That thought made him wonder whatever happened to that little ship. He had created it as a test case to see if his instantaneous travel system worked. It had worked so well that a race of tiny people found the ship, took it over, and then tried to get back to the big ship so that they could thank them properly. The little fellow in charge, Liverbing, had been very helpful to the Platoon F crew during their last adventure, and it was the ship’s engineer, a miniaturized replica of Geezer himself, who had unraveled cloaking technology. When they had parted, the other robot—named Goozer—was also working on a transporter. They had promised to share successes with each other, but since Geezer had heard nothing, he could only assume that nothing was found yet. Geezer had resolved to get in touch with Goozer at some point just to check on things, but there never seemed to be enough hours in the day. He couldn’t help but wonder if the Overseers knew about that miniature crew, too, though.
He shrugged in his mechanical way and began putting together a new wiring configuration, but stopped because he noticed that Vool had entered the room. She seemed to be snooping around, which was odd since Geezer held no secrets.
“Something I can help you with?” he asked as diplomatically as he could manage.
“You could mind your own business, tin-man.”
“Wow,” Geezer said. “I haven’t been called that in a while, but then I haven’t been around a lot of classy ladies recently, either.”
“Complimenting me isn’t going to make me think more highly of you, metal-boy.”
“Metal-boy? That’s a new one.” Geezer shook his head at her. “It’s funny how you Overseers think you’re so smart, so highly evolved, and yet here you are bandying about slurs like you’re just a shade over ape.” She didn’t reply. “What the hell do you want in my engineering room, anyway?”
“I’m here to watch and judge,” she answered as she continued searching for whatever it was she was searching for. “That means all parts of this ship and its crew. You just keep your mouth shut and do your job and I’ll keep my report about you to a minimum.”
“Ass,” Geezer said.
“Everybody has one.”
“I don’t,” Geezer pointed out, “unless you consider the company presently in this room.”
“Impressive,” said Vool with a huge, fake smile. “Did you think that up all by yourself, Mr. Steel?”
If it weren’t for the fact that Vool was essentially a god and could deactivate him without much effort, and the additional fact that he was completely useless in the realm of fighting, he would have popped her one, square in the snoot.
“Just do what you’ve got to do and then get out, lady.”
“I don’t need your permission, you aluminum can.”
“Unbelievable,” Geezer said as he turned back to his work.
He’d suddenly thought of a few new places that he could stick some wires.
ABOUT TO DEPART
Everyone except Vool had their look in place. Seeing the world through all of the colors that made up his kaleidoscope contact lenses was definitely odd, but it was easily manageable when compared to carrying his infernal tail around. It took a solid 30 minutes of practice to quit knocking things off the shelves before Harr finally got the hang of it. Ridly picked it up immediately, of course, and Jezden’s tail was so short that he didn’t have to worry about a thing.
“You’re sure this thing isn’t going to fall off?” Ridly asked.
“If it does,” answered Moon, “part of your bottom is going to come off with it. You’ve seen how the captain has been knocking his all over the place. If his stays on after all that wear and tear, I can’t imagine why yours would be an issue.” He turned toward Harr. “No offense, thir.”
“None taken.”
“At least Jezden got his wish,” Ridly said, pointing at the tiny tail hanging off the back of the android.
“His wish was to not have one at all,” Moon replied as he walked over to check on Vool, who was in the heating chamber that each one of them had to endure before their tails could be affixed, “but Enthign Middleton found that the smallest recorded tail on Kallian was just under twelve inches in length. So I set Jezden’s to precithely twelve inches.”
“Should keep him balanced, anyway,” Harr said under his breath.
“Thorry, thir?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Harr was now looking through the glass that separated his team from Vool. “So, did Geezer give you that tracking device for Vool’s tail?”
“He did, thir.” Moon picked up the tail, keeping it just under the lip of the window, and showed him where the miniature device was embedded. Vool would be none the wiser. “As soon as she’s warmed up enough, I’ll attach it and she’ll be traceable. Geezer also put the cameras in her contact lenses. They are incredibly thin and cover the entire surface of the lens, so she’ll never even know that we can see what she’s doing.”
“Perfect.” Harr turned to Sandoo, who had been standing there the entire time with his trademark look of anxiety. “I’m counting on you and Geezer to keep tabs on her every move, Commander. I don’t trust her. She’s too flippant about death and killing.”
“Like Yek, sir,” Sandoo said, referring to the crazy operative who had been on their first mission.
“Exactly.”
“Nice tail, Captain,” Jezden said as he walked into the room.
“Marks me as the leader, Ensign.”
“Marks you as a dork,” Jezden said with a laugh. “Looks ridiculous.”
“To us, yes,” Harr retorted, even though he couldn’t help but agree, “but to the people we’re visiting, it would be more ridiculous if we didn’t have them at all.”
“Well, I’m glad that mine is as small as it is.” A grin came over his face. “Now that’s something I’d never thought I’d say.”
The heating chamber dinged to let everyone know that Vool’s body temperature had climbed to the required level for Moon to attach the tail. The lieutenant shooed everyone out of the room so that he could get to work. This gave Harr the perfect alibi to visit engineering.
Getting there wasn’t much fun since climbing down a ladder with the big, whopping tail hanging off his backside was quite a chore. It made him wonder how he was going to manage dealing with other things, such as bodily issues. One more reason that being an android would have had its advantages.
“Hey, Geezer,” Harr said as he carefully walked into the room.
“Nice tail, honcho.”
“Any update on the map for Kallian?”
“Curr’s taken care of getting that data, but I’ve been working on hooking everything into your contact lens. Trickier than I’d expected. By the time you land, I’ll have completed uploading all of their schematics to it. Don’t have time to section it out.”
“Is that a bad thing?” asked Harr.
“Just means that wherever you are, you’ll see an overlay in the upper-right of your vision describing pretty much anything you’re looking at.”
“In addition to the maps, you mean?”
“Yep.”
“What kind of things are we talking here, Geezer?”
“Well, you’ll see stuff like the ingredients of a plate of food, for example.”
“Couldn’t I just see that by looking at the plate?”
“Deeper than that, honcho. I’m talking about it detailing the fat, sugars, and all that stuff.”
Harr stood back, admiring his engineer’s craftiness. “Actually, that sounds like a pretty damned useful tool.”
“Yeah?” Geezer’s eyes glowed for a second.
“Anyway,” Harr said before Geezer could go off on one of his marketing tangents, “as I was telling Sandoo, I want you both to keep an eye on everything Vool does.”
“Already planning on it, big cat. Don’t trust that one at all. She’s a complete assh…”
“I know how you feel about her, Geezer,” Harr interrupted. “Sadly, I share in that sentiment, which is why I want he
r under constant surveillance.”
“Consider it done, chief. If she so much as shits sideways, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Actually,” Harr said with a look of disgust, “I think I’ll pass on knowing that much.”
“Oh? Okay, one sec, then.” He typed something on his screen. “Done. We’ll leave out bathroom habits in our report. I sometimes forget how squeamish you humans get about things like that.”
“Wait, you were seriously planning to tell me about…” He paused, closed his eyes for a moment, and then shook his head. “Never mind. Were you able to get the identification badges?”
“Sure did.” The robot turned and grabbed a tray that contained a small stack of IDs. “Got the perfect M.O. for you, too.”
“Oh?”
“Well, Middleton gets the credit, really,” Geezer said while fishing through the badges. Chances are that Curr was the one to really get the credit if Middleton was claiming it. “He did a little research and found out that there’s a group of inspectors slated to arrive at the W.A.R.P.E.D. building this afternoon. Once I got the full details, I intercepted their transport unit—something called an ‘arrow plane’—and had it grounded on a deserted island. I also cut off all their communications. They’ll have no way to tell anyone what’s happened, so you’ll be able to take their places with ease.”
Harr thought about this for a moment. “Won’t there be someone waiting for them on the other side?”
“According to all the records we’ve found, nobody even knows what they look like. Apparently, they keep all inspectors under a strict rule of anonymity so that they can’t be bribed or threatened. Helps ensure non-biased testing and verification. According to the documents, they even undergo plastic surgery to change their appearance at the end of each inspection.”
“That’s awfully convenient,” said Harr.
“It surely is,” Geezer said with the equivalent of a robotic cough. “They can only do a set number of projects, too, or they’ll end up with skin so tight that they look like they’re permanently smiling.”
“Well, that’s creepy.”
“Yeah. Anyway, my plan is that you’ll each be assigned the identity of their inspectors. You’ll get their names and credentials, just in case someone does a call-in verification or something.”
“I thought these people were kept anonymous?”
“Not from the sleuthing skills on this ship, prime. Our tech is a fair bit more advanced than theirs.”
“Brilliant.”
“Only way I know, big cat.”
“One last question,” Harr asked before leaving the room, “did you locate that tracking device that Frexle put on the ship?”
“Can’t find it anywhere, chief.”
“Well, keep an eye out, will you?”
“No can do, honcho,” Geezer said dryly. “I need them both in if I’m going to be productive.”
Harr looked at his engineer and sighed. “Everyone’s a comedian.”
THE ARRIVAL
It used to be dicey flying a shuttle down to a planet’s surface, but ever since Geezer had hooked up the cloaking technology that Goozer had shared with him, landings were as stealthy as slipping past a sleeping sloth.
They’d landed just outside of the city in a manmade recreational area that the map named “Central Hangout.” At first, Harr was concerned by this name because it implied that it would be overrun with people. Life scans showed the opposite. There were very few people in the area. This could have had something to do with local time being morning, which Harr assumed meant that everyone was on their way to work.
“Everyone has their translators connected?” he asked as he verified his own was working. They all nodded in response. “Good. Now, we all know the drill here.”
“I don’t,” said Vool.
“True. Okay, it’s simple. Don’t act like…well, you. Pretend you’re normal.”
Vool crossed her arms and undoubtedly began thinking up many clever ways to end Harr’s life. He didn’t care. Fact was that completing this mission was a long shot, so she’d probably get her wish anyway. But until that fateful moment, he was going to keep being the captain of this crew, and that meant that Vool had to be in a constant state of questioning things.
Ridly finished up her ship check, setting it to return to the Reluctant once they had departed. “Scans in the immediate area show no signs of life,” she said as Harr watched over her shoulder. “Shuttle is clear. We can hop out and he’ll fly back to the Reluctant.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jezden, “did you just refer to the shuttle as a he?”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Ridly. “You all refer to the Reluctant as she, so why can’t I call this one a he?”
“Because everyone knows that ships are female, that’s why,” Jezden answered. “The captain is a man so the ship is a woman. Just how it works.”
“You’re walking on eggshells, Jezden,” Harr warned him.
“Why?”
“Because you’re an idiot,” Ridly said. “Not all captains are men, you know? And who’s to say that Captain Harr isn’t gay?”
“Uh, me?” Harr replied incredulously.
“Was just making a point, Captain,” Ridly said apologetically. “I didn’t mean to out you like this.”
“No, I am not gay,” Harr said more anxiously than he should have. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay. I mean, I have gay friends.”
“They’re called boyfriends,” Vool said.
“Not like that,” said Harr. “Forget it.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Ridly.
Jezden gave Harr the once over. “Come to think of it, she’s right.”
“Wait a second here…”
“No, really, you did serve under Rear Admiral Parfait,” Jezden said and then giggled at his own sentence.
“He was my boss!”
“Those meetings tended to run a little long,” Jezden mused.
“It does look suspicious, sir,” Ridly stated with a shrug.
“Yeah, okay,” Jezden said, “so the Reluctant’s a he, too, then.”
Harr just stood there, blinking at them both.
Vool seemed to be enjoying the entire exchange. If nothing else, she’d cracked a smile for the first time since they’d met. You would think that her smile would have taken her already-amazing looks and pleasurably intensified them. It didn’t. She had the smile of a hungry wolf.
“I’m going to use the can while you idiots get things ready,” Vool said.
“Let me just state for the record that I am not gay,” Harr said stiffly the moment that Vool closed the lavatory door.
“You said that pretty stiffly,” Jezden noted. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Captain. Explains a lot, too.”
“If I were gay, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it, but I’m…” Harr stopped replaying Jezden’s last sentence in his mind. “Explains what, exactly?”
“Well, your lack of bedding down with any women, for one.”
“You may recall, Ensign, that I’m the only human on the Reluctant.”
“So?”
“Well, who am I supposed to have relations with?” Harr asked incredulously.
“Ridly?” suggested Jezden.
“No, thank you,” Ridly stated a little too quickly. “No offense, Captain. You’re an all-right-looking guy and all, but I don’t do gay guys.”
“I’m not gay!”
“There’s always Lieutenant Moon,” Jezden said. “Best of both worlds, sort of. I mean, I’m only into chicks, but with the recent light being shed on your particular interests…”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Harr commanded as he walked to the back hatch. “You two can think what you want about me. I honestly don’t care. Let’s just get to business and quit the chatter.”
“Quick to anger,” Ridly said sideways.
“I’m telling ya,” Jezden agreed as Harr reached for the container that held their badges, “things are al
l starting to fall into place now.”
Harr grabbed the container and forced himself calm. What did he care what they thought about his sexuality? The fact was that he had sorely missed the touch of a woman. Unfortunately, no matter how he might try, he could never see an android as anything more than a sophisticated computer. At least not in the way of intimacy. Yes, they were all very human in their own ways; and it was true that even the homeliest among them (Curr) was still better looking than most actual humans; and it was also true that if Lieutenant Moon had instead decided to become one of the female personalities who originally shared his mental space, Harr would have likely tried to build a relationship with her. But Moon hadn’t, and so that was that. Ridly, good looking or not, was simply not his type.
Vool stepped out of the restroom as Harr pushed the current conversation out of his mind and set to focus on the task at hand.
“Listen up,” he said in a voice that conveyed the “gay talk” was over, “Geezer was able to get us identification cards and credentials. We’re going to play the part of systems inspectors on this warp test. Our job, as far as the Kallians are concerned, is to make sure everything about the test is safe.” He glanced over at Vool. “Obviously, our actual goal is to sabotage things, but only on my orders. Is everyone clear?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Vool said as the other two nodded.
“Good. Now, let me hand these out.” He pulled out the first badge and handed it to Ridly. “You’re going to be Dr. Fleeka Baloo.”
“Ooh,” Ridly said with a big grin, “I like that name.”
“Swell,” said Harr as he handed out the next badge. “Vool, you’re going to be Dr. Grayle Piffer.”
Platoon F: Quadology: Missions 6, 7, 8, and 9 (Platoon F eBook Bundle 2) Page 7
