The Ick

“Is it ready yet?” Sylvester asked, his claws tapping against the cold, metallic counter.

“Is it ready yet?” Needles said, doing her best impression of a tone-deaf toddler before glaring over at Sylvester. “That’s you. That’s what you sound like.”

“Funny, but is it ready yet?”

“No,” Needles replied, unhooking plugins while she brandished a small torch.

Sparks flew in front of her, zipping and zapping as though the ship may explode at any moment. To Syl, it all looked very dangerous, but, he supposed protective head gear was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Needles seemed undeterred, her nerves steeled and her mind deep in thought.

“Do you have an estimated time when you think it will be finished?” Syl asked, progressing from abusing the metallic counter to simply fidgeting with his thumbs, pretending as if they were a merry go round

“No, I don’t have an ‘estimated time when I think it will be finished,” Needles responded with a tinge of irritation coating her tone, she turned to glare at him, before, once more returning to her unhinged baby impression. “Can’t you find some way to occupy yourself? This isn’t exactly easy to do.”

“What can I say, I am nervous.” That was honestly quite the understatement, but they were already too deep into the waters. “We’re doing this! Come on, get excited!” Syl said, grabbing Needles by the shoulders and doing a light shaking motion. To be fair, was he even excited, or just hoping to become as such by convincing her to?

Needles’ head slowly drifted from her work toward him. The visual reminded Syl of something out of a horror film, all that was missing was the dramatic piano music playing softly in the background.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.” The rabbit hissed, dreadful intent bleeding from her glare.

“Sorry,” Syl said, backing away slowly. It was an odd thing to see a rabbit take on the shape of a rabid, food depraved wolverine.

“This may not be exactly rocket science, but this is pretty close to rocket science. It’s rocket science adjacent, so I am going to need you to be focused. Everything we have prepared for was theoretical. This though, this is the real deal.”

Syl thought maybe the statement was her way of giving him a morsel after nearly biting off his head.

“Got it,” Syl said, taking in a breath and letting it out through his flared nostrils, doing his very best to calm the mix of adrenaline and emotion coalescing within him.

“Excuse me, ma’am and sir!” An elephant called out from outside of their small aircraft. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but, at about what time do you plan to start the wax job on our ship?”

“Yeah,” Syl started, glad to have a small distraction. “We’re not going to be doing that. So, sorry.”

The elephant’s face fell to shock, also reminding Syl of something out of a horror film, this time being the victim in pursued.

“You know, it isn’t like you’re doing anything right now. You could just go ahead and do the job. It would keep Myros off our scent for a little while longer,” Needles said, not bothering to look up from what she was doing as she spoke.

“Forget it!” Syl said, shaking his head, his ears flopping lazily. “We are done with that life, Needles. Don’t you get it!? We’re free – we don’t have to do any of that nonsense ever again. You, me, my brothers, that guy Mikey’s bringing, we will all be on easy street.” Syl said, offering a happy go-lucky smile that Needles still didn’t bother to look up for.

“I am about to call your ma-ma-manager!” The elephant squealed.

“Sylvester!” Needles yelled, turning to again beam him with angry eyes. For the second time in the last few minutes, he was appreciative that in space laser eyes still didn’t exist—well…at least not that he had seen yet.

“Fine!” Syl conjured in return, knowing when it was best to count his losses. Despite wishing otherwise, he turned his attention back to the ship opening the compartment with the bucket and sponges.

2.

“Any progress yet?” Sylvester asked, releasing the empty plastic buckets from his grasp and watching them fly into orbit.

He saluted them as they vanished into the black abyss of space, sent to wax the pearly gates of the world beyond.

Thank you for your service, Syl mumbled underneath his breath as he walked over to the ship and looked over Needles and her work, although he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“I have disabled the tether between us and the Myros Construction Agency,” She must have noticed the unchanging, yet expectant look on Syl’s face as she let out a short sigh. “That, at the very least means it should buy us some time before any of Myros’ security are sent out to start looking for us.”

“Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy knowing Myros cares enough about us to send their security to come out and look for us,” Syl said in jest.

Needles beheld him like he was an idiot. Syl wasn’t offended, by now he had become accustomed to Needles giving him this look.

“They don’t care about us. We are less than nothing to them,” Needles reminded him, slipping her tools back into her bag. “They do, however, care about the ship. I wouldn’t be surprised if they value the mop buckets more than us.”

Syl looked out into the vacuum of space where he could still just make out one of the buckets floating around.

“Hey, I have a question,” Syl began, a thought occurring to him. “How come the bucket only started floating away after I let go of it? I mean – I even remember putting it down once on the ground when I was cleaning the guys’ ship? How did the water even stay in? I had to dump it out.”

Needles sighed. “Okay! One time,” Needles said, looking like something had finally split her stored reserves. “I will explain how space works to you in our galaxy, but, after that, I never want to be asked this question again. Understand?”

Syl smiled. It was about all he could do in this situation. As much as he wanted answers to those questions, he knew he wouldn’t understand whatever explanation came out of Needles’ mouth, it all just sounded like gibberish to him.

“Schwing, schwang, schwung,” Needles yammered. “Schwingy schwing schwing.”

Syl continued smiling, he even threw in a few nods to look really enamored.

“There, are you satisfied?” Needles asked, finishing up whatever lesson she believed she was teaching

“Very. Thank you. I feel like I have a much better understanding of how the galaxy works now.”

Needles rolled her eyes, “I’m relieved.”

“Do you really think they even care that much about this rinky dink tin can?” Syl asked, giving it a light slap to emphasize the lack of durability they were working with.

“This rinky dink tin can doesn’t come cheap.” Needles reminded him, giving an admiring look to something no one else could see beauty in. “Not to mention, they have about one-hundred of these things. If anyone finds out that they can have their autopilot disabled, everyone will try and steal one to escape. Chances are, they will want to make a lasting statement with us.”

“You know what I have been thinking?” Syl glanced back over his shoulder at the bustle of the station. “All this time, why didn’t we just ask one of the customers for a ride somewhere? Like, wait until we found a nice enough person, tell ’em how Myros treats us, see if we can get them to drop us off at the nearest populated planet?”

Again, Needles gave him her special look.

“You don’t think I would have thought of that? You don’t think that would be the very first thought I had straight away?”

Syl remained quiet for a moment, then answered, “… No?”

“It is in the terms of conditions each customer signs for our services.” Needles mimicked signing a contract in the air. “They had to do some legal mumbo jumbo to appease the C.D., but, what it comes down to is, you and I, we are Myros’ Construction’s special property. If they help us escape, they are stealing. They steal from Myros, well, then, Myros already has their billing information.”

“Which means they can charge them,” Syl said, frowning as he figured it out. “Which means they will accrue a debt.”

Needles pointed at him with her screwdriver, “Bingo.”

Peering out from the loading ramp of their ship, Syl saw the elephant lumbering toward them from a distance.

“Thank you for buying the services’ of Myros Construction, we hope you have a wonderful day!” Syl said, trying his best to have enthusiasm and not be completely deadpan, once the elephant was close enough.

“Oh, absolutely,” The elephant replied, offering a wide grin. As he continued, his face became sterner, however. “I did end up giving you 3-stars on Space Yelp, unfortunately. Also, I did, of course, as threatened, have to call your manager about certain indiscretions. He was very concerned with why your colleague was messing with wires and finagling with your ships’ engine. I didn’t know what to tell him on that.”

“What?” Syl yelped, the different kind of yelping, eyes widening.

“Yeah, it’s like Yelp, but for space. Three stars. Honestly, I really thought about giving you three and a half stars to be nice, but, then I thought, you know, buckle down, people use these things for clear, authentic information.”

“Needles!?” Syl said, looking over to her, his mind racing as fast as ever.

Once more, she didn’t look at him, but judging by her frantic, frivolous movements, she clearly had heard the elephant. Sparks flew off from the ship’s dashboard as she poked and prodded at every doohickey at arm’s length.

“My God, Syl,” Needles said.

“What are the odds she called the wrong number?” Syl said, twiddling his fingers nervously.

Needles ignored him for a moment and looked out the window of their ship. “My God,” she said again.

Not understanding, Syl followed suit, looking out the window of their small space, God, and at the heavens above them. (Then again, where were the heavens, exactly?) First, he saw the bucket still floating above them. Then, however, he saw it. Six space ships flying their way toward them – all of them a similar shape to theirs, all except for one single thing, theirs had guns attached.

“Okay, well,” Syl said. “Now, I have egg on your face.”

“You are about to have blood on your face too, after they blast your head off with a plasma rifle.”

“Would I though? If they blasted my face off with a plasma rifle, I would more likely have no face, thus no blood.”

“Sylvester, …,” Needles said, then stopped.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’m nervous. What should we do?”

“One moment,” Needles answered, further tinkering with the wires in front of her.

“Seriously, I don’t know if we have a moment,” Syl said, doing a double take out the window, seeing the ships nearing them. “Maybe we can just lie and say that it was busted and that you were trying to fix it? I don’t know. Maybe they will believe that.”

“They may, but that would also leave your brother Mikey stranded on an uninhabited planet.”

“Eventually, maybe he would take the hint and realize something went wrong. Get back in his ship and bring himself back into Myros. He surely wouldn’t stay there forever, waiting for us.”

Needles shook her head. “The autopilot would have already kicked in by now, it’d have left without him.”

“Well, maybe, … uh, we tell them he was lost, they swoop down and pick him up.” Syl added in a shrug, knowing darn well that would never work.

“They already got their ship and mop buckets back.” Needles said, swapping out her tools without looking back at him. “They wouldn’t go through the trouble for him. If we let them have us, all of us are going to Duggins. Mikey gets left wherever he’s at. You never save Jack. You never return to your parents. We all die.”

“Then, what do we do then!? We’re rabbits. I’m all ears! You have seen them!”

“We don’t do anything,” Needle said, looking at Sylvester seriously. “You’re gonna fly us out of here.”

“… I don’t, uh, …”

“You don’t, but you will. The ship is ready, Captain!”

“I don’t know how to fly a ship. I didn’t even have a driver’s license for a car back on Ex’Fi!”

“Neither do I.”

Syl gulped.

3.

Syl could feel the heat in his chest as Needles stepped aside and let him take the reins of the small aircraft. He squinted his eyes, scrunched his toes, and tried to think of every time he watched a science-fiction film, he thought of reading Ground Team 6, and all the times he imagined himself in any of their predicaments. Acting in a hypothetical, imaginary situation was much easier than when it came time to perform in a real one.

If only Jack was here, Syl thought.

He was the man of action, not him. He wished Mikey was here. He was the smart one, not him. If Mikey was here, he would have the smarts to know how to fly the spaceship no problem. It would be intuitive to him.

“Breathe,” Needles said, offering him a small token of confidence.

Syl did as he was told and sucked in a lungful of air, trying not to fall into hyperventilating. He had read at least a dozen books on flying, over the years. Being stuck in the fishbowl that was Myros Construction led to a lot of downtime and desperate searches for entertainment. One would think it would give him an edge, and perhaps, it did, maybe a little. But, also, he was now appreciating how different one aircraft could vary from another, depending on which planet it came from.

At this moment, every irrational fear he could think of came crashing at his head like a dodge ball back in high school gym class. What if Needles made a mistake? What if the ship simply couldn’t be flown off autopilot? What if they had a fail safe in place? Or, what if they didn’t have a fail safe, but a self-destruct button?

He heard the engine roaring. The noise reminded him of large industrial fans going off. It happened every other time they took off, so that was normal, he thought. It usually went away after a minute or two. Don’t panic, Syl thought to himself, in space, no one can hear you panic. He engaged the thrusters and stomped his foot on an interesting enough looking pedal.

They went forward. The screech was deafening. Syl identified the noise as being the bottom of the ship grinding itself against the ground. He also identified that spaceship pilot’s didn’t traditionally let their ships grind into the ground like that. He was a trendsetter, he supposed. There goes the paint job, Syl thought next, for a reason he wasn’t certain of, maybe he was in hysterics.

“You probably want to try going up first,” Needles said, gritting her teeth as they continued to rub up against the planet like two sticks trying to start a fire – a fire that Syl hoped they would not create.

“Right,” Syl said, unable to think of a clever reply.

Then, as he stomped on another pedal next to his initial pedal of choice, they did exactly that, hovering higher and higher. Once reaching what Syl deemed an appropriate height, Syl returned to the earlier pedal (in his head, he had marked it as “Go pedal” and the other hand now become the “Up pedal,” whether he would stumble upon a “Stop pedal” or a “Down pedal” remained to be seen) and flew them forward.

At last, Syl’s anxiety began to leave them and the world went from slow motion back to real time. As he flew, he felt relieved at how intuitive it was. He turned the steering wheel left, the ship reacted by turning left. He turned the steering wheel right, and it went right. We can do this, Syl thought to himself.

They flew forward. Beside him, Needles pressed some buttons on the screen in the middle of the ship’s dashboard until a small screen unveiled a rear-view perspective of the ship and brought it into view. Behind them, the six spaceships were closing in. With no other option, Syl floored it on the “Go” pedal, trying to create as much distance between them as he could.

On the rear-view screen, a prompt appeared indicating a phone-call along with the option toneither Accept or Deny said transmission.

“What do we do?” Syl asked, looking at Needles for guidance.

Needles shrugged her shoulders, then, with her paw, touched the “Accept” button.

“Uh, … Hello?” Syl said at last after waiting a few seconds for the person on the other end to begin speaking.

“Greetings, we see you have commandeered one of our ships. Unfortunately, as prefaced with the ‘our’ part of my prior sentence, the ship you have commandeered is ours, and we would like it back.” The voice sounded robotic and programmed, but, in spite of that, Syl felt certain it belonged to an actual living being, one that had simply been re-programmed by Myros’ indoctrination methods.

“Absolutely, why don’t we all meet at the Myros headquarters and talk it over afterward. Needles and I have a couple of errands we have to run first, but, first thing, after that, we will absolutely meet you there.”

“I am afraid we cannot do that, Sylvester Sabian. You and your colleague have now committed the crime of theft. You stole our ship and you stole two of our employees, those being you, of course. Lower-grade employees, mind you, but employees, nonetheless. With the damage you have done to the ship, and to our trust of you, I fear all three are totaled. If you would please land the aircraft, we can end this shenanigans and move on.”

“How does this sound?” Syl asked, before clicking the ‘End Call’ button on the screen.

“I guess we will never know,” Needles said in jest, nodding her head at Syl.

Syl steadied the ships trajectory and pressed hard on the gas pedal. It didn’t make the spaceship go any faster – once you floored something, that was usually the end of any acceleration you could do, but it made him feel like he was making the most of the little options he had. He could feel his nerves rushing back up to the surface again, along with yesterday’s lunch.

“Is there no way to make this thing go any faster?” Syl screamed.

“It isn’t exactly made for this sort of thing. The only way we will be able to survive this is if we lose them,” Needles yelled, holding onto one of the ship’s armrests, trying to keep from falling forward while Sylvester twirled the ship around in a spinning motion. “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

“Losing them.”

“How does disorienting us do anything but help them?”

“It’s called a barrel roll,” Syl mumbled.

Syl took a hard turn to the left, steering themselves out of harm’s way by evading a large cliff. Without realizing it, they had since found themselves smack dab in between two cliffs, engulfed by one of the planet’s faded green canyons. As they came to another wall, Syl stamped the “Up” button, bringing themselves out again. As he did, he indirectly dodged their adversaries and the beams of blue light they fired at them. Syl gripped the controls as tightly as he could, his claws digging into the palms of his hand.

“My God,” Needles said. “Don’t they know if they blow us up that they won’t have a ship!”

“You said it yourself, they would want to make a statement!” Syl exclaimed. “I guess they weighed the pros and cons and decided they wanted to kill us more than they wanted to send us to Duggins!”

They wouldn’t be able to escape them by speed alone, Syl was now realizing, the further and further they went. How much fuel did the ship have? Syl didn’t know how to check. They could run out at any second and he wouldn’t know the least of it. It was such a stupid and foolish plan. No, Syl shook his head in disagreement with himself. It would help things, in fact, he knew if he allowed himself to be psyched out, he would be destined to fail.

“God,” Syl said, looking up. “If you are up there, I could really use a miracle right about now.”

It was a latch ditch effort, a small prayer to the heavens. His mind didn’t have time to ponder the logistics. As a child, he had been taught the heavens were someplace in the clouds, but, now, he knew better. Ever since he’d left Ex’Fi, he knew better. There were no heavens in the clouds. In a literal sense, the clouds were nothing but the pearly gates segueing to the black never ending galaxy. Was looking up even looking in the right direction for God?

Zap! A laser met their ship at last, striking them with a harsh, mean thud. The vibration reverberated throughout the ship, Syl could feel the steering wheel rattling between his paws. He couldn’t outrun them, but maybe he could make them lose sight of him. With that thought and no better thoughts to beat it, Syl aimed the steering wheel downward, an act he was correct in assuming would better aim the ship. They made their descent, closer and closer to the planet’s surface.

Planet Jazming was a green planet with mounds and mountains and a surface that felt cold to the touch. Jazming’s ground could best be described as peculiar – earlier, when Syl had dug his hand in the ground out of curiosity, the terrain reminded him of sticking his paws in mildew. Needless to say, he hadn’t inspected any further beyond that. On the bright side, of which there were few, it also provided many unique curves and twists to navigate and traverse. Syl flew, dodging one mountain, and gliding down between the long sticks of dripping muck that sprouted from its ground.

Behind him, Myros Construction remained in its pursuit. First with one beam, then, a third. A fourth. Syl was able to dodge the first. The second, however, he wasn’t so lucky.

The screen at the front of the ship flashed a warning sign, along with a diagram showing the left side thrusts, as it turned out, they were no longer attached to the ship. Thank you for your service, now you’re off to join the wax bucket.

As one more plasma beam met the ship, Syl found himself met with an unpleasant realization – their spaceship was on its last legs. He yanked up at the steering wheel, trying to fight against fate. Like God did with all the best laid plans, however, fate laughed in their faces. The ship nosedived, harpooning itself into the planet.

As it did, Syl expected to see his whole life pass before his eyes. It didn’t, however, … not all of it.

In small flickers that played in his mind like photographs in a slideshow played at turbo speed, he saw his brothers. He saw his family at their table for breakfast – his brothers and his mother and dad. He saw everything – every dodge ball he had been beamed in the face with, every time his mother yelled at him, every time she held him when he was afraid or had a bad dream. He saw he and his brother’s sword fighting with sticks and lodging dirt clouds at one another, each hiding in makeshift trenches.

Then, that was all he saw, the extent that fluttered before his eyes. It was everything that mattered to him, he supposed. Everything he was fighting to take back.

A moment later, the images stopped, and the thud of impact occurred. It wasn’t at all what Syl had imagined. Their ship hadn’t exploded nor had it been torn in half, instead it sort of ‘ka-plunked’ into the planet. It was an odd word choice. Syl didn’t know if he’d ever used the word in a sentence before, but that was what it did: ka-plunk. And, as the planet engulfed them, Syl and Needles saw nothing but the dark moss through the windows of the ship.

“Are you alright?” Syl asked, holding his stomach and doing anything he could to keep from making a bad matter worse by making their final moments wreak of vomit.

“Well, I have mostly all of my fingers and toes,” Needles joked, making a fist with her robotic arm.

As though waiting on a cue, before their eyes, two beams fired into the planet, creating a spark of light as it pierced through the terrain. It was Myros Constructions’ final word on the matter, Syl assumed. They were being left for dead, and perhaps rightfully so.

For now, they were alive. Syl could only hope the same could be said for Mikey.

4.

Mikey waited. After all, it was all he could do. It was the next phase in their plan. As nearly an hour went by, he felt a sense of relief. He had kept himself at a distance from the initial drop site, peeking his head out from the side of a large dark-blue hill. He had been worried that Myros Construction might head their way back to drop off and come searching for him, but as long as the ship was returned, it seemed they didn’t care too much.

Mikey dug his nails into the strange terrain, seeing the dark-green muck under his nails in peculiar globs. What a curious planet, Mikey thought to himself. Although Syl and Jack had deemed it useless, Mikey believed his knowledge of planets would prove useful in the journeys to come. Of which, he had a lot. Any chance he could, Mikey could read. It had been his favor pastime even before they were abducted, and his love of the written word had only increased since then.

Mikey had read, not exactly about the planet, but of planets like it. This was what they called an Incognito planet, a space name for planets whose inhabitants are hidden and their land disobeys conventional logic. For lack of a better term, things weren’t what they appeared. Thank God that I won’t be staying here very long, Mikey thought to himself.

He looked over at the care package Brandon had provided to him, and then, looked at the laser flare he had brought with him. The purpose of a laser flare was simple enough – Mikey pointed it to the sky and fired it off like a flare gun. Unlike a flare gun, however, as the laser flare ascended, it met its end and exploded, raining down a firework like visual. Instead of burning out, however, the visual remained. Starting where Mikey had shot it off, a bright blue light pierced the dimming purple skies and led itself up until creating an umbrella-esque field of light above him. It was all an illusion of light and little more than that, but it could be seen from a long distance away and burned bright for over an hour. With three laser flares left, Mikey could keep firing them off until Syl and Needles arrived with the ship.

Brandon had played it coy when Mikey asked him what he would say when Myros’ upper-tier management (the big ones’, not the ground floor nobodies like Needles) inquired about Mikey’s disappeared. He simply laughed and said he would claim that Mikey had “turned invisible,” and leave it at that. Would Myros Construction accept anything besides a real, good explanation?

With every moment that went by, it was clear that his own emotions had the better of him. His paranoia had already taken hold of him from the very moment Syl laid out their plan, and it hadn’t let go of him for even a moment since. Now, each second that went by without sight of Syl or the ship, was another drop in the bucket of his fear, worsening little by little. Mikey dug his boots into the greenery. What a strange substance, Mikey said to himself. It was a thought he had already had once before. It was a thought he had already had twice and thrice, in fact. However, the longer he waited with nothing to do but twiddle his paws, the more his mind began to recycle its environment in search of some kind of intellectual nourishment.

It was better than the alternative. That Syl and Needles had been apprehended and sent off to Duggins, a fate that would surely see them meet their end. This meant that Jack would also inevitably die in Duggins, and by extension to all of that, Mikey, all be himself on a planet that may as well have been deserted, would die as well. It was an ugly thought, but the longer he waited and the more he saw the planet’s multiple moons begin to outnumber the sun and dim the skies, the more likely it became.

What a strange substance, Mikey said to himself. He dropped to his knees and dug his paws into it. And indeed, it was. The texture felt wet and thick, and was cold to the touch. Mikey hesitated to compare it to chocolate or some other sweet, but it was the first thing his mind conjured up. The smell, however, was very far removed from anything one would find on the dessert menu. It fumed, like gasoline or nail polish, with a suffocating, almost intoxicating aroma.

5.

At last, nightfall had arrived. As the second of the flares burned out and died away, Mikey had hesitance about firing off the third. It wasn’t like it would matter anyways. If Syl had been around to see the flares, he would have been there by now. Something was wrong, which meant Mikey needed to come to terms with that fact. He decided to be proactive. He wandered away from his hideaway. The darker the sky became, the more the temperature began to fall. It was difficult to say for certain how cold it would eventually become. Maybe it would bottom out and plateau, or maybe Mikey would need to also come to terms with his newfound life as an ice pop. With no other option but to search for breaks in the terrain, find new information and seek shelter, Mikey could only hope it wouldn’t be the latter of the two possibilities.

With feet blistered and exhaustion due to overtake, his shivering and uncomfortable search for salvation was finally answered – Mikey found a row of mounds, none distinguishable from one another, but each of them carried the same feature among them – a small cave to enter. At first, Mikey was a little hesitant. In truth, Mikey was more than a little hesitant. Saying he was outright against the idea would have been more accurate. What could have made those holes? His paranoia had taken hold and begun supplying the wildest possibilities it could think of. Could it have been a large poisonous snake!? Doubtful, Mikey thought. Snakes were usually venomous. Also, by the large curvature of each of them and how they seemed to gradually move down and transition, he felt confident they were handmade. Could it have been a large snake … with robot arms!? Mikey rolled his eyes at the audacity of his own paranoia.

Whatever it could have been, it hadn’t been documented by the ship. Mikey had run a complete diagnostics of the planet before Brandon returned to Myros Construction. It was listed as “believed to be uninhabited,” so who was to say what was what. An Incognito planet implied living life forms, but most of the time that didn’t amount to the kind of living life forms that were expected. Instead, it was more likely to be plant life or balls of fuzz that met the lenient criteria – not an actual, proper civilization. Scientists would visit these planets to harvest materials to create medicines and other … more hallucinogenic drugs, Mikey could remember reading that in one of his books.

Mikey took the first opportunity he could to drop the care package down inside the cave, letting out a large breath as he did so. Looking ahead, he also felt thankful to see the cave had an actual end. As he entered, he could immediately see it only ran about a dozen yards’ deep. It didn’t subdue the fear he had that whatever made it would come back home and eat him, but it did alleive any creepy theories he had of it being part of some ancient catacombs where zombies roamed the night.

“Just a cave,” he said to himself.

***

As the cold worsened, as did Mikey’s desperation for warmth. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. He weighed the pros and cons to himself, and decided what was important to him and what wasn’t, what was a desire for him and what was an absolute necessity. What he came to find was that nothing he had with him, be it Brandon’s care package or his own supplies, would matter if he died in the cold.

The plasma pistol was essential to him. The food was essential to him. The final laser flare was essential as well. Everything else, he simply didn’t need. Goodbye, money, Mikey thought to himself, creating a neat and tidy pile of Papers. After dousing it with alcohol disinfectant from his med kit, and a well placed shot with his plasma pistol later, he was now able to curl up next to a warm fire.

Before his eyes, something strange happened. Beneath him, the peculiar, green terrain, was no longer green at all. Instead, it was an onyx black, as dark as looking into space itself.

Mikey stood to his feet to further investigate. Upon further inspection, it would seem that not all of the terrain had changed, but, rather, a small area in the proximity of his fire.

“I don’t understand,” Mikey said to himself, before dropping to his hands and knees.

He stared deeply into the charcoal-colored ground, then felt a jolt of fear travel up his spine when he watched two bright yellow eyes blink open, staring back at him.

Mikey screamed.

6.

“What do we do now?” Syl asked, looking to Needles in search of answers he knew she didn’t have for him.

“Well, at any rate, I take it that Myros Construction probably thinks we are dead right about now,” Needles answered, regaining her composure and looking around the ship for some kind of inspiration.

“Lucky us,” Syl said, and, it was true, Myros no longer looking for them was nothing to knock, “Unfortunately, by the way things look, that will be the truth any second now.”

“What, uh, … what are we even in? This isn’t dirt. This isn’t sand. We might have well been submerged in a bowl of gelatin.”

“It’s harder than gelatin,” Needles said. “But that may not be a bad way to look at it. It doesn’t appear the ick is coming down on us.”

“The ick?”

“Yeah, you know, the ick, the green stuff all over this planet.”

“It fits.”

“Well, it should, that’s its name.”

“Fair enough.”

“It isn’t coming to us, crushing us. The ship has a basic well-being function, if it had the weight of, let’s say twenty feet of dirt coming down on it, it would clue us in on that,” Needles explained.

“Assuming you didn’t break anything when you were disengaging the autopilot.”

Needles shook her head, “Of such little faith. Everything’s working fine. I mean, we lost one of our thrusters and the engine has taken more than significant damage, but all of that happened when you took over.”

“I never called myself a pilot.”

“And, if that was any indication of your potential, you never will.”

“Yeah,” Needles agreed. “Yeah, we did. Now, what?’

“You’re saying it isn’t coming down on us. It isn’t, like, trying to break through the windows and suffocate us.”

“It doesn’t have to break through the windows to suffocate us, that will still happen if we wait long enough. But, no, it isn’t actively applying any major pressure on us.”

“That implies then, that if we didn’t have windows, we would more or less be in the same predicament?”

Needles glared at Syl, uncertain of where he was going with this. “More … or less.”

Syl walked over to one side of the ship, then, he looked over at Needles. He looked over to the button on the wall, and back over to Needles. Then, he shrugged and pressed the button. The door slid open. As they had assumed, ick didn’t come flowing into the ship to kill them. Instead, a large green wall of ick looked back at them.

“I was guessing,” Needles said, feeling a sense of shock by Syl’s casualness. “For all I know, the stuff could be toxic, or … or it could have come rushing in to bury us.”

“Good guess.”

“So, I’m thinking,” Syl said, reaching down and grabbing the laser pistol from out one of the compartments in the ship’s supply station. “We blast our way through all the ick until we reach the surface.”

“What if it’s flammable?”

“Our ship would have lit the whole planet on fire by now then.”

“Uh – Syl, …,” Needles started, then stopped.

“What?”

Syl looked over at Needles and saw her pointing behind him. Slowly, he turned around and saw it – a green-shaped figure had emerged out from the ick and was now walking toward them. It stared at him with big, wide, yellow eyes.

“Ab-so-lute-ly not,” Syl exclaimed, pointing the laserpistol at it. “Stay back or I … I’ll fire!”

It raised its hand to him, but the threat didn’t deter it. Instead, the ick-man walked toward him, its hands outstretched as though it were about to try and strangle Syl.

“I warned you,” Syl said, before firing off a couple shots, aiming at the creature’s limbs.

The creature collapsed, falling to the bottom of the ship in a spill of itself, liquifying as it wiggled and writhed back out from the ship, submerging itself in the greater ick.

Desperately, Needles pressed the button, shutting the door.

Syl took in, then let out a few deep breaths, working up the will to speak, “What was that!?”

“You always said Ex’Fi had an archaic mindset toward interplanetary life. Well, lo and behold, it looks like we have found the little green men you were searching for,” Needles said, having to catch her own breath.

In a moment’s notice, they felt the ship begin to rock aback and forth, like a, … like a ship of a different kind. Syl fell down to a seated position, aiming his plasma pistol at the windows, expecting the creatures break the glass and burst out to make their attack. They didn’t, however. Instead, a new realization set in. Their ship was slowly but steadily beginning to rise up out from the ick.

“What’s happening?” Syl asked, his balance being put to task as the whole ship shook. “I don’t understand.”

“And you think I do?” Needles replied through gritted teeth. “Maybe you pissed the whole planet off!”

Soon, the movement stopped, and not only were they not under attack, but they were no longer submerged beneath the gross ick. Syl could feel his heart racing, but, with sight of the purple sky above, he also felt a sense of relief overcome him.

“Did, … did the planet just decide to spit us out?” Syl asked, looking out at the window in confusion.

“In its defense, I can’t imagine we taste very good, all that rocket fuel spilling out of us, not exactly a healthy breakfast, … lunch, … dinner? I haven’t the faintest idea what time it is now.”

“Not the most pleasant of compliments, but I’ll take it,” Syl said, letting a rare break free on his face. Unfortunately, his optimism was fleeting. “The ship is a wreck.”

“Yeah, … yeah, it is.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Maybe, …? It lost entire parts of itself and those don’t exactly grow on trees. And, even if they did, it isn’t exactly like this planet has any trees to choose from.”

“So, we’re screwed then?”

“I don’t know. I might be able to rig it up nice enough to reach the nearest planet with intelligent life, but it’ll take time,” Needles explained.

“I have to find my brother,” Syl said. “He is expecting us somewhere on this planet.”

Syl looked out the window. In the distance, he could make out the faint remnants of a dying laser flare.

“That’s where my brother is,” Syl announced, pointing at the umbrella-shaped beam of light. “Thank God it’s a small planet.”

“I think God’s as incognito as the planet at this point,” Needles said, “But, at least that means he is okay.”

“Yeah,” Syl waited for a moment, then looked at the door to the ship. There was a burn mark from where he had fired off the laser pistol. “Do you think it’s safe for us to step outside again?”

“I, uh, I think so,” Needles said nervously.

“You don’t sound very assuring.”

“Well, I am not entirely sure what we are dealing with here. This is definitely an Incognito planet of some kind, which means it doesn’t follow the same playbook as a conventional one would.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It could be any number of things, really. It is basically a catch-all term used to describe an anomaly. For all we know, everything we have seen could have been an illusion. The ick could be one big, old group hallucination.”

“That wasn’t a hallucination,” Syl said, remembering the green blob creature that neared him.

“Look at the door, do you think you would have been able to make such an impressionable mark on the door with that flimsy peashooter if it had to pierce through an actual creature first?”

“I can test it,” Syl said, aiming the gun at the door again.

“…, If you make a whole in our aircraft, there isn’t a whole lot of leaving we will be able to do.”

“It all happened so quickly. For all I know, I could have missed the creature altogether. I’m a terrible shot!”

“You said it, not me.”

“Either way, I am confident I didn’t hallucinate that.”

“You would feel confident. That is how it works. It would mess with your brain. You would be surprised how persuasive the right substance can be.” Needles said, seemingly speaking from experience.

“I still have to help my brother,” Syl said, whether the ick was a hallucination or a hulking green monster waiting to smash them into bits, his brothers were all he had.

“I don’t think it will attack us,” Needles said in support.

“How do you know?”

“I can’t know anything, not exactly, at least. What I think is that the creature was defending the planet.”

“What is it, some kind of security guard?”

“For all we know, maybe. It’s like, what if the ick felt itself being attacked, and then, decided that it needed to excrete out whatever bad thing was in it?”

“So, we were the planet’s bowel movement?”

“The little green man was like an antibody fighting an infection, maybe it has a hive mentality of some kind,” Needles explained, only halfway convinced with her own explanation.

“At any rate, the fact that we are still here means it likely considers the threat to have been neautralized.

“Good, because my brother needs me.”

Syl opened the door again and stepped forward. He awaited the attack. At any moment, he expected one of the little green men’s hands to reach out from the ick and grab him by the ankles. But they never did. When she saw the coast was clear, Needles joined him. Still apprehensive, Needles dipped one leg out of the ship like a person dipping their toes in the water of a cold pool. When nothing happened, the rest of her body left the ship as well. When she realized they weren’t under attack, she relaxed.

She looked at the ship and inspected the damages – of which, there were many. Half the engine had been practically torn to bits by the attack led by Myros Construction. It wouldn’t be an easy fix, if it was even possible to fix at all. It wasn’t like she could plug up the damages with twigs and rocks, she needed resources that they simply didn’t have.

“Maybe if we look around we can salvage some parts of the wreckage. We lost part of the ship a ways back, maybe some of it isn’t broken beyond repair?”

“Maybe,” Syl agreed, skeptical, but trying to remain optimistic. “You know, if I find my brother then I am certain he will be able to offer a hand with that.”

Syl watched as Needles walked back into the ship. “Let’s see what happens when I start it,” Syl heard her mumble.

“I can still see where he shot off the flare. If I follow it, maybe I can find him. If I can, from there, I can lead him back here and we can group. I want to find him before nightfall.”

Behind him, Syl heard the roar of the ship’s engine, although, at its current state, the ship’s engine brought less of a roar and more of an ambitious meow. Fire shot off the back, makingg a rickety, unpleasant sound as it did. Syl watched on curiously – the dark-green ick now appeared to be a more solid black. Was it reacting to the fire? As the engine’s meow quieted, Needles stepped out from the ship.

“That isn’t the most pleasant of sounds,” she admitted.

“No, it isn’t,” Syl agreed, before turning his attention back to the flare.

“Oh, … no, nope,” Needles exclaimed, followed by the pitter patter of her footsteps stamping toward him.

Before Syl had the chance to ask her what was wrong, he saw it – more than a dozen pairs of yellow eyes were looking up at them from the ground beneath – the visual reminded him of a thin layer of ice, of something trying to break free from beneath the surface. As one body slowly raised itself, emerging from the ground like some sort of tar man, once one with the ground, now detaching, Syl watched as three more followed suit.

“Yeah,” Syl said, stuck in place. “Yeah, nope!”