Galactic Prankster
© Bryan Beal
Howling through the atmosphere with the heat sinks screaming at her with every alarm going off in what would have been ears was a buzz hard to beat. Just the knowledge that she was making every radar (who the hell still used radar??) sensor ping on this side of the continent made the whole thing just that little more delicious. Reigar wrenched her exploration probe around the slope of a mountain into the valley beyond, floored with a carpet of trees that spread to the peaks beyond. This was the life!
Below her, a road wound through the trees on its way to somewhere that just did not matter to her. Reigar saw some lights coming towards her on that road and swung her ship out in a wide arch so that she would come up behind the terrestrial vehicle. As she started to line up on the curving road, she dropped her altitude and managed to fly between the tree tops. She pulled back on the speed so that she would not roar past the vehicle too quickly. One had to savour these moments. The proximity alarms started beeping at her, to her delight. Nothing said “fun” more than every alarm going off in a ship.
Reigar dropped even lower, skimming a mere four metres above the road, going at a crawl. She flicked on the EM array, one of her favourite things on this ship. The scanners picked up the vehicle again ahead of her, around a bend in the road. She increased the thrust a little to just exceed the vehicle's speed, which was a crawl for her. She almost let out the equivalent of a yawn with the tedium of going so slow. But it would be worth it.
Ahead was the vehicle and the scanners identified it as Sol-made BMW blah blah blah. She really did not care a whit for what it was. The important thing was the two terrestrial beings inside it. As she approached the vehicle, the EM array hit it and the systems inside all died. She stopped at a hover about fifty metres behind it and switched to night vision and popped the audio scanners on. She did not understand the language they were using, but she knew anger and fear when she heard it. The operator of the vehicle was hitting the steering wheel while trying to get the BMW started again. Reigar turned the EM off and saw the car start immediately. She left it for five seconds before turning the array back on. The shouts and howls were awesome.
Reigar climbed to a height of about thirty metres and drifted slowly to a point right above the disabled car. Using her scanners, she made sure that she was right above the roof and then dropped to about five metres. From there she hovered a little. Sudden Reigar's ship dropped to gently slap against the roof of the BMW, then shoot back up to two hundred metres. The climb was instant. She dropped again, to gently smack the roof of the vehicle and shoot back up to two hundred metres again. Inertia Control Units were the best! Reigar had done this four or five times before one of the terrestrials was brave enough to poke their head out for a look. By the time they looked, she was out of sight.
She really wanted to reduce altitude and empty the waste system on its head, but she was already breaking a dozen laws and that would just get her into a tonne of trouble that she did not need. She had heard that they now had DNA technology. It would have been a disaster to leave traces of their own DNA for the terrestrials to find.
One of the terrestrials was still looking at the sky while the other was still screaming incomprehensible gibberish. Reigar had to satisfy herself with reducing her height and delivering a timely blast from one of her thrusters at the BMW. The force shoved the terrestrial's head down onto the window edge and increased the volume of the screams from within. A second blast marked Reigar's departure from the scene.
Reigar checked the footage when she was clear of the planet's moon and safely hidden behind it. It was awesome. Her friends would have a real laugh about this one. She would like to see them top the scream factor of this trip.