"Captain." Commander Wan's grip on his arm was firm but polite, as was her tone. "The media are recording you, sir."
He faced her with eyes blazing. "They're not really there!" Shocked gasps erupted from the audience, but it didn't matter. None of this was real—except for the pain throbbing under his skull. "Do you remember this guy?" He jerked a thumb at Steve.
"Who?" She frowned quizzically at the wall.
Steve wasn't there anymore. He had conveniently disappeared—or had become invisible. His powers weren't exactly easy to fathom.
"Never mind." Quasar squeezed his temples and rubbed between his eyes. "Of course you wouldn't remember. We haven't gone there yet."
"Sir?" She released his arm.
"The Epsilon Seven Star Cluster." He winked at her. "Don't worry, I won't spoil it for you. But it's quite a story." He couldn't resist. "You see, there's this massive gaseous entity that guards the planet, and it's able to take physical form by scanning the mind of whoever sets foot on the surface. It determines the form it should take based on the person's preconceived concepts of wisdom and authority. For you, perhaps it would take the form of a United World prime minister. As for me, apparently I have an unreasonable tendency to believe anything spoken by an elderly man with an oaken staff. So that's how the gas manifests itself." As an afterthought, he added, "And his name is Steve."
Commander Wan blinked up at him. "We're scheduled to leave space dock in less than an hour, sir." Her subtext was clear enough: Don't you think it's a little late in the game to suffer a complete mental breakdown? "The delegates would like to present you with a token of their appreciation."
"Right." That much he remembered, and he decided that perhaps the best way to wake himself up would be to play-act the scene through to its natural conclusion.
So he returned to the stage with great leaps and bounds for show, much to the appreciation and renewed applause of the audience. The Prime Minister herself awaited him there, along with her senior staff and other high-ranking officials from both the military and scientific communities. The launch of the Effervescent Magnitude was a joint venture on their part. Together, they had managed to create a vessel able to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy and protect Earth's interests in the process.
"To Captain Bartholomew Quasar and his crew," the Prime Minister began, smiling broadly and winking at Quasar, who nodded to Commander Wan and his bridge officers standing in the front row of the audience. He recognized Dr. Yune and his weapons officer, yet there was no sign of Hank. It was odd to relive a time when the very hairy biped hadn't been acting helmsman. Quasar had difficulty remembering what life had been like without him. "With our deepest appreciation and respect," the Prime Minister continued, "may you explore where few have dared to travel, and may you serve Earth and its people in all you do. The future of our world depends on your success, Captain Quasar, and we know there is no one else more capable of seeing this mission to its end than you."
Quasar nodded at the word end, hoping it would launch him back to reality—one involving the search for a certain If Only elixir and a crew that was steadily disappearing, one member at a time.
Episode 4: In the Line of Fire
Captain Quasar closed his eyes briefly with what he hoped passed for an expression of humility in the face of the Prime Minister's high praise, but when he opened them again, he found that he was no longer in the United World Hall of Heroes.
Instead, he found himself cringing bleary-eyed in the hazy residue of multiple heat ray blasts, crouching behind a freight container in an unfamiliar ship's cargo hold. Beside him, Hank ducked low and growled in disgust.
"They've got us pinned down!" Quasar heard himself state the obvious. Bulkhead rivets above him melted, oozing down the steel interior, releasing spurts of air pressure into the vacuum of space beyond. "We won't make it out alive!"
"Humph," grunted Hank.
"That's all you have to say?" He returned fire over the freight container, then frowned at the gun in his hand. He'd been unarmed on stage with the Prime Minister. When had there been a chance to grab a pulse pistol? Or to change his attire, for that matter? He no longer wore his dress uniform. But then again, this was the way with dreams, he supposed. Things just sort of happened without a whole lot of forethought. Like what came out of his mouth next: "You honestly want that grunt to be your last word?" It was as though his body was on autopilot; his mind was just along for the ride.
Hank reloaded a clip of pulse-rounds into a Cody 52 with two hands and gripped a loaded atom rifle with his other pair. "I don't plan on dying with you again." He fired a volley at their adversaries, hidden behind large freight canisters that flashed and fizzled with every blast.
"You're not referring to—" Quasar cursed at the helmsman's slow nod. "Well, how was I supposed to know cold fusion reactors were unreliable?"
"Humph." Translation: It was common knowledge on Carpethria.
Quasar ducked as another ray singed the air above him. "So we died. Big deal. We're here to fight another day!"
Captain Quasar frowned at his own words. This moment in time—unlike the scene on the stage in the Hall of Heroes—was different. He didn't know what was going on now; he had no idea where they were or what circumstances had brought them here. Had the cold fusion reactor actually gone kaput and killed everyone on board?
Hank muttered something under his breath, garbled by his unique pair of throats that sometimes gave his voice an oddly harmonic quality. "No black hole to save our butts this time."
Quasar stared at his very hairy helmsman. Taking a great deal of effort, he forced his mouth to frame the words: "Explain yourself." It felt like he was moving through thick gel. His voice had slowed to a deep, sluggish moan, but the question came out clearly enough, and with a quizzical look, Hank paused for the sake of a little exposition.
Apparently, when the experimental cold fusion reactor aboard the Magnitude had imploded and torn a massive hole in space-time, they'd found themselves on the other side of the galaxy in the grip of a black hole, which had fortuitously put everything back together again— the ship, the entire crew complement, even the rip in space-time—thanks to an intense gravity well. The reactor, however, remained inoperable.
Now the Magnitude had to run on impulse power until they reached the nearest starbase for repairs. There would be no chance of another space-time disaster as long as they avoided near-lightspeed travel like a pimply plague.
But here and now, with these rivets melting and the air pressure decreasing, it wouldn't be long until they started losing their eyeballs—always the first to go in a situation like this.
"So what do you suggest?" Quasar fired a few more rounds at no target in particular.
Hank eyed him for a moment. "Sure you're okay, sir? You get bumped on the head or something?"
"I'm fine," he forced out.
Hank shrugged his superior set of shoulders. "We're running short on ammo."
"Then we'll fight them hand to hand!" Whoever they are, the captain mused.
"We'll be a bloody mess on the bulkhead. Those rivets are dissolving with every blast."
"I was hoping you hadn't noticed that." Another heat ray sent the captain diving to the floor.
"Humph." Hank's fur started to reach laterally toward the wall as it buckled with the increased suction. "You could answer for what you've done, and maybe they'll let us live."
"I didn't do anything!" Not that he could remember, anyway. When would he wake up from this confounded dream? It was beginning to frustrate the heck out of him.
"Humph." Hank nodded toward their adversaries who obviously disagreed. "They should've known better than to think they could hold us in their brig."
Quasar blinked as the situation became clearer. At least he was beginning to understand what was going on. "Then it serves them right that we escaped."
"And look where it got us."
Quasar released some sort of strangled battle cry, more out of fr
ustration than anything else, and emptied the last of his rounds.
"Another," he demanded, thrusting an open palm toward Hank.
The hairy helmsman had just slapped an atom clip into his rifle. "That was the last one," he apologized.
"Already? Gah! Give it here." Tugging the bulky weapon from Hank's left hands, Quasar cracked the charger bolt and fired up both barrels. "Let's see how they like it hot," he growled.
Hank's eyes widened upon hearing the rifle's high-pitched thrum. "Captain, you're not considering—"
"It's our only shot at getting out of here alive."
"But a surge blast will—"
A surge blast? Was Captain Quasar's dream-self out of his freaking mind?
Episode 5: Troublesome Interlopers
"Captain Quasar, lay down your weapons!" boomed a voice imbued with authority. "Or our heat rays will take out the wall behind you. Without pressure suits, your remains will splatter across the exterior buffer panel. Please spare us the disgusting task of scraping them off."
"What about them?" Quasar said to Hank. "Won't they explode, too?"
Hank shook his head. "They're wearing suits."
"Gah!" Quasar cried.
"Should we take that as your last word?" replied the voice of authority.
Quasar tossed the whining rifle out into the open, and it slid across the floor, spinning end to end. Hank covered his face with all four hairy hands and grumbled, "Not again." But the rifle didn't explode in an all-devouring ball of light.
Quasar's dream-self winked at the Carpethrian helmsman and raised both arms high. "Don't shoot!"
He stepped out into the middle of the cargo bay where a steel grate in the ceiling allowed light to filter down from the deck above. All around him loomed plasticon freight containers impervious to heat rays and pulse rounds. Beads of perspiration rose on the captain's tanned brow; his eyes darted toward the discarded atom rifle beyond his grasp. Its piercing note held the moment.
A pair of heavy, faux-leather boots stomped into view, landing with resounding clunks. Above them at mid-calf began the slick, skintight material of a blue pressure suit molded to hard-muscled legs and thighs, a tight abdomen, massive mammary mounds, biceps and triceps straining against the suit's snakeskin-like fibers, and shoulders that reminded Quasar of a bioengineered bull he'd once seen in a ring on Nuevo Spain Delta. Above the shoulders (towering over three meters), a transparent helmet protected the fiercest, most gorgeous face Quasar had ever seen.
"Hey there," he said with a dashing smile. He'd often dreamed of women such as this, so seeing one now didn't faze him.
The tall woman was not impressed by his display of pearly whites. And she had company. Out from behind two other freight containers came four giant women, each sporting a matching pressure suit and wielding a massive Incinerator-type weapon, twice the size of the atom rifle vibrating on the floor.
"Ladies." The captain made a slight bow, smile intact.
"Silence!" commanded the first woman, completely in charge of the situation. "You have offended us enough with your presence, let alone your coquettish wiles!"
Captain Quasar had no response to that.
"You there!" the woman roared, her gaze twitching toward Hank's hiding place. "Show yourself, or this one dies!"
With all four hands empty and directed toward the ceiling, Hank emerged, shuffling his very hairy feet to join the captain.
The other women snickered. "What are they?"
"This one is a man," said the commander, her lip curled back in disgust as she pointed her Incinerator toward the captain's groin.
"Hey now," Quasar squirmed.
"And this—" The commander frowned at Hank. "What are you exactly? Some sort of walking carpet?" The other women guffawed.
"Behold—!" Quasar exclaimed, gesturing toward the whining rifle on the floor just as it reached a fevered pitch of no return. He expected it to blow a hole in the floor, dropping them to the deck below. Instead, the whine fizzled to a low blurp, and there was no impressive blast. His shoulders slumped. "This is the helmsman of my ship, the Effervescent Magnitude. Speaking of which, I believe it's high time we said our goodbyes, ladies, and—"
The butt end of an Incinerator smashed into his solid jaw, and he staggered backward in pain and surprise. He'd experienced plenty of fisticuffs in dreams before, but they'd never hurt like this.
"Watch your language," scolded the commander.
Quasar turned to Hank. "What did I say?"
The cargo bay door slid open with a rush of air, and in strode a woman just as muscular and massive as the rest of them, but without a pressure suit. She held what looked like a cold pack to the back of her head and winced as she approached.
"Return to your quarters, Asteria," said the commander. "These manimals are not your concern."
Emerald eyes flashing in streaks of light from the ceiling grate above, Asteria stepped in between her commander and Captain Quasar. With her long, raven-black locks, she was a ferocious beauty to behold, despite the thick unibrow. "They escaped under my watch. I lay claim to them."
"You are not suited up. We have a pressure leak in here—"
"I will return them to their cell." Asteria faced her commander squarely. "They are weak, unarmed. What harm could they possibly do?"
The other women looked disappointed. "We were hoping to watch them explode," admitted one, gesturing toward the compromised bulkhead.
The commander nodded at Asteria, holding her gaze. An unspoken understanding seemed to pass between them. She singled out two crewmembers behind her. "Go with them. Ensure that these interlopers cause us no more trouble."
Asteria cast a meaningful glance at Quasar as she removed the cold pack from her head and tossed it to one of their escorts. Turning on her heel, she exited the cargo bay.
"Move." An Incinerator's muzzle dug into Quasar's back.
He followed Asteria into the corridor beyond the cargo bay, avoiding eye contact with the glaring commander.
As soon as he and Hank crossed the threshold, Asteria shoved their two escorts backward and slapped her palm flat against the wall-mounted control panel. The door instantly slid shut. She set the lock with a verbal command code, trapping the commander and four other women inside.
Asteria grabbed Captain Quasar by the throat and devoured his lips in a forceful kiss. In that moment, as real as it was, as delicious as her lips were, he realized something that should have been clear to him from the start.
This was no dream. This was happening.
Somehow, he was here. And this, strangely enough, was now.
Episode 6: Reactor Coils
"You don't pull your punches." Asteria touched the back of her head gingerly as she released Captain Quasar from their passionate lip-lock.
He caught his balance against the bulkhead. "Had to make it look real."
Hank scowled, first at the thumps of angry fists on the other side of the cargo bay door where Asteria's commanding officer and company remained locked inside, then at the captain and the giant woman who'd kissed him. "You two in cahoots or something?"
Quasar flashed a winning smile, forcing a bravado he in no way felt at the moment. "Told you I'd get us out of here, didn't I?"
"No. Your exact words were, 'We won't make it out alive!'"
The captain pshawed. "I knew all along Asteria here would come for us." He looked up at her. Was she truly on their side? It didn't help matters that he couldn't for the life of him remember how they'd arrived on this ship. But for the moment, he had to make it look like he knew what he was doing—which he did fairly well on a regular basis, he had to admit.
Asteria grabbed hold of Quasar's arm. "We don't have much time. The reactor coils you require are this way." She hustled him down the narrow corridor.
"Reactor coils. Right. Coming, Hank?" Quasar called back, half-carried by their formidable ally.
"Humph." Hank reached into the thick fur around his flabby belly and withdrew the Cody 52 pi
stol he'd stowed there earlier. Then he followed at a close distance, keeping the weapon behind him and both eyes on Asteria.
Quasar gave him a wink. The Carpethrian always had his back. Quasar didn't know what he'd ever done without Hank. He couldn't even remember the name of the Effervescent Magnitude's original helmsman. Elli-something?
Asteria brought the captain to a cargo hold fifty meters down the corridor and dropped him onto his feet. Her voice command sent the door sliding open with a rush of stale air.
"How many do you need?" She glanced back at Quasar as she entered.
"Excellent question." He turned to Hank. "How many would you say ought to do the trick?" It wasn't yet clear to him why they needed these coils, but for the moment, he remained in charge of the situation. Even so, he was never above asking for directions.
"Four—if they can spare them. We can't risk firing up that cold fusion reactor again on the Magnitude."
"Right." Quasar nodded. "That piece of crap almost killed us."
"Did kill us," Hank reminded him.
"Water under the bridge." If only that were true. More than anything, the captain wanted to know what was going on here—why he'd traveled back into his own past only to return to this situation which he couldn't remember entering in the first place. And where the heck was Steve? Did he have something to do with this?
Quasar took the first coil Asteria handed out to him and hugged it close, grimacing at the weight but smiling as if it were nothing. "How much do we owe you?"
She grabbed him and lifted him up onto his toes, kissing him again with as much gusto as before. "Babe, you've paid me more than enough." She slapped his rear end and gave it a squeeze. His eyes widened on impact.
Hank cleared one of his throats. "Doubt your commander back there will like it much, you giving these away."
Asteria shrugged. "I'll tell her your captain overwhelmed me with his maidenly wiles." She winked at Quasar.
Captain Bartholomew Quasar: The Space-Time Displacement Conundrum Page 2
