Galaxy of Heroes

The Craaldan Five Cruiser descended hard through the yellow haze and circled over the planet’s Government Center. A deep Megalan voice repeatedly attempted to make contact over the radio.

“This is Meglos Ground Control. Inbound spacecraft. Identify. I say again. Identify.”

Genie ignored the transmission.

She located a landing pad on top of a building that towered over the domed Government Center and brought the cruiser in for a landing. The building was a skyscraper, but its mass and orange color gave it a squat, pyramidal appearance. It looked out through the haze at the distant Megalan Mountains.

The landing pad creaked and groaned as the armored cruiser set down in the high gravity. The pad was barely adequate in size or strength to support the big, black ship.

Genie did not wait for the docking ramp. She exited the cruiser through a hatch and walked across the landing pad through the heavy air, so thick it felt like liquid. She came to a door and opened it and entered a decompression chamber. The yellow Megalan air was flushed from the chamber, replaced by air breathable to humans. An inner door opened and she stepped into an empty holding room.

Another door opened and three Megalans carrying handguns rushed into the room, weapons at the ready.

The three Megalans wore orange law enforcement uniforms and had firearm holsters strapped to their legs.

“Who are you?” one of the hulking Megalans said, his gun extended and aimed at center mass.

Genie stepped forward with quickness and thrust her open palm into the big man’s expansive chest, sending him staggering backward against the wall. She kicked the second Megalan in the abdomen, knocking him down. Then smoothly with a sweep kick to the feet, she knocked the third onto his back.

She stepped out the same door the big men had entered and shut it behind her. She found an open elevator and stepped inside.

She was on the top floor of this 185-story building. She punched the button for floor 100 and the elevator began to descend.

An alarm sounded abruptly, and the elevator slowed and stopped. “You are under arrest,” a deep voice said over the elevator’s intercom. “Stand by for the arrival of security personnel. Do not resist. Deadly force is authorized. Submission is the proper course of action.”

Genie punched through the elevator floor and peeled back the metal. She climbed through the hole and then slid down the dark elevator shaft.

She reached floor 100 and forced open the elevator doors. A high-ceilinged hallway stretched before her for quite some distance. She walked past several Megalan civilians who did double takes when they noticed the silver cyborg walking past.

Genie found the door she was looking for. She gave it a quick kick. It flung open and crashed against the inside wall. She walked through an airy living room with oversized furniture, and huge windows that looked out on hazy views of the city below. The two suns of this system were setting behind the mountains, casting a spectacular sunset through the thick atmospheric haze. Brilliant orange, red, yellow, and tinges of blue, lit up the sky with refracted light.

Genie walked down a hallway to another door. She opened it and stepped into a bedroom.

Sgt. Joe Grimes and Governor Zegra lay in an enormous bed, together under the sheets.

“Genie!” Grimes said.

“Oh, great,” Governor Zegra said.

Grimes and the Governor sat upright in the purple satin sheets. Governor Zegra’s dark auburn hair was down, falling over her bare, muscled shoulders. She pulled the sheets over her chest.

Grimes sat next to her, bare-chested and upright in the bed.

Governor Zegra hit a button on the headboard. “Security! Level one alert in the Governor’s quarters.”

Genie’s circuits were lit up in alarm, as if on fire, as she glared at Joe and Zegra in bed together. Her nervous system flooded with adrenaline.

“Stay calm, Genie,” Grimes said. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Genie sprang onto the bed with a bounce and throttled Governor Zegra by the throat. Genie was far smaller compared to the Governor, but Zegra did not have the strength to break the powerful cyborg chokehold.

Zegra’s eyes bulged. Her mouth was open but no air entered her windpipe. The Governor’s large hands clutched Genie by the wrists. Zegra struggled to pry Genie’s hands from her throat, but couldn’t break the grip.

“Let her go, Genie!” Sgt. Grimes said. “You’re killing her!”

Five Megalan security guards stacked themselves against the wall in the hallway, front to back just outside the bedroom door. They crashed through the bedroom doorway with handguns thrust forward, taking positions on both sides of the room.

The second man into the room fired a quick burst of shots into Genie’s back. Then, the rest of his team opened fire.

The slugs bounced off Genie’s back without penetrating.

“Check your fire!” Grimes shouted over the gunshots. “You’re going to hit the Governor!”

The guards popped off a few more rounds before their smoking weapons fell silent.

Genie maintained her chokehold on the Governor, whose face was now blue.

Grimes put his hand on Genie’s wrists. “Let her go, babe,” he said. “I’m asking you nicely.”

Genie looked at him and frowned. She released the Governor, who flopped onto her back on the bed.

“Don’t move,” the Megalan team leader said, keeping his weapon pointed at Genie. “You are both under arrest.”

The big Megalan stepped up to Genie as his team covered him. He holstered his firearm and pulled out a pair of magnetic wrist restraints. “Will this be difficult or easy?” he asked her.

“It will be easy for me,” Genie answered, “but difficult for you.”

Genie delivered a snap kick to the big man’s groin, doubling him over. The other guards opened fire, to no effect.

Grimes dove for cover off the bed.

Genie moved with lightning speed, quickly incapacitating her attackers with rapid kicks and strikes. She grabbed Grimes under the arm and pulled him behind her as she darted out of the Governor’s apartment.

Grimes was nude as Genie dragged him down the hallway.

“I thought you were incarcerated on Vanaria,” he said.

“I was,” Genie answered.

“How did you get to Meglos?” he asked.

“By ship,” she said.

“What ship?”

“A Craaldan Five Cruiser,” she answered.

“Say again?”

Genie pulled him behind her toward the elevator doors.

“Genie, did you say a Craaldan Five Cruiser?” he asked.

“Affirmative,” she said.

Suddenly, a powerful convulsion rocked Genie’s body. Her head jerked backward and her back arched. She released him and clutched the collar attached to her neck. Grimes jumped back as a powerful electric current surged through Genie’s nervous system.

Genie dropped to her knees. The old coveralls she was wearing began to smolder and smoke.

At the other end of the hallway, Governor Zegra stood wrapped in a satin bed sheet. She held in front of her a transmitter that she was pressing with her thumb.

Genie had lost all motor control and was now on the floor on her back convulsing in erratic spasms.

Grimes glared down the hall at Governor Zegra. He strode nude down the hallway toward the large woman.

“I have had it with your stupid robot, Joe!” Zegra yelled angrily as he approached. “I’m going to kill it here once and for all.”

“No, you are not,” Grimes said.

Sgt. Grimes snatched the transmitter from the Governor’s hand. He punched a button, which released Genie from the electric shock. He punched another button and the neck clamp popped open and fell off Genie’s throat.

Grimes turned away from Zegra and walked back down the hall.

“Don’t walk away from me, Joe!” Zegra demanded.

Grimes pulled Genie up to her feet. He swatted the charred and smoldering coveralls off her.

Genie shook her head and regained her bearings.

“You come back here, Sergeant,” Zegra ordered.

The guards moved up the hallway behind her, with their weapons pointed forward.

“I am giving you a direct order to come back here immediately!” Zegra said.

Genie forced open the elevator doors and entered the dark shaft. Grimes followed her in.

“I will never forgive you for this, Joe!” the Governor shouted.

Genie quickly scaled up the elevator cable, holding Grimes behind her. The guards stuck their heads into the empty shaft and began firing potshots upward.

Genie reached the top floor and pried open the doors to the holding room. She kicked through the doors to the decompression chamber and then kicked open the outer doors.

The heavy Megalan air rushed into the chamber. Genie pulled Grimes behind her out onto the landing pad and toward the cruiser.

She entered the ship through its decompression chamber, which flushed away the heavy Megalan air.

Grimes gasped for oxygen. His eyes were watery as he coughed and hacked. He looked like death warmed over after passing through the inhospitable air.

“It smells like rotten eggs out there,” he wheezed. “Really rotten eggs.”

Genie pulled him behind her up to the cockpit and set him down in a seat. She started the lift-off sequence on the onboard computer.

“What did you mean when you said it was not what it looked like?” Genie asked him.

“What?” Grimes asked, still wheezing and rubbing his eyes.

“What did you mean it was not what it looked like when I saw you and Governor Zegra in bed together?” Genie asked.

“Genie, baby,” he said. “If it looked like I was cheating on you, I wasn’t—not in my heart. You’re still my number one gal.”

The Craaldan Five Cruiser lifted off from the landing pad and zoomed upward through the haze. Megalan ships blasted upward from around the Government Center in hot pursuit.