Adam C. Richardson

After introductions were made all around, I was invited to step outside. The military “grownups” needed to talk.

There was another bench along the front of the office. I sat there, away from the scraggly bearded man in uniform.

I watched the glowing lake below. In the late afternoon sun, it glittered like green fire.

“You want to kill the ass hats?” the bearded man asked.

“Excuse me?”

He grinned. His two front teeth were missing. “I know how to kill the ass hats. Seen it happen. The commander doesn’t let me kill ’em here, but I know how. You wanna know how?”

My instinct for fact finding stopped at methods of homicide. “No thanks.”

I felt him watching me. I considered taking a walk, but I was exhausted. Skippy the Butthead stood across the street. He posed like a tree, his head thrown back. I noticed that the bearded man watched Skippy, his eyes burning with ferocious loathing.

That night, Kate and I stayed in an officer’s cabin. She and I were given bed rolls and an empty room. She lay on her side, facing away.

“I know you’re angry,” I said.

“Not just angry,” she said. “Furious. I didn’t want to believe it when my men told me they saw you at the Butthead compound and that you wandered this way. You could have been killed.”

“The yellow shrubs—they work very well.”

“But you didn’t know that for sure. And why wouldn’t you tell me you knew about this settlement?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll tell you why.” She rolled over to glare at me. “You wouldn’t tell me because you’re a reporter, because you have to be the first one on the scene, so you can get the scoop on everyone else. Your journalist’s instinct is one thing, but you could at least mention it to your wife.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know what the worst thing is? You didn’t tell me, not because you didn’t want me to worry, but because you thought I’d go straight to Scargal. You think I’m military first and wife second.”

“Aren’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. I squirmed.

“What I am is Captain Kate Yancey. The ‘Captain’ is for the military. The ‘Yancey’ is for you. And in the middle, there’s someone who I’d like to think is intelligent and trustworthy enough to know how to balance options and make choices for the greater good. You could at least trust me to think for myself.”

She rolled over again.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

The soldiers called it Lake Exile. It sparkled below me like a field of glittering emeralds in the sunlight. The green mountain that loomed over us was Warden Peak, and although this planet was known on star charts as Manasseh, the soldiers called it New Alcatraz.

They could call it what they wanted. I called it paradise. Ensign West found me on the veranda gazing down at the verdant lake under the churning pea-green sky. The raptors in the trees around our so-called prison camp may have been startling to look at, but their song was melodious and rhythmically hypnotic. I was caught up in the spell, content to absorb the natural symphony of sight and sound forever.

“Mr. Yancey,” West said.

I tore my eyes away from the lake and turned.

“The admiral would like to speak with you.”

Kate had told me to expect this—a debriefing. I stood and followed Ensign West into the heart of our camp.

As prison camps go, I’d give it five stars. Cobblestone paths, a wide common area surrounded by copper-shelled cabins. Soldiers sat at picnic tables and talked. Some kicked a soccer ball around. Others played Frisbee. I passed a few men and women tossing pennies against a cabin wall.

In one corner of the common area, shunned by everyone, sat one of the Buttheads. Its head hung low, its red-rimmed eyes stared at the ground, its forehead a fleshy, bulbous protrusion that hung over its eyes like a visor. The forehead was what earned our alien hosts their dubious nicknames. More shocking than the forehead, however, was the Butthead’s mouth—a wound-like gash that stretched to the sides of its head at its widest point. Its willowy arms hung listlessly at its sides.

I hesitated as West led me past the bench on which the Butthead sat. I was still unaccustomed to seeing the aliens up close.

The alien stood, startling me backwards a pace. Its eyes closed, it threw its large head back, and in a beautiful vibrato tenor, it began to sing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

My mouth hung open. West had to pull on my sleeve to get me moving.

“Do they always sing like that?” I asked.

“Only that one. We call him Opera Man.”

“So it’s a male…uh…Butthead?”

West shook his head. “Who cares?”

No More Horizons – Part 2

No More Horizons – Part 1