Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  “We’ll draft them both as instructors for our canine unit,” Schopenhauer said. “The other dogs and trainers both will learn much faster with Rose and Rex role-modeling the new commands for them.”

  Hailey nodded. “I do believe that’s just what the doctor ordered.”

  He handed her the Blu-ray disc marked in black indelible ink “asset allocation” with the troop deployment intel, how they were to be subdivided by planet. Another of his people had brought Schopenhauer the data, no doubt responding to one of his earlier gestures that Hailey had missed. So, Schopenhauer had been at least a couple steps ahead of her, at least on the subject of off-world troop allocations. “What are you going to do with yourself after you confer with the Nautilus to prepare for the offloading of my people to other planets?” he asked.

  She had to admit she hadn’t thought that far. She glanced over at Thor and Frog Doll. “If we can get my father’s mind back on line, I can stop being the mature one in this family and go back to playing a kid. I’m interested to see if teaming up with Thor leads any place productive.”

  “I pity Omega Force’s sense of continued relevance once you two hit the scene.”

  She smiled at his good-natured ribbing.

  And then she skipped toward Thor and Frog Doll, forgetting all about the general. Thor and Frog Doll were passing a bucket of popcorn—which Frog Doll had pulled out of his clown closet of a kangaroo pouch—and taking in the When Galaxies Collide drama on the big screen monitors.

  “This is so much better when it’s for real, you know,” Thor said to Frog Doll. “I may give up on VR entirely.”

  Thor’s Zeta team had deployed from the ceiling, rappelling down from hooks fired from their grappling hook guns, so they could swing on makeshift swings, and take in the show as well. “Plenty of glory for us to steal, boys,” Darius, their team leader, said, “in a war canvas painted this large.”

  “Hooya!” came the chorus of replies in between chews of their protein bars.

  ACT FOUR

  WHEN GALAXIES COLLIDE

  THIRTY-SIX

  EARTH’S MOON

  OMEGA FORCE CLONE TEAM ONE

  WITH ELEMENTS OF ALPHA UNIT CLONE TEAM ONE

  Leon awoke in Cassandra’s arms, staring up at her face. She was crouched over him. Behind her was not the soothing tapestry of Milky Way Galaxy stars he was used to looking at from Earth. Just as disconcerting—the sky was more alive with fireworks than a 4th of July sky.

  Those were planets colliding!

  Suns exploding!

  Carnivorous black holes devouring everything in sight!

  Leon pulled himself to his feet, using Cassandra’s body as a brace. He kept his eyes to the sky. “You woke me up in the middle of an intergalactic war?”

  “I like you too much to do that to you. We arrived just moments ago. This is just the result of two galaxies colliding. The Kang are shocked witless. They’ll regroup fast enough. And then you’ll have the intergalactic war you were born for.”

  “You mean the multiverse war I was born for. But I suppose we all have to start small.” He rested his clenched fists on his hips and indulged a moment of the light show. “You should have woken me sooner. I didn’t commandeer this much celestial real estate to see it go up in smoke. Where is my reconnaissance ship, woman?”

  She summoned it with a raised hand. It hovered over them, a small, sleek, almost abalone shell-shaped, glistening black UFO. “Patent designed it.”

  “I’m assuming that means we can win this intergalactic war singled-handedly with this thing.”

  “Not quite, but close.” She was already marching toward the vessel, a piece of the hull melting into the steps needed to board it, each one hovering just like the ominously silent craft.

  “Is there a collision warranty on this thing?” Leon asked, stepping inside the vessel behind her. “Those are planets colliding out there, woman. I didn’t come this far to end up as a bug on a windshield.”

  “You better not, since you’re now in charge of The Milky Way Galaxy’s space fleet.”

  He did a double take her direction.

  “That’s right,” she said, “the Leon that’s supposed to be overseeing things up here is still taking a dip in his rejuvenation tank.”

  The Leon seated beside her in the copilot’s seat groaned. “You’d think someone would pull him out of there if he doesn’t have the sense to do it himself.”

  “You’re in the pilot’s seat,” he said. “Your reflexes are better than mine.”

  “Don’t drain my resources stating the obvious,” Cassandra said, taking the UFO up and out into space—at UFO-only-need-apply speeds.

  “It does have some get up and go. I’ll give it that,” Leon said, as Cassandra squeezed in between two colliding planets, keeping them from becoming an afterthought with those only-Casandra-can-handle-this-generation nanites of hers.

  ***

  ABOARD THE NAUTILUS

  LEON’S PRIVATE SUITE

  “Maybe it’s time someone got him the hell out of there,” DeWitt said. He and the rest of Omega Force were standing about Leon who was still soaking in his Samadhi tank, parsing timelines for actionable intel.

  “To hell with this,” Crumley said.

  DeWitt craned his head toward him. “So, we are getting him out?”

  “No, but we’re sure not waiting around for him to find something that floats his boat. There’s got to be something he’s encountered so far that can be of use to us in this timeline.” Crumley raised his voice, “Mother! We want to see what’s going on inside his head. All of it. Don’t you dare filter.”

  No response.

  Never a good sign.

  Moments later, long after Crumley had sighed his, “Well, it was worth a try,” she started piping the images through.

  The Omega Force operatives congregated around the big screen in Leon’s private suite. Leon was soaking in Solo’s rejuvenation tank, but Solo had gotten tired of feeling the guilt associated with not taking him out sooner, so had had the tank wheeled to Leon’s chambers.

  Even the lion guarding Leon’s suite jumped off the bed to take a look at the monitor. It wasn’t long before it was growling like a wounded animal, enough for the lioness and her cubs to come marching out to find out what was going on. They joined the vigil around the monitor.

  “Um,” DeWitt said, “you think we can fast-forward this footage to where, you know, we look like we’re actually coming out on top of this war?”

  “Don’t judge,” Crumley snapped. “Just watch, for something, anything useful. Mother has got her mind on other things.”

  “So do I,” Ajax mumbled, “my will, my final act of masturbation, reminiscing about the highpoints of my life—before it’s over.” He sighed, mumbling now as a self-pacifying gesture they were all too familiar with. “Step aside coffee; this is a job for alcohol.”

  On the monitor, a Kang dragon ship flew through a planet, as if it were no more than a phantasm, dropping “eggs.” The ship flew clear in time for the bombs placed at the planet’s core to blow it to hell.

  “Did you know those Kang ships could do that?” DeWitt mumbled. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

  “What doesn’t kill you messes you up mentally.” Ajax was just on a roll, like a player piano. He probably wasn’t even aware of what was coming out of his mouth.

  On the monitor, two dragon ships approached another planet from opposite sides. The dragons opened their mouths and… and what? Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Mother, augment,” Crumley said.

  They suddenly saw it. It looked like those 4th of July sparklers kids wave in their hands, shooting out the mouths of the dragons—straight into the core of the planet.

  Omega Force knew there was a punchline coming; they just didn’t know what it was.

  The planet started changing into a sun.

  Those of the artificial habitats from the Dead Zone that had been teleported into
the Milky Way Galaxy before that galaxy in turn was teleported here—proximate to this newly born sun—started falling into it. No longer able to resist its gravity well. They were flaming out as soon as they hit the corona. Well, some of them were. Some of the cylinder worlds, amazingly enough, simply went into orbit in the sun’s corona. The Kang, never ones for ignoring booty worth commandeering, were already sending Kang warriors toward the orbiting Dead Zone stations. Like pirates, they boarded, and like pirates, they raided.

  “F-me!” DeWitt exclaimed.

  “I do not spew profanities. I enunciate them clearly, like a fucking gentleman,” Ajax mumbled, looking more and more mesmerized by the screen. He’d stopped blinking.

  Mother advanced the footage, as if just giving the chapter highlights for now, figuring they could choose to read the book in more detail later or not.

  Over a hundred Kang dragon ships swarmed a star-studded region, chasing each other’s tails. Once the necklace was complete, the circle of ships just turned faster. And then, just as mysteriously, it broke apart.

  The “egg” the consortium had laid this time between them was a black hole.

  A big one.

  And it was gobbling up a terrific amount of real estate—fast.

  “That’s big enough to be a black hole at the galactic center.” Cronos made the sign of the cross over himself. “It’s like catching God yawning.”

  “No matter how long it’s been…” Ajax droned on, “there are still times when I think of you and suddenly it gets harder to breathe.” He struggled to get air to his lungs.

  “Did you know the Kang ships could do all these things?” DeWitt blared at Crumley. “They’ve just defied more laws of physics in less time than it takes me to shake my fist at them.”

  Crumley just kept shaking his head—in disbelief—at what he was seeing on the monitor; he wasn’t necessarily attempting to answer DeWitt’s question. “We’ve got to find the Tesla types the Kang rely on, before they can appropriate any more Dead Zone technology and jerry-rig it into the dragon ships.”

  “No shit, Sherlock!” Ajax blared. “I volunteer for that assignment. It’s the only one where I can imagine my hate overpowering my fear of what I’m dealing with!”

  Everyone ignored the outburst.

  Per the usual.

  They were still trying to take in what they were seeing.

  Ajax took his eyes off the big screen and what the others were watching, turned to the other big screen monitor in the next room. What sounded like explosions going on in the master bedroom were in fact happening a bit further away. “Shit! Who needs Kang warriors? Have you seen what Mother Nature is doing to us? This When Galaxies Collide shit, man… I know I missed this documentary on the Discovery channel for a reason.”

  All the same, Ajax migrated into Leon’s bedroom. The family of lions had already settled in on his king-size bed, observing nature take its course on the big screen.

  Ajax took in the Kang dragon ships fleeing the Kang Castle world. But they didn’t get far. They, like the rest of the planet, got sucked into the sun.

  “Don’t look now,” Ajax shouted into the tank room, “but we still have dumb luck on our side!” He mumbled, “Though knowing that bitch as well as I do, it won’t be long before she’s declaring, ‘Elvis has left the building’.”

  Ajax heard a collective gasp from the tank room.

  Suddenly he was torn between the footage on his monitor and running to the next monitor in time to see what had stolen everyone’s breath away. He gave the image in front of him, of the planet headed straight for Earth—his Earth—big enough to take out the Earth’s moon and the Earth in one pass, without even slowing, the second of awe-struck attention it deserved—and then he ran into the next room. On his mind: “Whatever it is they’re looking at, it can’t be that bad.”

  He arrived in time to see a rather dull looking planetoid, off all by itself.

  “Why are you watching that space rock?” Ajax bitched. “Though I must confess, for the first time in my life, I’m digging dull.”

  “It’s not a space rock!” the rest of the team blared in concert.

  Ajax was about to push for an explanation when one arrived on its own—in visual terms.

  The “space rock” was a dragon’s egg—the size of a planetoid!

  It cracked along its periphery, just like an egg shell might, as the chick inside began to peck its way out.

  The giant dragon that emerged moments later stretched its wings and shrieked. And it glowed. It was a hundred times the size of the dragon ships that anyone had seen up until now.

  “It’s a special kind of queen,” Crumley informed Ajax. “It lays dragon ships the way the dragon ships lay the smaller fighter jet versions of itself.”

  Ajax whimpered. He whined. He sobbed. He screamed—long and hard. He stomped on the ground up and down. Then he stood up tall and wiped back the tears and sucked in the snivels. “There’s no denying it anymore. My drug test has come back normal. My drug dealer sure has some explaining to do.”

  “Enough!” Crumley barked. Mother seemed to have the sense to shut down the video feed. Crumley turned to Ajax. “You say we’re doing better with getting Mother Nature to go to bat for us?”

  “Oh, yeah, I just saw a Kang castle world gobbled up by a sun. It was glorious.” Ajax turned to Cronos. “It might be time to consider dumping that Christian God for a cosmic form of Gaia. I started praying to her myself over a minute ago.”

  “This is not the time to look on the bright side,” Crumley said cruelly, boring his eyes into him, realizing Ajax was holding back.

  “Well, there is this trifling matter of a planet seven times the size of earth crashing into our planet and taking our moon and it out in one pass. We might have a couple hours to prevent that. But I volunteer to keep monitoring Leon’s thought streams. I mean, someone has to, right, and forward you guys what breaking intel you need.”

  “I swear you’re too much of a coward to be on Omega Force,” Crumley gritted out with enough gravel in his voice to qualify as a landslide.

  “I keep saying that!” Ajax blurted. “Maybe if you could put a good word in with Leon for me, he could shoot me out an airlock into deep space where I can spend eternity consumed by my worst fears—which will still be a hundred times better than this shit!”

  “Mother, you’ll forward the highlights from Leon’s timeline-sifting to my mindchip,” Crumley said. He figured Ajax might have a point; some of these images were too morale degrading to lob them on the minds of Omega Force willy-nilly. Crumley would take on the job of prioritizing the challenges himself. He was the most seasoned of all of them, which was to say, the most inured. It was still anyone’s guess, what’s more, which of these horrors would also be playing out in this timeline. “I will use the intel and filter and broadcast the info to the rest of Omega Force, as needed, projecting it onto the spaceport of whatever spaceship we can commandeer.” Crumley sighed. “Speaking of which, exactly what spaceship can we commandeer?”

  “You’re not cleared as Leon is for access to Nautili-class vessels,” The Nautilus’s chief supersentience replied. “However, if you like, I can beam you to one of the Nautilus’s landing bays where I keep the larger war birds.”

  “Please,” Crumley said.

  “We have larger war birds?” DeWitt squawked. “I’m Leon’s second in command, that means I should have been second to know.”

  “I would like to promote myself to spaceship Captain,” Ajax said, “so I can be in charge of my own lunacy, instead of someone else.”

  “Hear, hear,” came the chorus from the rest of the team.

  “Not a bad idea,” Crumley said, still on the move with the rest of the team toward the sliding doors leading to Leon’s private suite, though they were expecting to be teleported any moment by Mother. They were wondering what the hell the holdup was about. Crumley raised his voice, though he hardly needed to, “Mother, we’ll each need a complement of robots t
o help with controlling these ships, so the team can play divide and conquer. And I’ll still need to be able to override what they’re seeing on their monitors with what I need to pipe through to them.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t kidding about being in charge of my own fate!” Ajax squawked.

  “Until I need to get your attention, I’m okay with that,” Crumley said. “I’m going on a scouting mission to see what I can find that can help us win this war, against Mother Nature and against the Kang both. You’ll want to know about whatever I find if it can bolster your survival chances.”

  The rest of them snorted.

  “I’m strangely okay with that,” Ajax retorted.

  Omega Force was beaming finally to the landing dock. To take this long to initiate the transporter… Mother must be up to her tits in war-gaming, even parallel-arrayed with the other Nautili, in a galactic-scale conflict.

  All Crumley could think was that she was likely not just dealing with galaxies colliding anymore.

  The Kang must have gotten over their shock and awe at the recent turn of events and come out to play.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE NAUTILUS

  LANDING BAY C

  RESERVED FOR

  THE STARHAWKS

  “Whoa!” It was pretty much the collective response to what Omega Force was seeing in a Nautilus landing bay for her “bigger war birds.”

  The robots—legions of them—were still boarding the four warbirds the four Omega Force officers in attendance—sans Leon and Cassandra—would be using.

  Legions more droids were going over the hull exteriors, preparing the birds for flight, doing last minute flight checks, making sure the craft could fly.

  The automaton help looked like glorified can openers to Crumley, just a bit more robust and soldier-like than the ones that did maintenance and cleanup inside the Nautilus’s main live-work spaces.

  “I finally get my own Starship Enterprise!” Ajax exclaimed.

  Crumley was forced to admit the Starhawks were similar in size to the Starship Enterprise, but they reminded him more of the Romulan vessels from the venerated Star Trek series, once upon a time.