Some time later, Jibbly was no longer Jibbly. He walked up to me while I was digging a hole in the woods out behind my place. By that time I'd worked up quite a sweat despite the cold autumn weather which was keeping my beer nice and refreshing. When I straightened up for a breather the pig was there, standing over my shotgun and staring at me with a cold intelligence in his eyes which I’d never seen there before.
“Hello,” the pig said, its voice high pitched, the words slightly slurred for having come from a mouth not equipped for speech. Perhaps a lesser man, or at least a less inebriated one might have started at the pig talking, but to me it seemed par for the course, given the day I had been having.
“Uhhh… Hi?” I said, stabbing the shovel into the ground and grabbing my beer off the grave’s lip. His animal face didn’t seem like it was totally under Blart’s control quite yet, twitching in a way somehow more disconcerting than the fact of the pig’s speech in the first place.
“I cannot believe you have forced me to suffer this indignity.” Sometime during the sentence his face settled down and he managed a hateful expression towards me.
“I dunno, the pig looks kind of good on you.”
“Good? This is an animal!” His voice trilled. “It barely has a sense of self and the processing power of its brain is less than half that of the creature you so readily copulated with!”
“Well what the hell did you expect? You asked for something weighing more than forty kilos, that’s what I got you!”
“One of your adolescents would have been much better. You are-”
“One of my adolescents? You mean a kid?” I asked, giving the pig an angry look. It seemed to sense the change in my tone and it crouched down a bit lower over my shotgun. It put one of its hooves on the handle of the weapon and rotated it so that the barrel pointed toward me.
“Yes,” it said, “and no more interruptions. You are my servant now and-” It was about that time that I uppercut the shit out of that talking pile of pompous pork. He rolled over, stunned, and I pulled myself out of the grave, grabbing my shotgun in the same motion.
“You dumb little shit. I’m getting dog-tired of this whole act we’ve got going. I think I’m gonna shoot you now and have myself some bacon.”
“No, no, I’m sorry! Don’t kill my host again, it’s extremely unpleasant!”
“Things are about to be extremely unpleasant for you if we don’t get one thing straight. I’m not your servant.” I went ahead and put one of my boots on his ribs to keep him down. “The only thing I serve is the American Sovereignty, and only because they give me a paycheck and let me blow stuff up. If anything, you’re my servant, because I bought the meatsuit you’re currently riding around in and, more importantly, I’m the one holding the gun.”
“Why are you so violent,” the pig complained, holding its forehooves to its noggin.
“You haven’t even begun to see violent,” I returned, death in my tone. “What the hell did you think you were going to do with my gun?”
“I believed it was operated by thought-impulse, like most firearms, and that the threat alone would be enough to force compliance.” the pig who was no longer Jibbly whined. “I can see your fear centers are malformed. Any other rational being would become compliant when faced with the operative section of a force multiplier!”
“No, it isn’t ‘thought operated’ you two-bit moron. Now go drag that body into this here hole and be glad I don’t shoot you and toss you in, too.”
I’ve never seen a pig sulking before, but he made a good effort to do so as he went to the back of my pickup and dragged out the girl’s body. A few minutes later, he’d pushed it into the hole. I made sure to check the safety on the gun before I put it down and threw the dirt over her body. Blart lay flat on his belly, catching his breath. He did not reach for the shotgun again, which was wise since I wasn’t going to give him a second chance at life if he had. When I’d finished refilling the grave I thumped the loose ground with the shovelhead to flatten it then told the pig to stamp his hooves into it until it looked more like the rest of the yard. There'd still be a bald spot of exposed earth, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. He trampled back and forth over the grave a few times, one final disrespect to the poor gal he’d violated, then turned to face me.
“Now we can go out to my spaceship, and I can get you your new leg.”
“Now, I need to go to work,” I corrected. There was anger in my voice but after a second thought I scrapped the idea. “You know what, I don’t want to let you out of my sight for eight hours with your own spaceship to get into trouble with. I’ll just call in sick and we can go.”
- - -
My captain didn’t believe me one bit. He correctly assumed that I’d been out drinking the night before but incorrectly figured that I was extremely hung over. Not that it was much trouble to me, as he ultimately accepted that I’d be off for the day without much argument. I suppose he must not have wanted to be the guy who reprimanded a highly awarded drop marine over a sick day, but if I knew anything about the Captain, he’d be cursing me behind my back for at least a week. Blart directed me off my property and onto a road leading to the mountains east of town where his ship had landed. By the time Blart pointed out a turnoff onto a narrow access road, the sun was shining down from a place just past its daily zenith, but it wasn’t too long before the canopy of the trees left us in shade anyway.
“A little farther up the hill, and then we have to go on foot,” Blart said. He was standing with two feet on my passenger seat and his forehooves on the dash, looking out my front window.
“Alright,” I told him, keeping an eye out for any surprises he might’ve planned and, thus far, finding none. When we arrived at the end of the gravel access road there was a tiny parking lot with a single lonely SUV waiting for us. I threw the truck into park, climbed out and walked around to the other side. For a few seconds I watched Blart struggle with the door handle before he looked at me with a pleading expression. Chuckling, I pulled the handle and let him out while his hooves were still on the door, so he spilled out onto the ground.
“Did you have to make me wait?” He demanded while he shook off the dust.
“Yes, because you need to remember who’s the boss here. Now lead the way.” Dutifully, Blart did, walking off onto a hiking trail while I followed him, shotgun resting on my shoulder. We walked for hours into the woods and I began to get a bad feeling. It wasn’t something that I could explain, but a man like me learned to trust those sorts of feelings implicitly.
“Just so you know, little piggy, if you’re leading me into a trap, this gun’s got a bunch of rounds in it, and I will put every single one of them into your belly before I go down. Understand?” Blart turned and looked back at me, standing stock still for a solid few seconds.
“Yes,” he finally said. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he said nothing more and turned to keep going. I decided to train my gun on the pig for the rest of the walk, which, thankfully, was short. We followed the path through the blue ridge forest in a riot of mid-autumn colors up the mountain until finally we entered a clearing that had recently been used for a small campsite. At its center stood an honest-to-god spaceship. The thing crouched on four legs, smeared with gray soot, that protruded from the hull and sunk into the ground. The body of the vessel itself looked like a colossal, blackened egg with a flat bottom, and its surface was also marred by smears of soot from its fiery entry into the atmosphere. In all the ship measured maybe twenty meters high from the base of its flat bottom to the tip of its nose, and the legs kept its thruster about another two meters off the ground.
When I’d drawn close enough into the clearing, I could look up and see that the flat bottom was, in reality, a huge thruster bell inset into the base of the egg. At the feet of the of the ship lay some burnt tents and the leavings of an uncleared campsite. Three bodies lay on the ground with large, nasty holes blown through them in several places. The pig stopped and sniffed at one of the bodies with a sort of clinical indifference. I frowned at the pig’s total lack of surprise.
“Care to explain?” I asked.
“We needed to get a host,” Blart said. “We used the antipersonnel gun on them.”
“So you shot them all to death?” The pig looked at me and huffed out a strange sound that may have been an expression of exasperation. It was still hard to tell, even though his speaking was getting more clear by the sentence.
“No, we shot them all until they were very close to death,” he said. “Then we had our drone carry in the body of the most conventionally attractive member of the group. He paused and thought for a bit, perhaps suspecting that he’d stumbled upon some sort of faux pas. “We didn’t even shoot the others to death afterwards. If they had not been so weak and fragile, they would have survived just fine. In a way, you see, it was ultimately the frailty of their species that killed them.”
“And in a way, when I shoot you, it will be this gun killing you,” I noted absently, examining the ship for gunports. It seemed as if the exterior of the thing was all flush metal, as if worked as a single piece.
“Ehhh, yes… Well, we used our medical pods to stabilize the body’s condition and keep it comatose while I climbed inside and took control. We can’t take over a dead body, of course. Your biological control center almost instantly begins to decay. It’s disgusting and primitive. Within two minutes your kind becomes unusable.” He then began to say something in what I presumed to be his native language, but I clubbed him over the head with the butt of my gun.
“Woah now!” I barked at him, then leveled the shotgun at him once more. “English only. Say one more word in your gross, meat-flappy language and I’ll shoot you dead.”
“Fine! I’ll use your barbaric tongue,” the talking pig said, and turned back to the vessel. “Ship! Authorized user 236-49-3825, authorization code periwinkle.”
“Periwinkle?” I chuckled, and Blart gave me an indignant look in response.
“It’s a very specific color, assigned to me and me alone! The ship will recognize it.”
“Okay, Blart, whatever you say.”
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The ship began to open shortly thereafter. An ovular segment of the ship’s hull unfolded outward from one of its sides to lightly touch on the ground. Built onto the door’s curved inner surface was a flight of stairs atop which stood a robot. Not just any robot, though, this thing looked positively evil, standing there at the top of the ramp in wait.
Four pointed legs attached to an egg-like body, atop which sat a writhing crown of four tentacles curling and reaching in the rush of fresh air. Its similarities to the ship from which it had emerged were undeniable, as if it were the ship’s offspring. It began to move out at once, its tentacles whipping around bonelessly, but with definite purpose, as if to scan the surrounding environment. Strange objects which looked to me like weaponry were built into those flailing tentacles, and instantly the bad feeling returned.
Without thinking- perhaps a phrase that defined most of my existence- I dropped down and snatched the little porker up, pressing the shotgun’s muzzle into his belly and holding him close as he made some rather undignified squeals.
“I don’t know about you,” I growled, “but I don’t fancy being shot full of holes and used as a science experiment. How about you give me control of the ship?”
“What? I would never-” he started, but I bit him on the ear real hard, and his voice cut out in another squeal of pain. “Why are you biting me?”
“My hands are full of pig and I wanted you to shut up. Now, I want you to understand perfectly clearly. I don’t give two twice-baked shits what you would or wouldn’t do. If you want to keep drawing whatever your squidly self considers breath, you’ll transfer ownership.” I poked him in the side with the barrel of the shotgun again. “Otherwise we can both die and then the United States under American Sovereignty can take the remains of your ship and robot and whatever else.”
“Fine, fine! Ship, cancel order!” The annoying little butt-squid spouted out another long series of numbers, and the robot stopped moving at once, seeming to slouch a little bit. “Transfer ownership to this human!”
Nothing seemed to happen.
“Is it mine?” I asked him.
“No, we need to go aboard and you’ll need to provide a DNA sample to it before it will accept you as the owner of the ship.”
“Fine. Let’s go then.” I released him slowly and stood up behind the little pigsquid.
We walked onto the ship together, his little hooves clicking on the strange, almost ceramic steps as we went up the ramp. I kept my shotgun trained on him while we walked by the eggbot and strongly considered blasting him. The things reminded me of my time in the Second Japanese Action.
Sovereignty control had somehow uncovered a robotics program for the purpose of creating enhanced and expendable soldiers. We’d done a number on their population figures between the First Japanese action, subsequent nuclear testing, and enforced birth controls, none of which they had taken kindly to. If they ever wanted to break free of our control they’d have to figure out how to produce soldiers some way other than the natural method, and they’d done just that. When we’d dropped in, right on the heels of a trio of atomic bombs, we’d found that the intel boys were right. Fighting in the bombed out ruins of a city while huge robotic foes dragged themselves from the ashen ruins of burnt homes and buildings had been a strange experience, but we’d shown them why the USAS was number one on this planet.
Passing by the things, I held my gun more tightly. I thought about how easily the robot could reach out and ensnare me, but despite my fears it remained as still as a steel statue, allowing us to move deeper into the ship. It was an oddly familiar sort of place, far more roomy than I had anticipated for a tiny squid. The roofs all had at least a foot and a half of headspace, and I noticed something strange as we traversed the ship’s compartments. Its vertical design, relying on ladders, made traversing the ship a laborious process. Despite this, everything seemed to be suitable for a human. I would have expected things to be completely alien but the place looked like it had been set up for casual earthling tourists to walk through if they so desired.
Every space in the place was clean and efficient, and we passed from the hangar room to a little engineering section at its rear, with lots of interesting pieces of equipment, some of which I couldn’t begin to explain the purpose of, strapped to the walls and in clear cabinets for easy access. A hatch on the floor probably opened up into the cargo level, while a ladder led upwards. I took it to find a little galley and head on the next level.
Normal sized-counters, made of the same matte gray, almost ceramic-looking metal that the floor and roof was made up the sink and counter in the galley, and similarly the table and booth just jutted out of the wall, made of lightly padded metal. The ladder just continued straight through that compartment as well, though I made a mental note to come back and check for beer.
“How did you get around inside here?”
“Well,” Blart responded, sounding somewhat strained as he forced himself up the ladder with a pigs ungainly limbs, “I didn’t really,”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The ship is entirely automated. There are a few medpods in it that I would ride in when it was underway.”
“Entirely automated? So robots do all the work? What happens if they fail?”
“One of the others repairs it.”
“Well, what if they fail?”
“That’s extremely unlikely.”
“That seems like poor planning.”
His sides heaved and he spat out a blatting noise, probably the best a pig could have done to voice exasperation. It was an interesting sound for a pig to make, but it fit right in with my mental picture of the sounds one of Blart’s kind might make. We passed through a small armory, which is where the ladder had ended, and I looked around at what Blart had. Most of it seemed to be parts for the robot, things I couldn’t fire even if I got both hands on them, and I frowned. My plans on looting them had been foiled, so I crossed over to the next ladder and continued upwards, into what looked like a sensor room.
“What does your ape brain know? Your people haven’t even discovered FTL travel yet.”
“Well we know enough to understand that it’s shit-off stupid to fly around with a ship that will only run if everything works right.” The more I looked, the more it looked like the ship wasn’t at all designed for beings of his size, but rather beings more akin to my own large dimensions, if not a little larger. From the width of the ladder and the distance between its rungs to the height of the corridors to the whole coloration scheme, the place seemed like something the USAS might construct to deploy their daug soldiers. But that bunch of idiots had to be shock-trained to use a shovel properly, so I was pretty confident that the ship wasn’t for them.
No, this ship had been built by and for humans, or something that thought just like us in terms of what was comfortable and required. Sure, the exterior design was reminiscent of the squids, but they could’ve just commissioned the thing.
“Shows what you know,” he went on. “Automation in the tech base I come from is vastly superior to your primitive technological abilities.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said,“keep yapping, pervert. See where it gets you.” I knew he heard the menace in my voice, but truthfully I was too interested in the ship as we clambered over its ladders to shoot the little guy.
“I’m not a pervert,” he huffed, offended.
Finally we reached the bridge. I could tell that’s what it was, because it was the largest room so far, and unless I was mistaken, it was right at the center of the ship. There was a pair of slightly sheening steely cylinders, maybe a meter tall, built into the walls to my far right and far left and all sorts of consoles set into the wall, each one accompanied by a view-screen. It seemed like there was a great deal of data that could be streamed into the room at the drop of a hat. Honestly, I was impressed, but I wasn’t willing to show that to the little piggy beside me.
“So this is where it all happens,” I commented drolly.
“This is where the ship is controlled, yes,” Blart responded. “If you approach the central console and spit onto that pad right into the center, it should be able to analyze your DNA. Do attempt to keep your foul secretions off the rest of the ship. The tray will self-sterilize after you’ve provided a sample.”
“Deal!” I responded, moving forwards and hocking a loogie right onto his precious silver tray, not bothering to ensure that I was completely accurate. With my spit captured, it lowered down into the console while I turned to eye the pig.
“I swear to God, if this thing is identifying my DNA so it can figure which one of us to kill, I’m gonna turn you into-” but before I could name one of several pork dishes that I had in mind, the console dinged like a microwave indicating it was done. Blart quickly spoke.
“Ship, transfer ownership to this organism. Full control.” After a short pause, the ship emitted that same ding.
“Ownership transferred. Welcome, Commander Winsor.”
“Great! Ship, kill this-”
“Wait!” the pig squealed. “Wait, you can’t have me killed out of hand!” I glanced down at him, raising an eyebrow.
“Why not?”
“Your- your left nut!”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, frowning. Honestly, the thought of having my own starship had totally overtaken the idea that I’d be able to get my nut back. I wasn’t overly concerned with genital regeneration at this point. Since he was offering, though, it was icing on the cake in my book.
“Yeah,” I reconsidered. “I do want my left nut back! How do we go about that?” Blart eyed me warily, as if unsure whether he ought to just take his chances and try to run or give me what I wanted.
“There’s a medpod. We used it to heal the human woman that was my previous host, so there will be parameters for default humans. It should be able to adjust to you, heal you, and return you to your youth. All you will have to do is tell the ship’s AI that you want a full revitalization.”
“I’m not seeing why I need you for that,” I told him after a heartbeat’s consideration.
“I’m a pilot! You need someone to pilot this thing!”
“What, you’re telling me your super-advanced starship can’t pilot itself?”
“Do you want it to fly better than a tossed stone?” I made a show of considering that for a time, then shrugged.
“Yeah, I suppose so. Alright. Ship, remove all command authority from Blart, here, but let him take the conn when I tell him to,” I said.
“I do not recognize a Blart, Commander Winsor.”
“Call me Captain Winsor. And this little piggy right here is Blart! That’s his name!” Helpfully, I pointed down at Blart.
“That is absolutely not my-”
“Recognized. Former owner now known as Blart. All command authorities removed from Blart. Blart, you have been demoted to the rank of ensign.” I smiled. Maybe having a ship that was entirely run by AI wouldn’t be so bad.
“Excellent. Now, drag Blart off the ship and don’t let him back on till I’m out of the medpod! Then toss me into a medpod, and give me a full revitalization!” Nearly as soon as the command was out of my mouth the eggbot clambered up to the bridge, its metal feet clanging and banging on the ground as it skittered about. They weren’t fast by any means, but the way they moved gave me the feeling that they had some serious mass. Blart began shrieking and squealing and carrying on. He tried to flee from the robots but he wasn’t very fast or agile in his new body, and his hooves slipped and he fell and lay splayed on the floor. With contemptuous ease, the robot snatched him up by the scruff.
“No! It will take a week or more to repair you, idiot ape! What will I do until then?”
“Go root around in the dirt. Pigs have been doing it for millennia. Better not go feral on me though, or you’ll end up as bacon!”
“Noooo-” he wailed as he was carried off. I laughed uproariously right there on the bridge. I was having such a good time that I didn’t even notice the eggbot return- until it grabbed me by the back of the neck.
“Ach!” I blurted as my wind was cut off, so I couldn’t get the words out to tell the ship to stop whatever crazy idea had gotten into its silicon brain. I clawed at the robot’s cold steel fingers wrapped around my throat as it easily lifted me off the ground. As one might expect, however, they were metal, and couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about my feeble attempts to pry them off of my windpipe. As my vision started to go black, I considered that perhaps my choice of words in commanding the ship may have been unwise.
