal polite driving.

“I guess we topped off your car, huh Jeremy?”

“Almost,” he laughed, “Talk to you later, James!”

Before I went in the house, I watched Jeremy drive off. I thought about what all this meant. I never knew he trusted me that much. Well, I knew it, but I guess it was just a friendly reminder. What he showed me up there could have been a top-secret project. Probably more than that, yet Jeremy talked so casually like a run-off-the-mill day. It was that trust I treasured more than anything else I saw that day.

(c) 2006 Nathan Reedy

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