Goddess of the Galacticide Episode 74 - “Who Do We Shoot?”
Updated: 5 days ago
The alien held a strip beam, too, but unlike Cha Dzeeny, the creature belonged to the species who designed it, and would not have to look for the trigger mechanism.
The guards aimed their automatics at the dark mass that was Terg, but their projectiles would bounce off the hardened outer layer of the colony’s administrator like pebbles thrown by children. Cha held the only chance to defeat this giant, both their only hope, and incriminating evidence for an alleged crime. One he had not committed.
He knelt down, ever so slowly, and placed his strip beam on the floor, its muzzle pointing away from Terg.
“Lower your weapons.”
“Boss?”
“Do it. Slowly.”
Curses and grinding body armor. The guards hated their orders, but followed them.
Terg appeared unfazed. Or was he? His species had no discernible postures, body language, or expressions. The alien was an administrator, but his subspecies were warriors. Would he read the disarming as deescalation or as an admission of guilt? Did these aliens take prisoners? The lack of communication options became just as dangerous as that beam weapon still resting steadily in the alien’s claw.
Cha stood up straight.
“What now, boss?”
“We need to talk.”
Cha’s suit had tightly filled chest pockets. Baaii would make fun of him and how much equipment he would take each time he left their home. His right hand found the piece of tech he was looking for. He held up the chemstick and waved it slowly.
“Terg, we need to talk.”
A ticking sound came from the foyer. Were these subdued leg clicks from Terg’s guards? Did he call for backup? It was hardly needed for the helpless humans at his mercy. More ticking and clicking in the Goddess living room. A groan from the roof. No creature made these noises—it was the building, stressed by torsion.
“A wave? It’s not even mid-spin.”
The guard was right; no surface movement was predicted until spin-end, and even then it would not be strong enough to make the Goddess’ retreat vibrate.
Terg’s legs reshuffled, either to regain his footing or to prepare for an attack. Maybe he didn’t want to use that beam, cutting through everything with ease, including the Divine’s furniture and walls, and considered using that enormous cleaver he had brought.
Instead, he turned. The side that seemed his front when he appeared turned facing the archway looking into the foyer. Cha didn’t know how the alien could sense it, but he heard it, too. Hissing, sizzling, cracks, yelling. The universal language of armed struggle.
Out of all the things Cha imagined happening next, this was the least likely: Terg turned back to their group and put his strip beam on the floor, just as Cha did.
“What’s he doing, Boss?”
“He knows there’s trouble, and it’s not us.”
Terg picked his weapon back up—and left.
Did he try to tell Cha to do the same? Arm himself for what was waiting outside?
The roof structure buckled with a metallic sneeze. The floor vibrations massaged his feet. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t face it unarmed.
Cha grabbed the strip beam.
“Follow me.”
***
Terg was fast and had crossed the foyer half a pass before Cha could catch up. Sizzling, a crack. He was sprinting slightly uphill; the entire refuge was leaning. There hadn’t been any strong waves like this in many orbits. Female voices in distress. Baaii.
Cha reached the front door, beam at his side. Cracks zig-zagged across the distorted plaza, following the rolling motions of the surface. He had visited worlds with ocean waves, and it looked the same, but green and loud, and with vines shooting out of the crests, slithering, searching for the humans staggering across the chaos that had been their colony’s center just a shift ago.
“Fyee magii, boss?”
“Aim for the vine bases. Cover Baaii and the Prophet. Open fire!”
He waved. “Over here! Forget the speeder! Come here!”
The refuge might groan and buckle, but it would withstand the craziest waves this world could throw at it.
Either the thick air or the spores saturating it had carried his message. Baaii took the Prophet’s hand and led her toward the group.
The rumbling grew louder, and bright sheets of metal roof plating slid off a nearby building, cutting into the wounded plaza ground. Another trench opened up like a maw, right in front of the two women.
“Baaii!”
A thick, winding manifestation of the angry plant life emerged to their right, pushing skyward, then bending down, like it was sniffing for prey.
“Hit that new vine!”
The guards unloaded their projectile streams, chipping away at the base, but too slowly. The vine bent and whipped, nearly missing Baaii and Vriishany, trapping them between its stem and the growing chasm in the ground.
Fight-or-flight hormones drove Cha across the wavering surface, close enough to the vine’s stem that even a novice strip beam wielder could not miss it. He improvised aim from the hip and pressed the trigger hard. Hairs stood from his skin; the sounds of chaos muted, and colors vanished from his vision. The plaza stood still, even for a fraction of a tick, long enough to realize that making it portable did not curtail the elemental power about to be unleashed.
The bright yellow streak did not cut the vine; it shredded its base out of this reality, tearing, blasting, melting, ending it with a roar. Cha fell on his back, thrown out of balance either by the relentless rolling waves or the weapon’s recoil.
He struggled up. The vine’s severed end had lashed out in a last defiant jerk and pushed Vriishany into the chasm. Did Baaii still hold on to her? A shadow passed him. Terg’s legs ignored the mangled ground; he seemed even faster out here than on the polished building floor. His claws grabbed the prophet. Was she his ward as much as theirs? Baaii. The next crest toppled him over once more. He had to get to her. The administrator would save the Goddess’ prophet, but would he care about a human guard?
“Boss! We got backup!”
Cha saw the guard pointing across the plaza. Several multi-legged hulks appeared close to where the human checkpoint had been. In front of them ran several workers, like a panicked herd.
Terg loomed over him. The alien was so fast; luckily, they had ended up on the same side. He dropped off his load, then turned again toward his incoming brethren.
“Cha.” Baaii and Vriishany. He regretted ever having called Terg useless; the agile alien had saved his love and his ward while he was still tumbling around.
“Back to the Goddess retreat, we need to get out of the open!”
The colony’s open spaces were designed to spot intruding vines easily, not to provide cover or shelter for its denizens.
The hiss before the sizzle. Terg swung his strip beam on his extended branch arm like a light handgun.
“He’s shooting his own people.”
Had he lost his well-armored mind? The workers spread their wings and jumped over the chasm. Were they the attacking force? Did the aliens just appear uniform, but have factions, different allegiances? On whose side was Terg? His beam spared the workers, but seared through at least three of the larger warriors, splashing their green innards over the plaza.
“Who should we shoot, boss?”
“Only who attacks you. Everyone—back to the building!”
Workers scurried through their ranks. They could not have understood his orders, but had the same destination. One ran close past Terg, and he stopped it cold, plunging a leg onto its back.
Cha gasped. “Talk? You want to talk here, now?”
He grabbed the chemstick and showed it to the alien. Did they really have to do this here? The other warriors had been discouraged by the violent demise of their comrades, but they could rediscover their resolve any moment, and the ground was still buckling without relent.
The worker alien spit out a message.
“Fine.” Cha stuck the chemstick into the clear paste.
“Plant people are the enemy,” stated the readout.
“What do you mean, Terg? Are these not your troops?”
Terg did not mind the workers. They had been running away from the larger aliens. These creatures, planning their next move just across the chasm, they were not his fellow warriors. Whose were they?
He typed, cursed, hoping the misspellings would not distort the message, then pushed the trigger, creating a small drop of goo for the worker to slurp.
“Who sent them and why?” he asked.
The response was immediate: a big belch of alien spit, but the readout was short.
“The diin’s plant people are taking over.”
Copyright © 2026 Bert Oliver Boehmer. All rights reserved. No part of this serialized novel may be reproduced, reposted, or distributed in any form without the prior written permission of the author. The creation of any derivative works (including translations, adaptations, or other transformations) is likewise prohibited without permission. The use of any portion of this material for training or developing artificial intelligence or other machine learning models is strictly forbidden.
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