A Spaceman

Chapter 1--Welcome Back (we're glad to have you!)

Hello again.

Glad you could join us. Haven't seen you around in a while, were we boring you?

I thought not. It's not usually boring around here. What have you missed? A good deal, and then at the same time, not so very much. 

I wonder if you know you've missed things, or even that you've been gone at all. Or if you remember me or if it's happened before for you or all again. But no matter. You're here now.

You should know, I have a child now. she's the most fantastic thing that has happened in this universe, and I adore her. for a while I thought that this might be what love is. What other people feel when they say they love something.

But it's not.

It's purely selfish. Because, now, you see, I'm no longer alone. There's somebody else like me, more than that, a person like me who I can teach, I can train. I can mold. Yet she's quick and clever and contrary as I, quite soon she'll be defying me like mad I know it. I can't wait for that to come.

Oh, and I made a deal with the Isylgyns, the aliens trying to take over our planet. Not officially mind you, not officially so far as the actual government goes. But so far as my fictitious government goes, quite official.

You see, I was captured some time ago, I and my co pilot. But I'd studied Isylgyn and knew the rudiments of their language. So I was able to get it across that I didn't want to be killed as I was the human leader in exile trying to set up a truce. They went with that, seems they are as sick of war as we are. As a show of good faith I let them kill my co pilot.

I made it out in perfect health, back to Kepler in time to meet my infant daughter. I didn't feel the urge to let my fellow humans know I'd had the positive communication. Didn't think that was the sort of thing they needed to know.

But anyway, now you know who we are and what we're doing, care to jump right on in? Only I'm rather busy at the moment, not that I don't simply love your company.

"You're three meters away from a set of doors. Take them to the lifts take the lifts up----"

"I'm not doing that," I say, into my headset, ducking into a narrow hallway and sliding down to the ground, my laser gun is on a low charge, why wouldn't it be I'm sixteen miles deep into an Isylgyn overrun asteroid fortress we are trying to reclaim with infinitesimal success. "If I take the lift up that puts me fifteen meters from the control rooms and two levels above the power breakers where I'm supposed to be if I can get the power breakers back on then you and the others can launch."

"We're not trying to get you to the power breakers anymore we're trying to get you out of there, it's 1800 the Isylgyn reinforcements are twenty minutes away, there are over a hundred of them on the third and fourth levels," my ever competent and occasionally correct fellow pilot, Brenner, says, she's in the control room where I left her when I and the others went in to try to reset the power banks so that we can at least launch and get the hell out of here.

"That gives me a 76 percent of running into an Isylygyn, I'm fine," I say, sliding down the hall on my knees, the Isylgyns use the ducts to move around, at this level, I'm below the ducts and therefore out of their line of sight. "The mission was to get to the power breakers so we can launch, that's what I'm doing."

"That was when there were twenty of you, not one," she hisses, she's genuinely annoyed with me now.

"One is far greater than zero," I inform her.

"Major Card, I have orders to tell you to return to your ship, and wait for reinforcements," she says.

"Then none of us live because then we don't have any way of launching and the Isylgyn reinforcements will be here in a matter of minutes whereas our reinforcements will be two hours at best," I say, dropping to my hands and knees and crawling as quickly as I dare. The Isylgyns can sense movement up to twenty five feet down here they're less likely to notice me. it's going to be a long way down.