Read Space Cadets for Free Online

walled in. Between the walls of each was a narrow walkway that probably also served as a fallback hull if the outer one was breached. So we walked al the way around the perimeter of the center of the ship before we realized we’d just walked in a circle. Peggy was already cutting through the walls to the inner sanctum when we caught up to her.
    Once again, she stood back and kicked with all her might. She stepped aside so Rick could take a quick peek.
    He pulled his head out and said in a saddened voice, “All clear.”
    I went through last. What I saw was a small command station, with odd consoles and seats, all designed specifically for the alien anatomy.
    Three aliens were seated, slumped over, clearly recently deceased.
    Rick lifted the chin of one of them up with his gun and then screamed, “Oh fuck. Oh shit. It’s the Enemy.”
    Peggy fired a shot into the back of the head of the dead alien closest to her and Rick blasted the one he was with in the neck. Not to be outdone, I reluctantly put my gun to the side of the remaining aliens head, squeezed my eyes shut, and squeezed the trigger. I didn’t enjoy it.
    The entire process was panic-driven madness. We were so programmed to kill them on sight that none of us even considered how barbaric our actions really were.
    The Enemy is easily recognizable given they appear almost exactly how Hollywood portrayed them hundreds of years ago. They are tall and lean with long, spindly necks. They have those long oval-shaped heads with big eyes, except in reality their eyes aren’t pitch black, but emerald green. And instead of having pasty white skin like in the movies, theirs is leathery and black like a lizard’s. They are hairless and completely nude. It was impossible to discern if these were males or females. Maybe the Enemy has neither gender, but something androgynous instead. I’m open to the idea that I just don’t have enough information to decide either way.
    There was a scuffling sound coming from the far end of the command station. It was darker back there but when Rick turned that way and increased the intensity of his lights, we saw one of the bastards fiddling with switches and stuff.
    Rick ran at the alien and grabbed it by the throat. He hauled its naked ass over by me and Peggy and set it down in the lone empty seat.
    The alien looked at the defiled bodies of its comrades and hissed at us.
    Then something weird happened: The alien’s throat moved and its lipless mouth parted, but a voice issued from the ship, rather than from the alien.
    The ship said to us, “You’re too late. I’ve corrupted the ships computer so you’ll never unlock its secrets.”
    Because I’m a dumbass, it was only then that I realized the ship was interpreting the alien’s silent speech for us.
    Then the computer said, “I sacrifice my life for all of Bleeder.”
    With that, the alien’s long, snake-like fingers pushed something into its mouth. It bit down on whatever it was, and then it died right before our eyes.
    Peggy sighed. “Fucking poison…”
    Rick put a slug in its brainpan just in case it was a ruse and then he said, “Find out what he did to the ship. We need intel, people.”
    I didn’t know what I was looking for but I thought I found it right away. There was a box as big as a loaf of bread sitting on the console in the back. Once I illuminated the area, I saw two dozen wires running from it to the rest of the console. When I showed it to Rick, rather than figuring out what it did and how to properly unhook it, he just grabbed it and tore it loose.
    But it was an add-on so we knew it was something only recently hooked up.
    We spent ten minutes trying to figure out the ship. Nothing we did made a difference. We could not get it to respond. The alien was right; he’d corrupted it beyond repair. But time was on our side. We could reverse engineer the shit out of this thing, even if it took years. Its secrets would be ours, eventually.
    We slowly dragged the