Synthetic Reality

Guerrilla Gorilla

The cell shook so hard I was thrown against the wall. I snapped out of R.E.M. sleep and for a moment, imagined light in the room. I held my hand out in front of my face and couldn't see it. A second explosion confirmed it wasn't a dream.

I heard voices in the hall. Men yelling. Doors opening. Weapons fire. Screams. Were they executing prisoners?

I had nothing, naked and locked in a square box with a hole in the corner. I crouched low against the back wall with eyes on the door. I'd attack whoever opened it.

More weapons. Doors slammed. Muffled voices. They opened the cell next to mine and killed the madman within. No real loss there. A mercy killing at worst.

I heard the lock turn and saw a crack of light for the first time in two days. This was it. I pressed my feet into the corner of the wall. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I was blinded by white light when they threw open the door. I shielded my eyes waiting for them to adjust. They'd kill me for sure.

"Is your name Michael Diamond?"

I was starting to see blurred shapes in the doorway. "Nah, mine's Clarence."

They were coming into focus, blueish, definitely not Klandar. Had the ship been overrun?

A large Zorr with bright blue dreadlocks and a huge beard pointed a wicked black bladed sword at me. There were three more behind him with blasters. A young boy stepped into the room.

"Wait! He's the one who saved us. It was him, Bobby."

"He smells like shit."

"I owe him my life."

The large one shoved the kid out of the cell. "Can you walk?"

I'm sure I looked terrible. "I can run."

He stretched out his hand. "I'm Blue Beard. If you want off this dump follow me."

I followed. We ran down the hall. No guards anywhere, just me and the four Zorrs. One had clearly been a prisoner. Up two decks and more weapons fire ahead. We passed an observation window and outside was a souped-up freighter armed to the teeth. And there were the guards, their bodies anyway, attached to its hull.

"You're my kind of pirates."

Blue Beard smiled at me, gold teeth shining out from under his bright facial hair.

We rounded the next corner right into a firefight. The young boy stepped in front of me firing into a line of armored shock troopers. He took two rounds in the chest and dropped to the deck. I grabbed his blaster. The Klandar thought so little of my species they didn't even bother to shoot at me. Their hate for the Zorrs would be this squad's end. I flipped the boy's weapon to auto and mowed them all down.

Blue Beard put a hand on my shoulder and looked down at the kid on the floor. "His life debt is repaid. Now, I owe you one."

He had stood there with nothing but a sword, dodging disrupter blasts. He even batted one back. I understood why the others looked up to him. Hell, I'd even heard stories.

Everyone grabbed blaster pistols off the dead troopers and kept moving. We made it to the airlock without incident. Blue was about to close it when another explosion knocked us off our feet.

"Wait for me!"

A big dark green skinned Gastraddar in heavy battle armor was chugging down the hall toward us. He had a stack of bio-disruptor plasma rifles wrapped in a jacket under one arm and the bodies of two Klandar soldiers under the other. The flames behind him dimmed quickly and troops appeared through the smoke. They fired into the back of the hulk and at us in the airlock. The other Zorr pirate took one dead center between the eyeballs.