Read Online Endgame by Dafydd Ab Hugh - Free Book Online

Corps was a screaming coward.
    After a minute, the panic subsided into gripping anxiety; it was still horrible, but now bearable. “Are you all right?” Arlene called from behind me.
    â€œY-yeah, just trying to f-figure out what the thing is. Gotta git a lit . . . get a little closer.” I forced myself to crawl until I was as close as I could get. I set up my Sure Fire flashlight-lantern to illuminate the body while I inched forward until my head was caught between the spongy material and the ship’s hull.
    It was amazing, a scene straight out of The Wizard of Oz: when the Fred ship touched down, it landed right on top of a dead alien! It definitely wasn’t a Fred; this creature looked more like an alien is supposed to look: white skin, long multiple articulated arms and legs, fingers like tendrils, not like the Freds’ chopsticks or Sears and Roebuck’s cilia. I swear to God, this thing actually had antennae, even. The eyes were huge, big as the cross-section on an F-99 Landing Flare, and Coca-Cola red; I couldn’t quite see, but I think they continued around the back of the head. The face was turned toward me, and I got hot and cold chills running up and down my spine, like it was staring at me and demanding why? The mouth was ared slit, and there was no nose—dark lines on the sides of the face, where the cheeks would be on a human, might have been air filters.
    My heart started pounding again, another wave of panic; I was staring at my first Newbie—I just knew.
    After I calmed down a bit, I slithered sideways, through my light; it was a bad moment when I eclipsed the light, casting the Newbie into total shadow. God only knew what it was doing in the dark. I got far enough to the side to see the body and legs. “You know,” I yelled back, my voice still shaky, “this thing doesn’t look half bad. It’s crushed a little, but I think it could be salvageable.”
    Arlene yelled something back that I couldn’t hear, then she got smart and spoke into her throat mike instead. “Can you drag it out if I throw you a rope?”
    â€œI bet I can,” I responded. I was never a rodeo roper, but I’d been around a calf or two in my day. I grew up on a farm and worked the McDonald’s Ranch when I was a kid. “Throw me the rope, A.S. I bet I can lasso that thing and drag it into the light of day. Kiddo, I think we may have gotten our first lucky break on this operation.”

5
    W e carried our gruesome trophy back into the ship, plopping it down on the table right behind Sears and Roebuck. When they turned, they stared, eyes almost popping out of their skulls. “What that is?”
    â€œI was hoping you could tell us,” I grumbled. I had gotten used to Sears and Roebuck’s galaxy-weary, we’ve-seen-everything-twice pose; I was even more shocked than the Magillas themselves at their confusion. “Are you saying this is an entirely new race of beings you’ve never seen before?”
    â€œNo,” they said, “and whatever disgusting is it is. The color is all wrong and the eyes are something horrible. Where did you get it?”
    â€œShip fell on it,” explained Arlene. “Could this be a Newbie, the race Rumplestiltskin was on about, the guys that wiped out the Freds?”
    â€œWell something outwiped the Fred, that is sure,” said Sears and Roebuck. “If there no other life forms of life here, then is logically that is the Newbie.”
    â€œGreat, fine, cool,” I interrupted, “but can you revive the bloody thing?” I jabbed a meaty finger at them. “And don’t hack off any arms or legs this time! You turned my stomach with what you did to Rumplestiltskin.”
    Sears and Roebuck didn’t answer. Instead, they grabbed an ultrasound and an X-ray and began mapping the gross anatomy of the Newbie. After half an hour of building up a reasonable 3-D model in the