When our glorious leader says jump, you jump. You might harbour thoughts about him that at best would get you killed, and at worst might ... well, I'll leave that up to you to figure out. Anyway, the best position to occupy in relation to our glorious leader is as far away as possible. Especially if you have committed some horrendous social gaffe, such as arriving at a function three minutes early, or, as was the case with the hero of this piece, accidentally warming the leader's bedrock to a whole degree below the way our noble leader likes.
Having committed this terrible faux pas, Vinko Globar, (for that is our hero's name), pulled every string that he knew, and a few he'd only heard about, to get a transfer from his position of palace bed-warmer to something with the benefit of a great deal of distance. Granted, his new position was a step down in stature for him, but who is going to worry about that when the alternative is experiencing one of the lesser forms of death.
Anyway, Vinko this time couldn't have found a position more distant. It was on the science research mothership dispatched to survey the newly discovered world called Earth. The giant mothership decelerated quickly as it entered the planetary system, and positioned itself so that the planet's moon kept it hidden from the species that occupied it. All of this was mere academia to Vinko, his job on the ship was ducting sanitation technician. As part of the maintenance department, it was his job to see that all ducting on the ship was free of obstruction, dirt and pests.
One of the biggest problems with a mothership isn't the amount of energy needed to push it, or make it hover above a city you are trying to intimidate, nor is it the complexities of navigating such a monstrosity through space. It is the number of pests they manage to accumulate. Three miles in diameter, one hundred levels is one hell of a large area to keep clean when you are building ships. It doesn't take long for an adventurous sewergator to get in, and as they say, 'it only takes two to quango!' So before you know it, your ducting is full of Flugs and Sneels, and your sewer pipes are full of Sewergators and Mudwumps. And guess whose job it is to attempt to institute pest control procedures? Yes, you guessed it, poor Vinko.
Now as it happens, Vinko isn't the only ducting sanitation technician on the ship. There are actually nine. Hey wait a minute, I hear you cry, do your mathematics please! Three miles diameter and a hundred levels divided between nine means 260 miles of ducting per technician, and you try keeping a pest problem down in an area that size on your own.
To make it worse, most of the technicians that Vinko had to work with were semisens, so Vinko was the smartest of the bunch. He got away with hiding among them because his mother was a chameleon, so he could fit in well.
Anyway, back to the story, The mothership was parked behind the planet's moon, and for twenty sunths (ship time), the analysts, linguologists, sociologists, theologists zenologists, biologists, rheologists, politicologists and the captain, listened and watched the transmissions emanating from the planet. This would enable them to assimilate their languages, and develop an understanding of the diverse cultures, theisms, zenisms organisms and rheisms of the planet. One whole sunth was wasted in argument by the theological and politicological research teams on the politico-religious symbolism in Starsky and Hutch, until some bright spark from the canteen who overheard the debate, suggested that it didn't have any symbolism at all. It was just a 'Shoot-ern-up' cop show where the good win, the bad die and everyone feels happy about it. And hence, Soup Dragon Stemron became the acknowledged founder of the school of cathartology, though he never knew it. Two days later, his soup was poisoned by a bunch of rheologists who decided that they didn't like smart bastards stealing their thunder.
After looking at the planet for some time, the scientists decided that they needed hands on experience of the life forms. So they decided to go and collect some samples. I will leave it to your imagination how they managed to bring back an elephant, but they did. The elephant turned out to be most revealing about how mammal life forms had developed upon this planet. There were significant differences with the mammals of Sullom Voe. Earth mammals had developed viviparous birth, while those of the homeworld lay eggs like all advanced life forms. Soon, the cargo carriers were making daily runs, bringing all kinds of flora and fauna back. It was during the forty second Bunth that the most important information was obtained, all life on Earth was edible. When, at last, the cargo delivery brought the first sample of dominant life, everyone thought that they would now be able to get down to the serious matter of determining whether the species was friend or food. Things didn't get off to a good start though, for all the creature would say was; "I knew it! I knew it! You buggers kidnapped Elvis!" Not one rheologist was able to discover any more thought processes occurring in the creature's head, so it was determined that the species were food. The subject was instantly declared to be unfit for consumption however due to the advanced ethanol induced decay of the savoury organs, so the rheologists continued to work on the other specimens. It was about this time that a particular rheologist called Kevlar, (who was, lets face it , orbiting a little above his cranium at the time on account of his addiction to the whacky weed itself, grola grass), left a cage door open, allowing a minor group of mammals to escape into the ducting. Normally, this would have been cured instantly by a ducting purge in the escape area before the pests became established. Unfortunately however, the escape didn't get reported because Kevlar's boss just thought he had treated himself to a little snack on account of getting the munchies.
Now, as I said before, it only takes two to quango, and in this case, it looks like there were sixteen holding a complete rev of a time in the ducting. Sixteen soon became thirty two, became sixty four became a hundred and twenty eight, became very adventurous. The first evidence of a new pest problem was not noticed because lets face it, semisens are just that, semisens! They do what they are told and don't usually have a free thought to themselves.
If you have ever wondered why the person you have never seen before, dressed in red is always the one that gets shot in the space dramas, it is because that's real life kiddo. They're the semisens, and we always send them into the tricky situations first. If they don't make it to the next episode, well hell baby, there's plenty more where he carne from.
So where was I? oh yes, Earth mammals in the ducting, not being noticed by the semisens. They had managed to completely colonize ducting level three and outer ringmain one and inner ringmain seven before Vinko got to noticing they were there. It happened like this. When a pest problem gets too large, the ducting is sealed off and a super cooled air is blown through it. This puts the pests into a torpor, like all of our life forms. The techs then go in wearing thermal suits to lift and dispose of the critters where ever they lay. Vinko was doing the rounds of inner ringmain sewer four with two of the semisens, when he came across a sewergator, the semisens just saw a body they had to dispose of. Vinko saw a body that had been half eaten by something that obviously was not put to sleep by the cold. The eating had to have been done while the creature was inert, because as sure as Zon made little blue frapples, you wouldn't want to pick an argument with a gator when it was awake. Vinko called security, which did two things, first it alerted those upstairs to the fact that Vinko was not a semisens, and secondly, there was a nasty bastard alien wandering around the ducting. This wasn't helped much by the fact that the security team had just been watching a video from Earth covering the same theme.
Emergency pest commander Ashok, paused to regard the 'big bastard alien combat team' before him. Crack hombre's with the latest firepower.
"Now listen up! It looks like we have an alien species that's taken up residence in the ducting. We are not sure, but we may be looking at a xenomorph ... "
"You bet you are looking at a xenomorph" said one particular rheologist who had attended the meeting as consultant but in fact knew sweet .. ahem,- onwards ...
"If you don't mind," said Ashok, trying to regain authority, "This creature is very dangerous, and extremely hostile. Judging from the size of the bit marks we have examined, we believe that the creature has already passed through it’s nymph phase, and has probably grown into something extremely large, and incredibly dangerous." Every member of the big bastard alien combat team swallowed hard. This didn't look too promising.
"I am not going to lie to you men," said Ashok, "The risks of this operation are extreme, many of you may not survive, but that does not mean you are to neglect your tasks. Our glorious leader expects each lizard to do his duty. I want each of you to group into squads of five men, and start from the bridge level and work downwards. Each squad will be issued with motion detectors, flame throwers and repeating phase pulse rifles. I want weapons prep and full tactical assimilation by twenty seven hundred hours."
"Shit! " said Vinko, "I think that film's gone to his head."
At twenty to lunch, fifty squads of soldiers entered the ducting to engage in combat with an alien that everyone
believed to be at least eight feet tall. Squad D7 were working towards the inner ringmain, when their motion detectors
indicated five objects approaching them cautiously. All five of the squad positioned themselves at a corner intersection
and waited. Soon enough, five dark shadows approached the intersection. D7 squad leader yelled "Now!" and his soldiers opened fire, flooding the ducting with pulse beams and liquid fire. The Aliens screamed.
"Squad D5 just bought it," said the comms officer to Ashok who was seated safely in the command chair on the bridge, "It looks like we have fire breathers from the last I heard." "Pass that information to the other teams," replied Ashok. So now the teams are looking for an eight foot tall fire breathing Earth creature.
In the ensuing battles, twenty five squads were killed by friendly fire under the assumption they were aliens prowling the ducting.
After ten hours of raging battles with these smart aliens, not to mention considerable losses, without one alien to show for it, E3's squad leader Dramsar was hot, bothered, and quite frankly a bit pissed off with the whole tactic of that stupid vrag Ashok. He cane to a maintenance cupboard off corridor 17, and entered. Here were spare mops, buckets, brooms and flug powder. In the corner was a sink, connected to a cistern above. He turned on the tap and poured a sink full of cold water and dipped his head in it. His squad did the same then carried on with their sweep of the sector. Two hours later, they were dead. Their agonized shouts poured out of the speakers on the bridge, and a bio hazard team. were sent in to collect the bodies. They were a sight, It looked like they had been trying to shed three layers of skin at the same time.
Ashok sounded a general retreat. The whole of the lower levels of the mothership were evacuated until someone could work out a plan to combat this alien threat. Of the two hundred and fifty soldiers who entered the ducting, seventy came out alive.
"It's a blippng war zone down there," they said, "they just come out of nowhere, attack you and disappear again, leaving your mates dead allover the ducting." Ashok sent an emergency ansible communication to the home world, and received in reply that agents from the weapons division were on their way to collect samples for the bio-weapons labs, and all they had to do was contain it which was fine, because not one of the scientists wanted to go near the ducting. Vinko on the other hand was examining data on Earth, no one bothered him except Ashok, who wanted to know what an honest middle class lizard was doing hiding among the semisens. Vinko managed to avoid the question. He turned up some interesting information, like no Earth mammal goes through a nymph phase and develops into a big nasty bastard alien. The clincher was when he read about Weil's disease. Vinko put on a bio suit, grabbed a small cage from a biologist, and descended into the ducting. He searched for days, without seeing another crew member, but his search paid off. In the garbage hold, he found a colony of an Earth creature called a 'Rat', and it didn't take long to catch one. It took him several days to walk back again, and each time he stopped for a meal, hi examined his new companion. As far as mammals went, it was quite cute. It was almost completely black haired, except for its tail which was hairless. It had long incisor teeth, and tried most of the time to talk to Vinko, alt least that was how Vinko thought it was acting.
By the time Vinko walked on to the bridge, the agents from weapons division had arrived.
"We haven't seen it, all we know is its big and breaths fire," Ashok was saying.
"No it doesn't," said Vinko, "here's one, he said holding up his caged rat. The weapons department officer walked over to Vinko and stared at the creature which squeaked back at him. "What, this little thing has killed over a hundred people?" "No sir," answered Vinko, the soldiers killed each other while looking for this. They were only semisens, they saw each other moving, and thought they were aliens and started shooting before thinking, as usual."
"This is absolute vripple!" exclaimed a Rheologist, "This man I'll admit has found an Earth species running wild in the ducting, but this is certainly not the alien we are looking for. We Rheologists have been studying this subject all our lives, and I can assure you, what we have somewhere in the ship is eight foot at least by now and very hungry." The rat squeaked objection, but no one listened.
"No sir," said Vinko, "it is what you are saying that is absolute vripple. This creature ate a swampgator alive because it wasn't capable of defending itself, that incident allowed your imagination to go wild."
"Look! I really don't think that we should even be listening to this man," said the rheologist sneeringly, "after all we
are all highly trained scientists, and he is merely a sanitation technician, and not a very good one either."
"That doesn't matter," said Vinko, "search as much as you want, you won't find anything other than more of these very
clever, and very adaptive Earth creatures." The Weapons Division officer grunted, looked at his colleagues and said
"Looks like we've been sent across the galaxy on a wild raptor hunt men."
"Look, you really don't have to listen to him, he's just a grunt."
"But what have you got?" said the officer, "no images on cameras, no bodies, nothing."
"Look, OK, what about Dramsar, what affected him. Certainly not this little thing! It must have been a virulent poison
from a large creature." "Weils disease, is caught from rat urine, there's no telling what the bacteria can do to us. it's probably that."
"How's it transmitted then?" sneered the Rheologist.
"Through water that rats have been swimming in."
"All right," said the officer, then pointing to one of the semisens, "go and get me a bucket of water, quickly." The
semisens ran off, and a few moments later returned with a bucket. The officer upended the cage, and tipped the rat into
the water, allowing it to swim around for a few minutes, then pulled the cage out again and gave. it back to Vinko, then before anyone could blink, picked up the bucket and threw it at the semisens.
"If Rheology is wrong, and our sanitation engineer her is right, then all we have to do is wait." Two hours, and one dead semisens later, the Rheologist was fuming, and the weapons officers were storming back to their shuttle muttering. "Called half way across the galaxy, and for what? a small furry pest." As Vinko walked of the bridge, the Rheologist muttered in his ear. "We'll get you for showing us up like that." Vinko smiled blandly back at him. After all, how could a bunch or Rheologists possibly get even without everyone noticing. Vinko reassured himself of his safety.
But the Rheologists did get even. They taught him Arabic, then during the invasion, sent him to America.
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