Family Is Family

Kaxyl stands to attention beside his spacecraft, confident and cucumber cool. He awaits, along with a hundred thousand other pilots, the order to board their fighters. Flight suits spotless, medals gleaming, berets jauntied; they form a formidable conquering force. Harbingers of Hellfire they call themselves. The many years of training, intensive lessons and endless simulations – every last one of these undertaken in preparation for this moment. 

This mission.   

This invasion. 

General Gaxyl, flanked by six other high-ranking officers, observes the aviators assembled on the flight deck below. From the Command Observation Centre, he reviews this contingent of the invasion force he has crossed the galaxy with with no small amount of pride. His admiring gaze settles eventually on to one craft, his brother’s vessel that heads his rank of star fighters. Gaxyl resists the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes when he sees that his brother has yet again broken protocol and scrawled on the fuselage of his ship the message: 

Earth or Bust. 

The general secretly hopes that his accompanying officers fail to notice Kaxyl’s defacing of his spacecraft. It’s a punishable act, but hopefully an overlookable one as well, when one takes into account the magnitude of the current assignment. 

Gaxyl looks to the control panels at his side and quickly spots a red, illuminated X on a display station occupied by a young officer, a young officer that reminds Gaxyl of himself when he was an Ensign, once frantically searching for the reason as to why there is an illuminated red X on his screen. The general absorbs the image of the red X into his mind and transmits it out and away to his brother, sharing his disapproval of the scrawled message. The two of them, Gaxyl and Kaxyl, are identical twins, and have from a very young age, been able to communicate with each other somewhat telepathically. Sometimes they send each other words. Sometimes only pictures. Gaxyl felt that sending words to his brother this time would be most inappropriate as the words he was thinking of right now would only make his older brother burst into an uncontrollable giggle. And that most certainly would be noticed. And not in a good way. So the red X would have to suffice. 

‘Aviators!’ the order finally commences, ‘Stations!’ 

Kaxyl climbs the eight rungs up the ladder to his cockpit. In his seat and strapped in, he punches the code into the navicomputer initiating the take-off protocol. 

Incidentally, Kaxyl, the long-serving pilot, considers himself very fortunate to have been assigned to the squadron tasked with targeting the human city of London. Of all the numerous cities targeted to be assigned, London is the one Kaxyl finds fascinating beyond measure. The history, the culture, all of it captured his imagination the moment he’d learned of it. Even its name – London – so incredibly distant linguistically from the placenames of Kaxyl’s own planet. His plans for after the invasion is over, providing London hadn’t been laid to waste by that time, is to investigate all of the characteristic structural features, the man-made, as it were. Namely an erection on Bury Street that goes by the name of The Gherkin, which Kaxyl has studied extensively in the past weeks. Just the shape of it, an architectural marvel, he could stare at it for hours, counting over and over every single pane of varyingly the tinted glass. 

‘Ignition!’ the command for the pilots to fire up their ships. 

The craft hum hypnotically, idling before departure. This particular model fighter is a recent acquisition by the Oomienoomiegaralaxians. Swift and manoeuvrable, its worth has yet to be proven in battle. But hope rides high with the planetary invaders, and this impending assault will be the pudding that proves the ship’s capabilities. 

Sleek, the fuselage is rounded underneath like a cylinder with the main engine and munitions housing rising to a considerable distance above in a smooth wedge-like shape. The drag ridge along the top is rippled to provide stability when flying in atmosphere. Driving the craft, the flight compartment extends at the front of the wedge is only large enough to hold one pilot, a control panel and a bit of stowage. The rest of the flight compartment is filled up with required instruments, environmental control and a small sealed storage container for bodily waste generated by the pilot whilst airborne, known in the vernacular as the kwazlenunty. 

‘Aviators!’ the Flight Deck Officer, Gary, announces. ‘Depart!’ 

The fighters fly off row by orderly row, assuming formation once free of the flight deck. Klaxyl among them. Within minutes they enter Earth’s atmosphere. Descending, they in tandem accelerate to attack speed towards their assigned targets. 

‘Green squadron,’ Command instructs, ‘Lay grazing fire on the tops of those buildings!’ 

Don’t touch the Gherkin! Kaxyl shouts inside his head. 

‘Red squadron, get in closer and knock out their power generators!’ 

Laser fire ensues. Fighters break off from their groups and dive on to the unsuspecting population. Ships whizzing this way and that searching for their assigned targets. Disorientated craft forsaking orders and targeting any structure they can find. Breaking cloud cover, a contingent of fighters strafe rows of military instillations as well as civilian dwellings. 

In the chaos, craft are destroyed and pilots lost. Whether by misjudging flight trajectory or as a direct result of defences that put off the invading force, lights in the Command Centre representing individual fighters go out as craft are lost. Lights extinguishing quicker and quicker. Four minutes in and the invasion is deemed to be failing. The alien armada is being thwarted. 

‘Their defences are too much to handle!’ A pilot’s voice comes through the comms. And many more pilots join in. 

‘They’re taking us out one by one!’ 

The generals confer Command Ship to Command Ship and the decision is taken to pull back. ‘They now know of our attack, and this time they weren’t ready, but next time, if there is a next time, the humans will be awaiting our arrival.’ They conclude. The invasion will have to be abandoned, and Earth left as an unrealised asset.

The order to retreat is issued to all pilots to pull out and save what can be saved. 

Chaos takes hold as communications break down and squadrons are lost to Earth’s defences. The command ships begin to break orbit and make haste to lightspeed away from the human planet. The pilots that still have a radio connection with their officers frantically call for instructions. The disorder cannot be overstated. 

Of the multitude of voices coming through the monitor, distress calls and hails for assistance and instruction, the shouts of fear from his younger brother pierce all seven of Gaxyl’s eardrums like a natlelpating spike. 

‘I’ve been hit!’ Kaxyl shouts repeatedly. ‘No control… plummeting… spiralling!’ 

His crackly message hits his brother like a doogleswatter. 

Panicked, Gaxyl immediately forms a simple plan – save Kaxyl. He quickly improvises a reason to vacate the Command Observation Centre. After all, everyone has to visit the kwazlenunty every now and again, don’t they? Even at inappropriate moments such as this. The general excuses himself respectfully and once out of sight, runs the distance to the flight deck as fast as his three legs will carry him. 

Stopped from entry to the bay by the Flight Deck Officer, Gaxyl orders that he be allowed to take a craft in order to rescue his brother. 

‘I can’t allow that, sir.’ The General is informed. ‘The retreat order has come from Command and all craft has been recalled.’ 

‘Listen, Gary,’ Gaxyl’s composure eroding, ‘this… this is an emergency.’ Through gritted teeth. 

‘Sir, I am under orders,’ The Deck Officer states slowly, patronisingly, Gaxyl’s hand balls to a fist, ‘to not release…’ 

An expected uppercut to the Gary’s jaw renders him unable to further execute his orders to disallow take-off. 

Ok, the General reassures himself, orders are orders. But family is family. 

Gaxyl quickly boards the only craft remaining in the launch bay and initiates its flight protocol. He doesn’t request permission for take-off because he knows full well what the reply would be. The General, a long-serving pilot just like his brother, expertly pilots his stolen ship and sets the navicomputer on a direct course for London while he scans the bandwidth for Kaxyl’s personal beacon.  

The signal shows that he’s located at 51.5145° N, 0.0802° W, middle of London, in the early morning shadow of The Gherkin. 

 Hot into Earth’s atmosphere and plummeting blind through the cloud bank over London, all the while avoiding the Earthly defences, Gaxyl speeds towards the coordinates stated on the beacon finder. He spies Canary Wharf and glimpses Hyde Park and sets the nose of the Karricklefseraaser Double Turbo Invador™ Super Fighter smack to in the middle of them.

He’s beyond caring if he’s seen by any indigenous beings. All he wants is to find his brother. Setting the ship down, he pulls the beacon finder from its holder mounted on the dashboard equivalent. As the General jumps from his cockpit, the finder slips from his fingers and smashes into a million pieces at his feet. ‘Wakno farthem zant!’ he shouts. He quickly surveys his surroundings and sees that there are no humans present that would have been alerted to his presence by the shouting of those horrible expletives.

Middle of London, smashed beacon finder and Kaxyl who knows where. Great.

Gaxyl just happens to catch a glimpse of a red figure on an LED display and thinks for an instant that he’s found Kaxyl. But he hasn’t. The first indication that it wasn’t his lost brother was that the red LED figure only had two legs. The second was that the figure was far too big.

Gaxyl suddenly receives a picture into his mind. A road in London with a few vehicles positioned here and there and a shop front, as he’s sure they’re called. A shop front with human words on it, big letters that he doesn’t recognise from his training but they spell TK MAXX.

Kaxyl must be seeing this right now! He concludes. He scans around him and spots the TK MAXX behind him and a bit off to the side. Comparing reality to the image he’s received to his mind, he deduces the trajectory and his brother’s current line of sight and starts running like he’s never run before.

The general finds himself standing in front of a bush. Looking around, he sees nothing of note. A quick glance to see if any human ears have materialised and shouts ‘KAXYL!’

He receives a typical fraternal response ‘SHUT UP YOU IDIOT!’

‘Get out here you schmuck!’ In his own language, of course. ‘I’m taking you home!’

 Their six legs a blur as they return to the single pilot craft. Once there, Gaxyl makes his brother wait as he rips the lid from the onboard stowage compartment and discards the poo container, leaving both items in the gutter at the side of the Bury Street to be washed away when it inevitably rains.

‘How did you get your ship taken out?’ Gaxyl asks as he watches Kaxyl jam himself under the floor of the cockpit.

‘It was a nightmare.’ He says. ‘I have no idea what was coming for us but they were massive, they were brown, and they were covered in feathers.’

‘Idiot. Never mind, we’ll be off this planet soon.’

Gaxyl closes the viewing hatch and they set off for the Command Ship they launched from.

Entering space, Gaxyl sighs with relief.

‘How many panes of glass did you count in The Gherkin?’ Gaxyl asks.

‘Three thousand four hundred and two.’ Kaxyl responds accomplishedly. ‘You rescued me too soon.’

‘Never mind.’ Gaxyl smiles, contented that he was able to rescue his brother. ‘Idiot.’

He realises that he’s probably flying the ship straight into his own court-marshal. Kicked out of the armada for intentionally misleading Command, assaulting a fellow officer, stealing a ship, disobeying orders and flying into restricted air space. And he’s sure there’ll be more. But at least the brothers will be home for Christmas this year.

Or the Oomienoomiegaralaxian equivalent, that is.

Concerning the eight billion or so humans back on Earth, during all of the laser firing, ship whizzing, retreat announcing and command ships jumping away to lightspeed, no one, not one human, noticed a thing.

Later that same day, little Tommy Sibley walks along the street in London holding his mother’s hand. They’re not doing anything in particular today, just a bit of shopping at the big stores around Leadenhall and Bury Streets on a Saturday morning. Waiting for the little red man to turn green and allow them to cross the road, Tommy notices an item on the pavement at his feet. He picks it up and inspects it with the vigourous inquisitiveness of a six-year-old. Tommy at first thinks he’s holding a folded-up bottle cap, one of the old-fashioned aluminium ones, but it’s solid, and heavy for its size. Looking closer, there’s no Lite or Miller written on it as he expected to see. There is writing, however, on the smooth side of the object though and try as he might, even with his impeccable six-year-old eyes is unable to discern what has been scrawled in black ink. The man on the LED display changes colour and he and his mother cross the road, throwing the bottlecap in the refuse receptacle they pass as they near TK MAXX.

Rapidly passing from his interest, Tommy concerns himself no more with the writing that was on the unidentifiable object and turns his interest instead to the Pokémon display that greets customers as they enter the discount store. 

The script on the side of the discarded object was very small to start with, and the printed words, being of non-Earth origin, would have been indecipherable to Tommy as well to any one of us that attempted to read them. But had Tommy understood what was scrawled on the side of the unknown object in Oomienoomiegaralaxian, the chilling message he read would have been – Earth or Bust.

The End