by Logan Jacobs
“Oh, uh, hey, Captain,” the big eyed alien who stood next to a big bank of computers and display cabinets said. He had a sort of nasally voice and his intonation was very herky jerky. Like his brain was moving a million times faster than his mouth could ever hope to keep up with. “Didn’t know you were, uh, going to, uh, drop by so soon. I would have, um, uh, cleaned up a bit.”
I took a moment to look around, and the whole room was a bit of a mess, much like Darry’s workshop had been.
“Don’t worry about it, Wees-Mun,” Har’Gitay said. “I didn’t know I was going to be here this soon either. Everyone, this is Wees-Mun, CDPD’s resident tech genius. He keeps us on the cutting edge of law enforcement advancements.”
“Um, uh, and some criminal ones,” Wees-Mun said with a wicked little smile.
“And some criminal ones,” Har’Gitay nodded. “Which, as I mentioned earlier, is why we are here.”
“Right, right, right,” Wees-Mun said excitedly and walked over to a large cabinet that was built into one wall of the R&D room. He apparently didn’t need any more introductions, which, to be honest, I was kind of glad for. There were a whole lot of us crammed into the room, ten by my count, and that round robin of needless instructions would eat up more time that we didn’t have. “Over here.”
“Captain, this is really cool,” Artemis said. Her eyes were wide as she looked over all the cool gizmos and gadgets. It was like we were in a much messier version of Q’s workshop from James Bond. “I wish we could hang out for a while.”
“That, uh, would be, um, super cool,” Wees-Mun said with a big goofy smile. “Nice to meet you, Ms. V-Five. I’m a big fan of your work. In fact, I’m a huge fan of all of Team Havak.”
“Aw, thanks,” Artie said and blushed a bit.
“Not to cut the love fest short here,” I said as I cleared my throat. “But, as several of us have indeed stated ad nauseam, time is short.”
“Right, sure, um, yeah, sorry, um, yeah,” Wees-Mun stammered. “On with the show.”
He pressed a button on the cabinet, and the doors slid up into the ceiling. Inside the cabinet were about a dozen funky department store mannequin looking things suspended by various cables and wires. They were pale white and oddly featureless.
“Um, what the hell are those?” Tempest asked with a somewhat disgusted look on her face.
“They are bio-morphing androids,” Wees-Mun said giddily. “We impounded them from a black market tech smuggling ring. I’ve been trying to figure out how they work for weeks and just cracked the code.”
“That’s super cool and all,” I said as I looked over the strange, featureless, roughly human shaped bodies. “But what the hell do they do?”
“Oh, um, uh, yeah, here let me show you,” Wees-Mun replied. He motioned for Nova to join him over near one of the mannequins. “Ms. Qwark, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t,” Nova said as she walked over. “But if it attacks me I’m going to knock you into the middle of next week.”
“Oh, wow, okay, well, it shouldn’t, I hope,” Wees-Mun mumbled. “Here, just place your hand on the chest, fingers splayed.”
Nova shrugged and did as he asked. At first nothing happened. When she removed her hand, there was a glowing red imprint where it had been. The red glow spread slowly through the whole mannequin and then, right before our eyes, the things “skin” began to ripple like throwing a rock in a pond. Then, within seconds the formerly featureless androgynous android had turned into a perfect replica of Nova.
“Oh,” I said, impressed. “That’s what they do.”
“Yeah, oh, um, uh,” Wees-Mun talk mumbled. “They are perfect genetically accurate copies, down to the molecule.”
“That is so freaking chilly,” Artie whistled as she walked over to the Nova copy, which stared ahead unblinkingly. “What about personality?”
“That’s where it gets a little dicey,” Wees-Mun explained. “I can make a copy of everyone’s mental signature, but, you know, copies tend to degrade. The bio-matrix that makes up their ‘brains’ needs some work. Like, um, uh, a lot of work. They’ll pass pretty okay for about thirty-six hours. Then, they, uh, tend to start acting really unpredictably and rather wonky until they just shut down completely and revert to the original state.”
“Okay, okay,” Artie nodded. I could tell her brain was working overtime to figure out how to make this work to our advantage. “I can work with this. I can clone the nano-chip signatures into these androids and then add signal blockers for you guys while you are off world. Yeah, that just might work.”
“Um, sugar, what if people come by and want to see us?” Aurora pointed out.
“Way ahead of you, you vixen,” Artie continued, excitedly. “The attack gives us perfect cover. I’ll just tell everyone that you all are recovering from wounds in order to get ready for the next match. That Grizz and I have put you on lockdown.”
“You sneaky, sexy, minx you,” I echoed Artie’s statement to Aurora and gave the adorable brunette a kiss on the cheek.
“Come on, the rest of you, um, uh, give it, uh, a try,” Wees-Mun urged us to come over.
I glanced at PoLarr, Aurora, and Tempest who shook her head.
“I’m good,” Tempest said. “I can do that on my own.”
She closed her eyes, and a Tempest clone shook out of her like some kind of magic trick.
“Oh, man, I gotta babysit?” The Tempest clone said to Tempest Prime after she looked over at the androids.
“Sorry, kid, that’s the gig for right now,” Tempest Prime said back. It was very strange watching her have a conversation with herself.
PoLarr, Aurora, and I walked over to the androids and put our hands on their chests. In a blink we stared at genetically perfect replicas of ourselves.
“Quick question,” I said as a really juvenile and devious thought popped into my head. “Are these, uh, you know, anatomically correct?”
“Don’t even think about it, you trumpet canine,” Artie chided.
“Yeah, sugar, you can barely handle all of us as it is,” Aurora said with a wicked smile.
“Hey, a guy can fantasize right,” I said and held up my hands.
“Maybe we need to make copies of you?” Nova teased.
“Okay, yeah, now I see how weird that is,” I acknowledged once I thought about it from that perspective. “Some things are better left in my brain.”
“Yes, many things, Havak, many things are better left there,” PoLarr mocked good naturedly.
“Not to be a buzz kill,” Har’Gitay said as she cleared her throat to get our attention. “But, I am a police captain so, I’ll be the buzz kill. We are pretty much all set here, right? We still need to figure out how to get to Earth.”
“Yeah, I just need to get my mobile neural interface from the gym, and I can get the androids ready,” Artie said.
“I’m sorry, did you say, ‘we’ Captain?” I asked.
“Yes, I did.” Har’Gitay nodded. “I’m coming with you.”
“Really?” I asked, a little surprised. “How can you swing that? Aren’t you needed here?”
“I have some leave that I can take,” Har’Gitay explained. “I’ll blame it on the attack as well. You will need someone who knows the Skalle Furia. How they think. How they operate. That person is me. Plus, it’s time for a little payback.”
“No argument from me,” I agreed. “The more the merrier on this little sojourn. That okay with everyone else?”
“Oh, hell yes, sugar,” Aurora nodded. “I’d like to see the Captain here in action.”
“Another kick ass lady?” PoLarr chimed in. “What’s not to love.”
“She’s cool, I guess,” Tempest said in true Tempest fashion.
“She will be a welcome addition,” Nova echoed.
“Boo,” Artie pouted. “I’m always getting left behind.”
“Nonsense,” I encouraged. “You hold down the fort better than anyone. If not for you, we’d never be able to
sneak out. You and Grizz have the hard job of running interference for us.”
“If you say so,” Artie responded.
“I do.”
“Well, now that that is settled,” Har’Gitay said. “How the hell are we going to get to Earth.”
“You know?” I said with a grin. I’d been thinking about it since before we got to the station and I thought I just might have a solution. “I think I may just have an idea.”
Chapter Three
“Ack, ack-ack, aaaacccck, ack,” the ten foot long, two-and-a-half foot tall bright orange and day-glow blue millipede clicked at me.
“Aw, that’s very sweet,” I replied. “I missed you too, Poda.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s nice to see your dumb, human mug,” Phil added from beside her. Yes, Poda was a girl. Phil was a Telecultus, a fairly common alien race that emitted a pheromone that allowed them to pull familiar images, languages, sounds, cultural idioms, and stuff like that from other creatures’ brains, and mimic them. It made them naturally gifted transportation drivers, interpreters, envoys, emissaries, bartenders, and that kind of thing. For some reason Phil, and all the other Telcultises I’d met over the last few months all sounded like they were Long Island cab drivers like my mom’s cousin Jimmy Bouchi. “Although, I swore you were going to be dead in less than five minutes the last time I saw ya. Now I owe Poda like four hundred credits. You’re killing my wallet, buddy.”
“Sorry, not sorry, Phil,” I replied and shook Phil’s hand as we stood in the shade of a shrouded landing port in a not so hot part of Valiance City under the teardrop shaped spaceship that looked like it was made from melted chrome. Tendrils of blue electricity shimmered around the exhaust ports as the ship idled. “Thanks for helping us out.”
“Hey, don’t mention it,” Phil said with a wave of his hands. “Although, you did get the credits transferred, right? Okay, good. Just checking. As I mentioned, quite a few debts I gotta pay off.”
“Acck, ack ack ack ack,” Poda clicked from beside him. Phil and Poda had been the first two official aliens I had met what seemed like a lifetime ago after I’d just found out I was named as Earth’s champion. They had helped transport Artemis and I from Earth. It had been a wild ride to say the least.
“You ain’t gotta tell me, Poda,” I chuckled. My universal translator in the nano-chip in at the base of my skull didn’t turn her language into English like it did for pretty much anyone else, but I sort of knew what she was saying. “Phil does seem like the ‘spend it as soon as he earns it’ type.”
“What?” Phil said with a shrug. “I like nice things. So sue me. You guys got lucky that Poda and I were actually on the planet when you called. Just finished delivering a, shall we say, not so legal shipment of Earth novelties to some vendors who didn’t want to pay the exorbitant import fee. Hence why we are in this lovely space port.”
“I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear any of that,” Captain Har’Gitay said from behind me. She’d traded out her normal police captain attire for a sleek and not entirely unsexy combat SWAT looking outfit. It hugged her in all the right places and somehow still seemed to be incredibly functional.
“I’m going to pretend I never said it,” Phil shot back with a rakish grin. “Now I could stand here jabbing all day, but from what you said we need to make up some time… and space… see what I did there with the space time joke? Okay, you’ll get it later. We should load up and get going if we want to hit the jump point.”
“Why couldn’t we bring our weapons again?” Nova asked as everyone picked up various duffle bags and backpacks full of their gear. She was not very happy about it.
“While Earth has gotten a lot of technological advances from Team Havak’s wins,” Artemis started to explain as she began to set up a small, portable computer stand next to the ramp that led into the belly of the mirror surfaced spaceship we stood around. “They have explicitly not been given any weapon upgrades. As is common for the Forge of Heroes. If you show up there with your Paladinian Plasma Cannon and start shooting bad guys with it, the energy signature will alert bots in the central computer and blow our cover. You’ll have to make do with whatever weapons are available on Earth. Good news is that the Skalle Furia will be held to the same parameter. What is good for the weirdly long necked white female avian is also good for the weirdly long necked white male avian?”
“That’s a good one, Artie,” Phil said with a little laugh. “Nice to see English is still messin’ with ya.”
“Oh, it is infuriating,” Artie replied. She then tapped a few keys on the mobile computer station and a small holographic replica of our skill upgrade tree appeared in front our eyes. “We have a skill upgrade available from Marc’s last win. I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and pick and upload it now. Maybe there is something here that could help you.”
“Great idea, sugar,” Aurora drawled. “What do you think we should do, Marc?”
“Let me look,” I answered and let my eyes wander over the various skills. I had an idea of what I wanted but wasn’t sure if there was going to be anything like what I was thinking. After about thirty seconds of letting my gaze float over the skill tree, I found what I was looking for. “There. Urban Combat Specialist.”
“Oh, nice,” Artemis commented. “You’ll get upgraded squad tactics, room clearing, as well as hostage rescue capabilities.”
“Sounds good to me,” Nova said.
“Yupper,” PoLarr echoed.
“What are we waiting for?” Tempest grumbled.
“Urban Combat Specialist coming up,” Artie said and tapped a few keys. Then there was the familiar buzz at the base of my skull and a tingle in my nerves as the knowledge and skills were uploaded into the nano-chip. I wished we’d had a day or two to develop some muscle memory with the new skills, but from the information that I could feel rattling around in my skull, my team and I already had all the necessary training.
“All right, guys,” I said as the buzz faded. “Time to go.”
Artemis came up to me and gave me a huge kiss. Her body pressed into mine. While this wasn’t like our normal goodbye before I got beamed into some far flung alien arena where everything wanted to kill me it didn’t mean it was any less meaningful.
“Don’t you die on me,” she said as the kiss broke.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied with as much bravado as I could muster. I didn’t want her to see how nervous I actually was. I hadn't been home in over six months and now I was having to sneak onto my planet to try to mount a last minute rescue mission to save the President’s daughter. What else was new? “You and Grizz hold down the fort, okay. We’ll be back before you even have a chance to miss us.”
“We will,” Artie said as the rest of the team, Har’Gitay, and Chaz walked up into the belly of the spaceship like a bunch of characters in a cheesy Eighties action movie.
“Baba and I will run interference if necessary,” Fallon said. She and Baba had hung back for most of the activities since the President had arrived. “I’ll also put out some feelers. See if my information network can get you a lead.”
“Thanks, Fallon,” I tossed over my shoulder, the last one to walk up the ramp. “So long.”
Artie gave a brief, heartbreaking wave as the ramp closed. I held her gaze until the door blocked our view. I took a deep, steadying breath, turned and walked further into the ship.
It looked about the same as it did the first and last time I’d been on it, which was, in a word, fucking strange.
The walls, doorways, and light fixtures were all curved, organic shapes in muted earth tones that flowed from one thing to the next, while the machinery that filled the room was hard-angled and technocratic. Garish primary colors thrummed and glowed with unseen power inside their alien designed innards. It was like Salvadore Dali had gotten crazy high on shrooms and thought melted clocks were too pedestrian.
The passenger section held twelve small, individual-sized seat-pod looking contraptions.
The recliner chairs were made from some kind of light gray foam that seemed to undulate as if it were alive and could go from sitting upright to laying completely horizontal. The walls of the pod were curved, almost the shape of an elongated eggshell or almond, shiny, and the darkest black I had ever seen in my entire life, like highly polished volcanic glass. A small “entertainment” screen sat at chest level and had a repeating geometric shape floating across it as some sort of screen saver I assumed. A small, Phil-sized portal was at the front of the room and led into what looked like a cockpit.
The rest of the team had already taken their seats. Hell, Tempest was already asleep.
“Alright, kiddies,” Phil said from the cockpit as he craned his neck back toward us. Cotton candy colored gas began to pour from vents in the ceiling. “You all know the drill. Have a seat. Breathe deep. And get your brains ready for the mind melting thrill that is Higgs-Boson quantum tunneling. The jump point is about ten minutes after we break gravity. Come on, Poda. We need to get moving!”
“Ack, ack ack!” Poda clacked as she skittered down the aisle, so I plopped down in a seat next to Har’Gitay and the foam of the seat molded to my body and held me better than any seat belt could. Before Poda disappeared into the cockpit, she turned back toward me. “Ack… ack ack, ack acccckkkk, ack.”
“Oh, wow, thanks, Poda,” I said and felt my cheeks flush. “I have been working out.”
“You do have a way with the ladies, no matter what the species, don’t you?” Har’Gitay said from beside me.
“It’s a gift and a curse,” I shot back. I could feel the effects of the pink gas already. Apparently it spiked serotonin in the brain and prepared you for quantum tunneling, but it mostly just made me silly high. “Mostly a gift.”
“That is what I keep hearing,” Har’Gitay said with a goofy grin. “Ugh, I hate offworld traveling. I can feel myself getting all nice and lovey-dovey.”
“To infinity and beyond!” PoLarr yelled and startled Tempest. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Light weights,” Tempest yawned and then promptly went back to sleep.
