Forbidden World

by Jeremy Michelson

  “So what?” Tejoh said. The end of the dart gun caught on the upholstery fabric. He tugged at it, but it seemed firmly stuck.

  How embarrassing.

  Zek got a sly look on his face. Did he know about the dart gun? Or was the fool just overly pleased with his own cleverness at reading stupid, useless bulletins from central command?

  “There are rumors,” Zek said, “Not in the bulletins. I’ve heard from reliable sources that the Dendon Artifact was found on Earth. That a prince went there to retrieve it and was defeated by an Earth creature. Humans, or Terrans, they are called. They captured his ship and imprisoned him. There are rumors that the Terrans have retrieved the plans for the fabled Dendon faster than light star drive from the artifact.”

  Tejoh forgot about the dart gun.

  The Dendon Artifact.

  Faster than light star drive.

  A ship, appearing out of nowhere over Dendon. A cobbled together ship made from parts of a Don ship.

  He leaned back in the relaxation chair. Took a long sip from the glass of blood wine. Possibilities turned over in his mind. Profitable possibilities. A path to erasing his punishment. Perhaps even winning the Emperor’s favor.

  Though, if he himself possessed the Dendon Artifact, would he even need the Emperor?

  He put the heavy crystal glass down. It made a solid thunk against the wood table. He cast an appraising eye over Commander Zek. Perhaps this young crewman wasn’t such a fool after all. He might even be useful.

  There was one way to find out.

  "Commander Zek. Have you reported this to central command yet?"

  Zek grinned, revealing his clean, white, sharply pointed teeth.

  “I have brought this news to you first, Captain,” he said, “I await your orders.”

  Not so foolish.

  Excellent.

  Captain Tejoh picked up the glass and considered its glittering facets against the dark red blood wine.

  “Set course for Dendon,” Tejoh said, “We will investigate this ourselves. No sense in bothering central command about a defective buoy. Correct?”

  Zek grinned and nodded.

  “At your command, Captain.”

  The commander stepped out of the room. Tejoh turned and looked to the space darkened porthole.

  Perhaps this mission wouldn’t be so boring after all.

  Three

  Chris

  Liz came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. I leaned my head over and nuzzled her arm.

  For a couple minutes, we just stared out the view screen at the planet slowly rotating below us. The world was reddish gray with large patches of brackish green.

  It was heartbreaking.

  And it was more than just me projecting that emotion within me. I felt memories stirring that weren’t mine. And a deep, burning anger. A rage that threatened to spill out of me.

  I told the Dendon to calm down. I needed to be able to think.

  The roiling emotions subsided. Somewhat.

  The command deck of our little, stinky ship was a bit on the cramped side. It was designed for a small crew. Which, if it were just Liz and me, would have been perfect.

  However…

  Our third wheel rolled into the room.

  “Hey, that’s it, huh? What a dump,” T&T said.

  Titus Tavin. Supposedly he was a U.S. Space Corp mechanical specialist. Here to help us keep the ship running.

  Liz and I both knew he was covert ops. Planted here to keep an eye on us. Make sure we found the goodies. And doubly made sure we brought them back to Earth.

  Oh, and if T&T could find a way to kill me dead permanently, that would be awesome too.

  How did I know all this?

  Because the moron had a secret hyper-radio in his cabin. The aliens of SixUnion had long ago figured out instantaneous communication across space. And now we lowly humans had it too. We had the official hyper-radio and then T&T had his super secret special radio that Liz and I didn’t know about.

  Weren’t supposed to know about.

  Except they didn’t understand that when I connected with the ship, I connected with the ship. Anything that used ship’s power, anything that used equipment connected to the ship, I was aware of.

  Including stupid secret hyper-radios that asshole spies used to double cross Liz and me with.

  I’d discovered the hyper-radio in his cabin within five minutes of boarding the ship. A few seconds after that, I instructed the ship to record all transmissions to and from said radio for my later perusal.

  Most conversations went like this:

  General Mattany: Have you arrived yet? Give me a status update.

  T&T: Still on our way. He says he’s taking the scenic route. Otherwise nothing.

  General Mattany: Have you figured out a way to extract the device from him yet?

  T&T: Still working on it. I figure I’ll get in good with his girlfriend and she’ll tell me.

  Oh man. Get in good with my girlfriend? Dude, you are so asking to go on a spacewalk without a suit.

  General Mattany: Be careful. She’s dangerous. Unpredictable.

  T&T: Don’t worry. I’ll have her eating out of my hand in no time. Women can’t help but throw themselves at me.

  General Mattany: (Groan) Just stick to the mission. Mattany out.

  I had Liz listen on on that one. Her luscious lips curved into a scary smile.

  Throw themselves at him, do they? We’ll see about that.

  T&T was not good at making friends.

  Liz's hand tightened on my shoulder as T&T walked onto the command deck and pronounced the dead world of Dendon a dump. Fortunately, she wasn't wearing her armor. Otherwise she would have crushed my shoulder. Which the Dendon inside me would have reconstructed. But it still would have hurt like hell.

  Like usual, Liz wore a light robe that she could throw off at a moments notice. The only other thing she wore–which was permanently adhered to her chest, just below the hollow of her throat, was a small circle of gold colored metal.

  That innocent looking circle was the other Dendon artifact that survived the crash landing on Earth millennia ago. It belonged to the dead Dendon king’s bodyguard.

  All Liz had to do was shuck off the robe (for some reason the armor wouldn’t work unless she was stark naked) and touch the gold circle. In an instant, gold would flow out over her body, completely encasing it. Turning her into a stylized golden statue.

  And making her capable of kicking the living crap out of just about anything.

  Which came in really handy.

  It might come in handy even sooner if T&T kept pissing us off.

  “So when are we going down to this craphole?” T&T asked.

  Liz squeezed my shoulder even harder. I winced. Even without her armor, she had quite the grip. I patted her hand and the pressure eased. Slightly.

  “We’ll go down when we’re ready,” I said, “I’m still scanning the planet.”

  Which was true. I was having the ship map the entire surface. And doing whatever deep scans the ship’s lousy sensors could manage. Our ship was an unholy marriage of Don, Blinky, and human technology. None of which got along all that well.

  Add to that Dr. Kincaid’s version of the Dendon quantum lattice drive, and I considered us lucky to have arrived here in one piece. Or not turned inside out.

  It didn’t help being constantly distracted by Captain Jerkwad.

  “Man, I hope that place smells better than this ship,” T&T said, “I almost took a shit in my cabin just to make it smell better in there.”

  Thank goodness the Dendon had invented a faster than light space drive. If Liz and I had to spend weeks cooped up in such a small space with that guy…

  As it was, I had made the journey take a bit longer than it should have. We could have come directly to Dendon from Earth. But I wanted to do a few tests. Jumping out to Mars, Jupiter and Alpha Centauri before making the long leap to Dendon.

  Turns out there’s a pre
tty popular bar and grill on a station in orbit around Alpha Centauri. The name was unpronounceable, but the food wasn’t bad. I didn’t ask what was made out of. The Dendon assured me it wasn’t toxic to humans, though.

  Kind of tasted like chicken wings.

  “Maybe I should go down first,” Liz said.

  I gave her a pleading look. Please, god, don’t leave me alone with this creep. One of us was going to die. I really wanted it to be him, too.

  “I’d rather we stuck together,” I said, “You and I at least.”

  “Yeah, General Mattany wanted me to stick with you guys like stink on shit,” T&T said.

  His third excrement reference in less than a minute. He had some kind of fascination with poop. He talked about it all the time.

  “I’d really like to get out of here,” Liz said.

  I gave her my saddest puppy dog look.

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

  Phew. “Just give me another couple hours to scan and analyze,” I said, “Then we can set it down.”

  “Doesn’t that thing in you have all kinds of maps of this dump?” T&T asked.

  Which was kind of a reasonable question. I deeply resented reasonable questions coming from him. It made him slightly intelligent. Which didn’t seem possible.

  When Liz and I were (theoretically) alone, we whispered to each other about whether T&T was putting on an Oscar worthy act. Or if he really was naturally annoying and stupid. We’d come to the conclusion that at least part of it had to be an act. There was no way Mattany would put such a flaming idiot on such a critical mission.

  Not unless he was related to him in some way.

  Which would have been even worse. I’d already been quadruple crossed by Mattany’s daughter Julie. My former fiancé.

  Maybe T&T was some sort of cousin, six times removed.

  Who had at least one intelligent question now and then.

  “The maps the Dendon has are all thousands of years out of date,” I said.

  "Yeah, but it wasn't like there were little alien guys running around putting up new shacks and paving roads, right?" T&T asked, "They're all dead, right?"

  Damnit. More intelligent questions. The jerk was on a roll.

  Though calling the Dendon little alien guys wasn’t accurate. The Dendons were tall and slender with ebony skin and silver eyes.

  “Yes, and I want to see if anything’s changed,” I said, “See what’s collapsed. There’s weather. Earthquakes. Dendon might have had visitors who’ve made their mark on the place. I’d rather take a few precautions before jumping in with both feet.”

  T&T shrugged. "Whatever. Sounds like a waste of time," he said, "We should just get down so we can get out of this shitty tin can. Breath some fresh air."

  "You won't want to breathe the air down there," Liz said, "Such as it might be."

  “Why not?”

  She rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. Pointedly ignoring him.

  I sighed and pointed to the brackish green patches on the planet in front of us.

  “The Don makers destroyed everything that was alive on the planet. People. Plants. Bacteria,” I said, “No plants, no oxygen. It’s been a couple thousand years, so there’s still a little oxygen, but not enough to keep us alive. There’s lots of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. It’s a toxic brew for us. Liz’s armor can filter it for her. And I…can adapt. You’ll have to wear a space suit.”

  And I hope it got a big hole in it and he choked to death.

  No, I shouldn’t hope for things like that. That wasn’t nice.

  Maybe a meteor would fall on him.

  “That really sucks donkey balls,” T&T said, “I don’t get why we’re even here. The other creepy crawlies must have stripped this place bare by now.”

  I didn’t disagree with him. In fact, I agreed wholeheartedly with him. To his face. I’d said as much to General Mattany, too. The Don and the Blinkies probably went over the planet with a fine-toothed comb, trying to dig up the Dendon’s technological secrets.

  The Dendon had technology that the other races were still trying to figure out. Like Liz’s golden armor. The Don had their own version of the armor. My ex-fiancé Julie had some Don armor that was scary as hell.

  But it was far inferior to the Dendon armor.

  As Liz had proved when she ripped the Don armor off Julie.

  So if the place had been stripped clean, why had I agreed to come here?

  Because there were still mysteries on this dead world. The Dendon device inside me had insinuated knowledge of secret areas. Places that the Don and Blinkies wouldn’t have found. Unless they stumbled on them by accident. Which was highly unlikely.

  There was also the matter of the Dendon space fleet.

  According to SixUnion records the fleet had been ordered to fly into the sun to keep the ships from being captured by the enemy.

  That bit of information had come from the king of Dendon. Passed on in his transmission to the capital world about the whole, having-his-world-murdered-thing, and he wanted to lodge a protest thing.

  Except, my buddy, the Dendon A.I. thing-a-ma-gig told me that wasn’t quite true. The crew of the fleet had been infected. They took the ships…somewhere.

  Which meant there was a possibility that somewhere, out in the dark, was a fleet of highly advanced Dendon warships.

  Just waiting for someone to claim them.

  A possibility that scared the hell out of me.

  I didn’t want Dons, Blinkys or humans claiming any of Dendon’s weapons. None of the spacefaring races seemed grown up enough to be trusted with that stuff. It would be like handing bombs and machine guns to toddlers.

  Only bad could come of it.

  Which meant I needed to do something about it.

  Except my Dendon buddy wasn’t telling me where exactly the nasty stuff was. I couldn’t help but get the feeling the Dendon device was setting me up for something.

  Yay me.

  Four

  Chris

  I choose to set us down in the capital city.

  I sat in the command chair, my fingers pressed against the bare metal of the console in front of me. The displays were lit up with vectors and speed and altitude, along with information about the health of various ship’s systems.

  I couldn’t care less, though.

  I was the ship. And I was flying.

  Liz was next to me. Keeping one eye on the viewscreen, and another on T&T behind us. Though the cabin cameras, I was watching him too. He stood in the doorway, gripping the doorjamb in a white-knuckle grip, his eyes wide and his stupid face pale.

  The ship wasn’t all that aerodynamic, so the ride was a bit rough.

  Or maybe I wasn’t dampening the turbulence as much as I could have. T&T wasn’t all that fond of flying, I’d found out. There also wasn’t another chair on the command deck for him to strap into. I’d suggested he stay in his cabin. But he declined.

  Probably under orders to keep an eye on us.

  Oh well, guess he gets to enjoy a little turbulence then.

  I doubted he was going to make a move on us before the ship set down, though. So I let my consciousness slide into the ship. And enjoy the ride.

  I could feel the world's thin atmosphere streaming over the ship's hull. Felt the friction warm the ship's stubby wings. I adjusted the shielding and the heat backed off. We couldn't afford to have a breakdown.

  No one was going to come give us a tow here.

  There was a bit of a taboo with the other races of SixUnion. Everyone politely pretended the Dendon had never existed. They ignored it. Most references to the Dendon had been wiped out over time. It was only with great reluctance that the Stickmen had allowed me to access a portion of SixUnion’s records about the Dendon.

  Most of which were either uninformative, or just plain wrong.

  So if we crashed or had a mechanical failure we couldn’t fix, we might be stuck here. Forever.

  Which we wouldn’t have t
o be conscious for all of it. Even with Liz’s armor and my, um…abilities, we wouldn’t be able to survive for long on a dead world.

  Our only consolation would be that T&T would die long before we would.

  The ship’s engines stuttered and caught. I did a quick diagnostic on them. They were having a hard time with the atmosphere. Cheap-ass Blinky engines. The Don ones had been toast after the fight, so we’d had to replace them with ones the Blinkies gave us.

  They didn’t work very well. Like most of the crap Blinkies made.

  I rerouted systems to send more power to the engines. The L-Drive produced tons of power, but we had to use crappy Blinky inverters, so we only got a trickle.

  I was starting to have second thoughts about the hastiness of this mission. Maybe we could have waited a couple years and built something better.

  Patience was not a quality humans had in abundance.

  “Problems?” Liz said.

  I dragged a sliver of my consciousness back. Most of me was still fighting systems. I saw through my actual eyes the numerous red and orange lights blinking on the console. Liz could fly the ship, too. But not the way I could.

  “This ship sucks,” I said.

  And it smelled bad. Even now, the rancid cat food odor still lingered in my nostrils. An unnecessary distraction.

  “Holy crap, are we going to crash!” T&T said.

  Yet another unnecessary distraction.

  “What can I do?” Liz asked.

  “Do you have a new ship?”

  “What can I do that is possible without pulling a new ship out of my ass?” Liz said.

  “Take over navigation,” I said, “I’m trying to stave off a cascading system failure.”

  “Lovely,” Liz said. She put her hands on the command console and brought up the controls.

  “Failure cascade?” T&T said, “That’s bad right? We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  Well, if we crashed and only he died, would that be so bad? I pushed the thought out of my mind. I needed to concentrate on ship’s systems. I reached out to the power inverter, trying to tweak a little more out of it. Without overheating it to the point of failure. It was already in the red zone.