Earth Fathers, chapter 14 (Patreon)

The two invaders stood near the door. They were four or five feet tall and oddly square with a pyramid shaped torso and a leg tentacle at the bottom of each “corner” of the body. They both kept one edge of their bodies pointed toward Max, and each had a pair of plate-sized eyes on either side of one of the torso “edges.” Along the bottom of the torso hung a fringe of shorter tentacles and each alien pointed a triangle-shaped instrument at Max. Considering that Max could see down the length of a barrel, he was guessing that was a weapon. A big-ass weapon the aliens held in three tentacles.

The invaders shouted at Max, but only two words came through the translator, “Come” followed shortly thereafter by “Death.” Despite the lack of common vocabulary, Max definitely understood their point. He raised his hands to show that they were empty, and hoped that was a universal gesture. He really did not want to die in his underwear in an alien pool. 

Actually, he didn't want to die, period. The specific details of his death would just be the shit cherry on the fuck sundae. “I'm coming,” Max said as he inched closer. He pulled Xander's tentacles away from his arm and tried to push him back.

The invaders chattered again, and this time the translator offered, “Bring” and “also.”

“They’re children,” Max objected. “Offspring. They're not part of this.” Max didn't point out that he wasn't part of it either, but if he got the assholes to leave the kids alone, he would put that in the victory column. He was just grateful that James was nowhere in sight. Never before had Max been so appreciative of that boy’s habit of wandering.

“Bring” and “also” came out in another round of chittering. The translator then spit out the word “Never” and “children,” which they reinforced by adding “Born adult.”

Rick had insisted that the people’s offspring were cognitively mature from birth and simply ignorant, but Max could not call these three adults. They were too small and too fucking naïve to deal with armed assholes. “Offspring can't leave the water. Children water. Adults land,” Max argued. Kohei tried to pull himself around to the front of Max, but Max pushed the boy behind him.

“All come or die.” That came out rather clearly and with only a minimum of untranslated chitter. Max was not in a position to fight. He had no weapons, no clothing, and no idea what sort of conflict Rick had gotten them into. Was this an alien species that Rick's species had gone to war against, or had they just been boarded by the intergalactic police?

Max had no idea. Well, he had some idea. He liked to think that no version of a police force would execute children simply for refusing to come. That fact put these invaders on his enemies to exterminate list.

Unfortunately, he had no way to kill them right now, so his best bet for survival and the survival of the children lay in cooperating. The boys were still clinging to him, so Max waded towards the shallows. Walking towards an armed alien while wearing nothing besides wet underwear was not a comfortable feeling. Not even a little. “Let me get my clothing.” Max pointed at the chair.

The short invader chittered.

“Clothing.” Max crossed his arms across his shoulders and mimicked shivering. Sadly, he had been playing this translating game long enough that he knew which ideas were most likely to translate. “Humans require covers. Humans cold.” 

Maybe these invaders had some sort of sympathy because one of them walked over to the chair and used a small dangling tentacle to grab the clothing. He pulled the clothing up towards what would, on Rick, be his mouth and flip them around as though searching them. Max didn’t even have a knife, so after a few minutes, he dropped them. Before Max could retrieve them, the alien kicked the shirt and pants toward Max. The hem of the pants landed in the water.

“Warm,” it told Max.

“Yeah. Gee, thanks.” Hopefully aliens didn’t understand sarcasm, but given how few words were getting through the translation matrix, Max figured he was safe. He pulled his pants on over his wet underwear. This was not going to be warm. But he had a bigger concern. 

He could not let the children’s skin dry. Split skin could lead to them bleeding out before he could get them back to the water. But these invaders did not seem to care. So Max dunked his shirt in the pool before he slipped his arms through the sleeves. It took a little poking and prodding, but he finally convinced the children to shift onto his back, so that they were between him and the wet shirt. 

Hopefully that would give them some protection. Kohei’s long tentacles came up and curled around Max's neck. When Max tried to button his shirt, he discovered his uniform shirt did not fit two children under it. He tied the shirt tails around his waist, which left him bare chested. 

Warm spots pressed against Max’s back as the children pressed close. The small, warm Xander spot slipped down near Max’s waist where the shirt was tied, but Kohei stayed close to Max’s neck, his tentacles quivering. The two invaders watched him, their perfectly symmetrical eyes locked on him, which was good because Max could see James behind them. James’s tentacles quivered a bit as he stood in the crevice by the environmental control machine. “Stay,” Max said firmly. The two invaders looked at him, and the taller one said firmly, “Come.” Clearly he assumed Max had been talking to him.

Max had to keep their attention off the far corner. “I come. Offspring stay.” The shorter invader stepped forward and raised his gun.

“All come,” Max said quickly. The taller alien turned and walked out of the pool room, and Max followed. Thankfully, Rick kept the ship fairly warm because Max's skin was already turning to goose flesh. The children had warm torsos, just like their father, so Max’s back and neck were warm, but cold water ran down the crack of his ass and made his pants stick to his legs. Max suspected his brain was focusing on that because he was trying to avoid thinking too much about the armed invader walking behind him. If he fired, that weapon would hit the boys first. Fear knotted his stomach.

The invaders led Max up towards a part of the ship that Max had thought of as Rick's territory. Back when Max had first started exploring the ship, these doors had all been locked, and at one point, he had seen Rick coming out of one of them. Behind Rick, Max had spotted a complicated computer panel that was four or five times larger than the panel Max used for his translations. He had mentally labeled this the control level and had not tried coming back.

The large invader stopped in front of a door and pressed a short tentacle to the panel beside it. The door slid apart, showing a fairly large group of computer panels hung on the seven walls. None of the other rooms were hexagons, and this room was larger than any space other than the pool. Max had to assume this was an important room. An eight-sided couch dominated the center of the room and a large glass column rose from the center of that couch. The glass contained lightening, sparks that flowed from one pin-sized bit of metal embedded in the glass to the next.

Rick stood beside the couch, pale and with his tentacle all curled into miserable little balls. Someone had thrown his hat into the corner, and Max knew the someone in question was not Rick. That man loved his tool hat.

“Rick, are you okay?” Max asked. He moved toward Rick, but the flunky invader caught Max’s arm in one of his leg tentacles.

“Max!” Rick’s voice was unnaturally loud and belchy. “Query. Offspring?”

Max touched the tentacle still wrapped around his neck. “Kohei and Xander are right here. They're fine, and I'm doing my best to keep them wet.”

The invader spoke so quickly that it was all one long chirping sound. The translator picked up a few random words including “work” and “die” and “offspring” and “aubergine.”

Aubergine. Max had programmed that word himself, but he could not figure out why an alien would be using it, and he definitely didn't like the implication of the other words the invaders were using. The flunky who had grabbed Max let go and backed toward his boss, but Max didn’t move toward Rick again. He had to defuse the situation, but the problem was that he didn’t understand it.

“Human. I offer compensation for surrogate care. Offspring,” Rick said with a few extra belches standing in for words Max had not yet provided an English translation for. Unsurprisingly, Max had not covered hostage situations in his translation work.

Something in the computer translation matrix changed because coherent statements came out of the computer translator as the main invader chittered. “Complete work or offspring die.”

Rick quivered. “Conditional. I complete work. You kill offspring. Kill Max. Kill me.” That was a little more direct and confrontational than Max would have preferred, but he couldn’t fault Rick’s logic.

“Conditional,” the invaders countered him. “You fail work. I torture offspring. I torture Max. I kill you.”

As choices went, that did not sound promising. The threat made Rick shrink down on himself so that he was no taller than the invaders. Max had never seen Rick’s leg tentacle curl in stress, not even when they thought Xander might die. But right now it was wavy and quivering. This situation was about to go from a hostage negotiation to a fucking bloodbath.

“Rick.” Max said the name loud enough to demand Rick’s attention. Rick quivered more. “Do the work,” Max said firmly. The first rule of capture was to avoid death. Well, actually the first rule was to be prepared to give one’s life in defense of country and the second rule was to continue to fight as long as a person had the means to resist. However, the third rule for prisoners of war was to make every effort to escape, and escape required them to avoid catching a case of sudden death.

“Intelligent,” the invader offered. Max didn't give a shit what that asshole thought. Anyone willing to kill children in order to extort someone and exploit their terror deserved to die, and Max would love to be the one to make that happen.

Chapter 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-15-23715331 

Chapter 16: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-16-23798161 

Chapter 17: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-17-23902574 

Chapter 18: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-father-18-23938595 

Chapter 19: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-19-23961630 

Chapter 20: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-20-24034384 

Chapter 21:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-21-24119410 

Chapter 22: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-22-24165545 

Chapter 23: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-23-24253737 

Epilogue: https://www.patreon.com/posts/earth-fathers-24266071