by J. J. Green
Transgalactic
Antics
Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer #3
J.J. Green
This novel uses British spellings.
Cover Design: Illuminated Images & Dark Moon Graphics
Sign up for a free copy of Carrie Hatchett's Christmas and for exclusive notice of new releases, advanced reader opportunities and other interesting stuff at JJ Green’s mailing list here:
http://jjgreenauthor.com/?page_id=136
(We won’t send spam or pass on your details to a third party.)
Table of Contents
Chapter One – Carrie the Maverick
Chapter Two – Going AWOL
Chapter Three – Carrie's Comeuppance
Chapter Four – Begging a Favour
Chapter Five – All Aboard
Chapter Six – Dinner Diversions
Chapter Seven – Bring Out the Big Guns
Chapter Eight – Decisions, Decisions
Chapter Nine – Into the Deep
Chapter Ten – Falling Out
Chapter Eleven – Carrie’s Off
Chapter Twelve – Strange Encounters
Chapter Thirteen – Blast From the Past
Chapter Fourteen – Too Close For Comfort
Chapter Fifteen – A Wet Mess
Chapter Sixteen – About Face
Chapter Seventeen – The Great Escape
Chapter Eighteen – Home Truths
Chapter Nineteen – The Final Straw
Chapter Twenty – Dance Up a Storm
Chapter Twenty-One – Placktoid Proposal
Chapter Twenty-Two – A Friend in Need
Chapter Twenty-Three – Sink or Swim
Chapter Twenty-Four – Crunch Time
Chapter Twenty-Five – Surprise Awakening
Chapter Twenty-Six - Reconciliation
Chapter Twenty-Seven – The Placktoids’ Plan
Chapter One – Carrie the Maverick
Carrie Hatchett silently wished she had put on her thermal underwear. She had been crouching for hours in a cold, damp, trench dug by Unity troops, while the siege of the squashpump city dragged on.
‘City’ was a loose word to describe the squashpump municipality. It was in fact a massive mound of moist, brown organic matter on a bare, boggy plain. Try as she might, Carrie couldn’t help but see it as a huge manure pile and the squashpumps as large, intelligent, civilised slugs.
“Ma bairns, ma bairns.” Nearby—close enough for Carrie’s translator to pick up its squeaks and transform them into Scottish-accented English in her mind—a squashpump official sat, or lay. At the beginning of the negotiations several days earlier, this squashpump, who went by the name of MacDougal, had been calm and professional, but over time it had weakened under stress and concern for its family. According to official estimates, roughly 236,000 squashpumps were being held hostage by the placktoids, a mechanical alien species intent on taking over the galaxy.
Wincing as she moved her cramped muscles, Carrie went over to the distressed squashpump and sat beside it. “I’m sure there’ll be some progress soon. We’ll get your children out. How many do you have?”
The squashpump reared up, lifting its upper end five or six centimetres off the ground, and sprouted multi-coloured soft tentacles. “One thousand and seventy-eight, give or take one or two. I can ne’er keep count of the wee rascals. Oh, and three hundred and twelve eggs.” Its tentacles flopped. “What’s t’ become o’ them?”
“One thousand and seventy-eight? That is a large family.” Carrie tried to imagine what it must be like to be a parent to so many offspring. “We haven’t heard from the placktoids for a while. They must be about to agree to surrender. With Unity or Transgalactic Council presence on every habitable planet across the galaxy, they don’t have anywhere to go. They might be hostile, but they aren’t stupid.”
“Och, that’s what I mean. It’s taking too long. Yon evil machines are trying t’ figure a way oot. They’ve a trick or two up their sleeves yet, I warn ye.”
Carrie rubbed her chilled arms and blew into her hands. MacDougal was right. The placktoids were extremely devious. When she had been the first to uncover their illegal activities, they had fooled the Council into believing they were the victims in a dispute with the yellow liquid known as the oootoon, when in fact they had been the aggressors. But their latest plan of invading the squashpump planet had failed. Unity soldiers had driven them from every area to this final refuge. Surely they had no way out? They had no alternative but to surrender.
“How are the tunnels coming along? They must be nearly finished now,” Carrie asked MacDougal.
“This evening, they say.”
“I’ll go and see if there have been any developments,” Carrie said, hoping to find some news to calm the anxious squashpump. MacDougal collapsed limply to the ground as she left.
Not far down the trench, she found her Transgalactic Council Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Manager, Gavin, speaking to some Unity soldiers. In their combat gear and helmets with opaque visors, Carrie found the soldiers creepy. Not because they were alien—some were human, or at least humanoid—but their uniforms took on the appearance of their surroundings, like chameleons, which made them hard to spot. She was sure one or two of them had deliberately snuck up on her to make her jump.
She waited while her huge insectoid manager finished his conversation. A cold wind circulated, and she hugged herself, looking up into the thick, grey clouds that constantly covered the sky. After a few moments the soldiers nodded at her and went away. “Any news, Gavin?”
“I am afraid we have received no further communications from the placktoids since their most recent expression of defiance. The general consensus seems to be that positive action is required.”
“What kind of positive action? Not an assault?”
“Probably, yes.”
Carrie gasped. “But there are hundreds of thousands of squashpumps in there, and they’re so small. How will the soldiers be able to avoid hitting them? Can’t we wait until the squashpumps have finished digging the tunnels? At least then we can sneak up on them.”
“We cannot afford to wait, unfortunately. We have not heard from a single hostage since this morning, and the placktoids are fully aware of the squashpumps’ ability to tunnel quickly and efficiently. They know we would not use tunnelling machines because they would detect the vibrations, but that the squashpumps will dig tunnels manually to allow troops to approach the city. We are sure they can also estimate the time it would take and know the tunnels will be completed soon. A crisis point is approaching and we must be decisive.”
Carrie bit her lip. On her previous assignment she had been in charge of negotiations between the squashpumps and the former tyrants of the galaxy, the dandrobians. While on Dandrobia the squashpump delegation had attacked the dandrobians, and it had taken Carrie too long to discover the real reason—that the placktoids were forcing them to by holding their families hostage on their home planet, and that the dandrobians had been in on the plot from the very beginning, for reasons no one yet understood.
“I wish I’d spoken to the squashpump delegation earlier and not allowed myself to be hoodwinked by the dandrobians, Gavin. I feel like this is partly my fault. We might have had more time to act against the placktoids and avoided this whole situation.”
“Your feelings of guilt are irrational and non-beneficial. Please focus on the matter at hand.”
But Gavin’s news about the proposed assault was not what she wanted to take back to MacDougal. “There must be something else we can do. Can’t we allow some of the placktoids’ demands? Can’t we just confine them to their planet, like we did with the dandrobians?”
“Th
e placktoids’ ability to create transgalactic gateways makes this impossible. We must be certain no placktoid can escape. It is confinement within the oootoon or nothing.”
The mysterious, yellow oootoon, through which transgalactic gateways would not operate. Carrie well understood the placktoids’ refusal to give up their only bargaining tool, the squashpump hostages. Living in air pockets within the oootoon for the foreseeable future was not a fate she would resign herself to easily, either. Her heart sank. When it came down to it, a violent end to the siege seemed inevitable. But she could not, would not, allow squashpumps to come to harm. “Gavin, we can’t just let the Unity storm the compost, I mean city. We have to do something. I have to do something.”
“I appreciate that you are concerned about squashpump safety. Such a sentiment is natural and admirable. But you must understand you are only one Transgalactic Council Officer within a large team of Council and Unity staff. You cannot and must not act as an individual in this matter. We must all obey the joint decisions made, for our own safety and that of the squashpumps.”
“But I’ve had personal experience of dealing with the placktoids. I know them. I’m sure if I could speak to them face-to-face I could reason with them.” Though Carrie had been the one to expose the mechanical aliens’ devious plot, she hadn’t been allowed much input into the negotiation process. This was probably because the Council was aware that taking part in long, detailed discussions was not one of her strengths, but being excluded annoyed her, and she was tired of sitting on the sidelines, distant from the action. She itched to take part and be useful.
“A face-to-face meeting would be far too dangerous,” Gavin replied, “even if you were to possess the authority, which you do not. Please do not even consider such an action. It would be suicide to leave this protected position, and in the event that you did survive to approach the placktoid commander, you could seriously destabilise the negotiation process.”
Carrie clenched her fists at her sides. “The negotiation process is going to be seriously destablised the moment those troops storm the manure pile. I mean city. There are squashpump babies and eggs in there. Goodness knows what the placktoids will do when the Unity starts to attack.”
“It is precisely to protect the squashpumps that the Unity must attack, and soon.”
Frowning at her ten-legged, bronze-carapaced manager, Carrie struggled for an answer, but she couldn’t think of a suitable response. She stalked away without a word. There had to be a better way than a frontal assault. There had to be. Avoiding returning to MacDougal, she went in the other direction, towards the area where the squashpumps were constructing tunnels for the Unity soldiers.
Scanning the ground for squashpump workers, she approached a tunnel entrance. The squashpumps had created a chain to shift the earth from the tunnel, and on the far side was a great mound of excavated soil. As Carrie approached, the chain broke up, and the squashpumps began undulating and hooting. “We’re there,” they shouted. “We’ve reached the city.”
A thought struck Carrie, and she made her decision quickly.
Chapter Two – Going AWOL
Sure that the squashpumps would soon report her to a Council or Unity official, Carrie sped down the tunnel. It was narrow and stuffy, barely wide enough for a human to pass through. Light from the entrance grew dim as she went deeper, and she took out the small torch she carried in her Transgalactic Council Officer toolbox: a large handbag filled with handy devices. She shone the torch ahead. The tunnel’s damp walls glistened in its beam, and water dripped from the ceiling. With a trembling heart, she hoped the squashpumps had made the tunnel safe from collapse. She was getting the feeling she always got when she did something impulsive—a nagging sense of regret. At least, she hoped she would live to regret her decision.
It was warmer underground than on the surface. The air was still and moist. As she went on, the tunnel walls began to close in even more. Soon, Carrie was stooping. Her neck began to hurt. To take her mind off the dull ache and her fear that she would die alone, entombed underground on an alien planet, she tried to think what she would say to the placktoids when she arrived at the squashpump city. She shook her head and hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder.
Recalling her first encounter with the mechanical aliens, she mentally went through the different types and their roles. The placktoids,bizarrely, resembled office stationery that was common across Earth. A fact that—Carrie swallowed—meant they harboured a particular hatred for humans, who they saw apparently enslaving and maltreating their distant cousins in Earth TV transmissions shown throughout the galaxy. With a sinking heart, she realised that, as a human, she was perhaps the last Officer who should be negotiating with them face-to-face.
The main placktoid types she could remember were the ones that resembled paperclips and the massive shredders. Staple removers, staplers and ballpoint pens were some of the other kinds, but she had only seen them moving around boxes of stolen oootoon. The paperclips, on the other hand, seemed to be responsible for ship-to-surface transportation, though Carrie had also encountered smaller versions that attacked viciously. It was the shredders she had to worry about, however. They were the coordinators and commanders. No doubt there would be at least one shredder in charge of the situation ahead. A fiery anger rose up in Carrie at the memory of the shredder that had nearly killed her best friend, Dave. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She needed to stay calm if she was going to succeed in persuading the placktoids to give up the hostages and surrender peacefully.
“Carrie, Carrie, please answer immediately.”
She jumped, startled by the voice coming from her translator. It was Gavin. News must have got back to him about what she was doing.
“Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer Hatchett, respond at once.”
She winced. Her Manager knew she hated it when he called her that. She took out the translator. There was no point in talking to him. He would only tell her to go back, and she wasn’t going to do that. No squashpumps were going to die if she could help it. But if she answered Gavin she would have to directly defy him.
“Officer Hatchett, answer me. Do not turn off your translator.” He knew her too well. “I repeat, do not—”
Releasing the operating button on the translator, Carrie replaced it in her bag. She would need to turn it on again to speak to the placktoids and avoid hearing the piercing off-key music that was the language they used with other species, but for the time being she could escape Gavin’s commands. Sweat trickled down the side of her face, due to either increasing temperatures or her racing heart. She pulled down the zip on her jumpsuit and wondered how much farther she had to go. She must be nearly underneath the city by now. Her chest tightened as she realised she had no idea where the tunnel led to. Was it right under the placktoid headquarters or on the outskirts? If she couldn’t see any placktoids when she emerged, how would she find them? And if she popped up right in front of them, would they attack on sight?
Carrie stopped and, her hands shaking slightly, opened her Transgalactic Officer toolbox. She riffled through the contents. She had never really taken a proper inventory of the devices at her disposal. There didn’t seem to be any weapons in there. She sighed. She wouldn’t have known how to use them anyway. Careful preparation had never been one of her strengths. Pushing her sleeves up to her elbows, she concluded that she could rely only on her skills as a Bagua Zhang master if it came to a fight.
The end of the tunnel reared up, and she had to stop abruptly to prevent herself from bumping into it. Scanning round with the torch, she confirmed she was at a dead end. Above, the ceiling looked the same as the rest of the tunnel except for some old, dead roots poking through, but Carrie was sure the squashpumps’ calculations were correct and only a few centimetres of soil separated her from the city, and the invading placktoids, overhead.
Holding the torch between her teeth, she began grabbing and tearing down handfuls of moist earth. She wo
rked quickly but quietly, unsure what technology the placktoids might have to detect sound or movement. Crumbs of soil fell onto her face and hair, and she blinked and shook them off. Then her right hand grasped at nothing but air, and light shone from above. She had reached the surface.
She squatted down and turned off the torch before putting it away. There wasn’t much light from the squashpump chamber above, but there was enough to see by. All was quiet except for her heart, which thumped in her ears. Carrie pulled down more clods, creating a hole large enough for her head and shoulders. Now she could see another ceiling above, which held the source of the light. Emitting a pale blue glow, it was coated in some kind of lichen or fungus.
An object crossed her field of vision. Carrie stepped back. The object had been moving too quickly for her to identify it. Had it been a placktoid, or a springing squashpump? Though slug-like, the squashpumps could move quickly if necessary. There was another movement, and another. Squinting, Carrie tried to follow the objects, but they were moving too fast. There was nothing for it, she would have to take a chance and climb up. She decided to leap up, so that if there were placktoids in the room, at least she would have the element of surprise.
Carrie bent her knees, and launched herself upwards, throwing her top half across the floor of the space above. She slid backwards into the tunnel, the hole’s edges crumbling around her, but she managed to get her knee up and onto the floor. A sharp object hit her in the face, and another hit the back of her hand. “Ow!” She closed her eyes just in time as another impacted her eyelid. “Ouch.” After scrambling a short distance on hands and knees, Carrie sat up and covered her face with her hands. She was being hit on all sides by small, thin pieces of metal.
Peeking between her fingers, she confirmed her suspicion: she was being attacked by small placktoids, ‘baby’ paperclips the mechanical aliens had developed as part of their plan to reproduce in enough numbers to take over the galaxy. She inhaled sharply as a paperclip hit the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger. Peeking again, she saw her escape route through the mass of swarming, vicious miniature placktoids. In the corner of the rounded room was a hole, a dark exit.
