Drastically, she revised her escape plans. The 16 was too ill to move, so Avantor would have to take over the vessel. Training video #460/B—"How To Capture A Starship When You Are Naked, Unarmed And Alone", flashed through the woman's mind and she reviewed the pertinent points. Check. This shouldn't take more than 900 seconds.
Leaving the door ajar, she left the cell and turned to see a guard in powerarmor clumping her way.
“Wait!” Private Furstenburg shouted over the external speaker of his suit. “We need to—"
Talk, was the word he was going for. But the Gee cut him short with a psychokinetic bolt that slammed the hapless man backwards, embedding him into a steel bulkhead and really putting the inner forcefield cushion of the powerarmor to the stress test. With a tremendous groan, the battered Marine went limp, but stayed where he was, both metal boots dangling inches off the deck.
Like a glorious golden halo, the avantor's long hair flared out from her body by the secondary static electric charge of the mental blast, and her magnificent bosom was heaving from the exertion, but she did not stop to catch her breath. The main door to the brig proved to be a simple magnetic lock/dead bolt/pry bar combination and moments later she stepped into the outside corridor.
Ready for anything, the two uniformed guards in the passageway relaxed and holstered their guns when they saw whom it was exiting.
“Are you okay, lady?” the first Marine asked, and the other started to doff her uniform jacket to give to the naked woman.
Then like golden rods of steel, the avantor shot out both of her fists to crash into the humans’ jaws and the guards toppled to the floor. As Avantor bent down to take their energy weapons, the turbo lift at the far end of the hallway opened and out came Lt. Sakadea and a squad of soldiers in powerarmor. Four Marines in the center of the group were lugging a length of sewer pipe with a glowing crystal sphere on the end. The sight of which made the Guardian Of The Galaxy go pale. Oh Void.
Halting some ten meters away, the soldiers pointed the cannon-like weapon at her and the ball on the tip began to glow with power.
“Avantor, don't do it. We can explain everything,” Lt. Sakadea said in his most soothing tones. “There is no need for violence."
"Szorklop!" the warrior spat, pulling the two laser pistols free from the guard's holsters.
It was then Kurt realized that neither of them was wearing translators. A critical mistake. Damn, nothing else to do.
“Riflemen, hold your fire!” he cried. “Cannoneers, let her have it! Full force!"
jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj STOP THAT jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj
With a shudder, the Gee dropped the guns and stumbled backwards into the brig under the point blank blast of the STOP THAT cannon liberated from her own ship. Gasping for breath, she fell sprawling to the floor. Lt. Sakadea grinned in satisfaction and started forward.
But then struggling to her knees in a most provocative pose, the avantor focused her awesome mind powers, and blew a hole in the wall alongside the cannon crew, bits of steel ricocheting off the armor of the Marines. She scowled in annoyance. Missed!
Grimacing slightly, Kurt touched his stinging cheek, his hand coming away covered with blood. Okay, goddamn it, this was enough of that crap.
“Cannoneers,” he shouted. “Fire! Fire! Fire!"
It took five more of the psionic blasts, each hitting the Gee like a baseball bat, but at last Avantor slumped unconscious. Only the fingers of her right hand managing to cross the threshold of the door, which was a whole lot further then anybody had ever dreamed she would get.
As the Marines cautiously clunked into the brig, and a medical team came running out of the elevator on the left, a low moan sounded over their suit radios.
“Where's Furstenburg?” Lt. Sakadea asked.
It didn't take the soldiers long to find their bruised friend. Freeing him from the wall was another matter entirely.
* * * *
“Status report!” Captain Keller demanded gruffly to his wrist transceiver.
“Avantor is back in her cell, sir,” said Sakadea's voice. “A maintenance crew is repairing the damage she did, the ST cannon has been positioned in front of her cell door and wired to the lock. The next time Lady Godiva tries to take a walk, she won't get very far.” He paused. “We also gave her a jumpsuit and a translator."
“Acceptable, lieutenant,” Keller said. “Report back here to the Ward Room as soon as you're finished."
“Aye, aye, sir.” With a click the soldier signed off.
“I warned you about the Gees, my Captain,” Trell reminded the human. “Nobody has ever successfully kept one prisoner."
This interested Dr. Van Loon. “You've tangled with them before?"
“Yes, when I was with Leader Idow."
“Meaning no disrespect, Trell, but why were you with that bastard? I have come to know you fairly well and you're not the criminal type."
Prof. Rajavur knew the answer to that, but remained silent and let Trell tell his tale.
“I was with Idow by necessity, not choice,” the alien said calmly, not offended a bit by the question. His tour of duty aboard the All That Glitters was not the high point of his life, but neither was it something he was ashamed of, even though very few of the memories were pleasant. Then his face brightened as he remembered that Boztwank was dead. “My parent was a gambler, but to my misfortune not a very good gambler and got deeply into debt. The only honorable solution was selling me into slavery to pay the bills.” Trell dilated his nostrils. “Not an unusual practice on my world."
Captain Keller raised an eyebrow. “Parent, singular?” he asked curiously.
“Yes, indeed,” Van Loon chimed in, unable to resist the temptation to wax didactic. “Trell's people, the Mormanzumas, don't procreate by fertilizing an ovum in a female like us, but by budding. That is controlled cellular fission which results in a duplicate being. But not a clone. The new entity has its own unique personality."
During this, Trell averted his eyes and blushed. Sex talk always made him uneasy.
“Interesting,” Keller mused. “Then why does he look so human? Trell, did your race evolve from primates like our?"
The alien wiggled his ears as he had no idea. His race was not interested in history, only technology. Nobody cared who did what to whom or when, unless it resulted in an invention.
At that point, Lt. Sakadea appeared in the doorway and saluted the room. “Sir!"
“Come in, Lieutenant,” Keller said, returning the gesture. “I see you were wounded."
The Delta Force agent touched the bandage on his right cheek. “Just a scratch, sir."
“Good enough. Have a seat."
Closing the door, the lieutenant walked to his chair, pausing for a second to throw a crumpled piece of paper into a golden wastebasket where it disappeared in a flash of atomic disintegration. Assault Rifle #666, because it beasts the hell out of you. Geez, he was going to have a serious talk with the troops about this nonsense real soon.
“To continue,” Captain Keller said, returning to the original thread of conversation. “We have only three places to try and get a HN cube without resorting to piracy again."
He consulted a list. “Our top choice is Darden: an agricultural world of horse drawn carriages and steam engines. Apparently high technology goes against a tenet of the local religion, sort of like our own Quakers. They may have a cube to sell us stored away in the old barn that serves as the planetary starport."
“Doesn't sound very encouraging,” Dr. Van Loon noted gloomily, taking notes in his pocket medical journal.
The captain agreed. “Next choice is a real long shot, the planet Oh Yeah?. A radioactive cinder of a world that has become a memorial to the stupidity of war. There are dozens of dead starships in orbit about the planet and Trell believes there is a remote possibility that we can find a still functioning cube among the wreckage. But it is highly doubtful."
Nobody made a comment about the unpleasant notion of grave robb
ing, their mission eclipsing such mundane considerations.
“The last coordinate is a world Trell doesn't know a damn thing about,” he said.
Lt. Sakadea stopped scratching at the red stained cotton gauze square on his cheek. “Nothing?"
In his own defense, Trell pointed out that there were millions of inhabited planets in the galaxy. He admitted that these coordinates sounded vaguely familiar, but so did many others.
“An outside chance, at best,” Keller said in frank honesty.
Sipping thoughtfully, Prof. Rajavur drained his mug coffee, it's excellent quality dispelling that old myth about ship food. Privately, he wished Yuki and the rest of his old team were here to share it with him. He was in space!
“To repeat Dr. Van Loon's earlier question,” the Icelander said aloud, “what are the worlds we can't use? Underwater colonies? Orphanages? Prisons?"
Captain Keller consulted his list. Even though the words on it were typed, the contents were still a little hard to read. The interfacing of Trell's translator, the ship's computer and laser printer was not yet perfect. “The first is the planet RporR. Trell, am I pronouncing that correctly; R—pour—R?"
The Technician gave a green nod. “That's right, sir. Although everybody else in the galaxy does tend to spit the name a bit more."
The starship captain ignored the foolishness. “It's a forbidden world, nobody may enter or leave.” He twitched a faint smile. “RporR has a blockade around it just like Earth."
“Excellent,” Sakadea said with a grin that put the taste of salt in his mouth. Quickly, he returned his lips to neutral. “Then they're potential allies."
In the strongest possible terms, Trell told the soldier he was absolutely wrong. RporRians weren't the allies of anybody; except maybe assassins and garbage collectors.
“The second is a secret criminal base that Trell knows about from his association with Leader Idow. It is the center of operations for a stolen starship ring. We can definitely get a Hypernavigational cube there, but we have broken enough laws already. Our mission is to ingratiate ourselves into galactic society, not purchase stolen equipment."
However annoying that decision might be, the room had to agree with the thinking behind it. Too bad, though.
“What is number six, captain?” Rajavur asked curiously.
Keller scowled at the paper in his hand and then tossed it aside. “The planet Gee, supreme headquarters of the Great Golden Ones."
“No, we don't want to go there,” Hassan observed from the floor, putting the finishing touches on the last chair.
“Thank you, sailor,” Captain Keller stated coldly. “Your work is finished here. You may leave."
As the embarrassed technician shuffled out of the room, Keller surveyed the faces of his executive staff. “Any further discussion? Any comments? No? Accepted then."
Rising to his feet, the Swiss officer walked over and activated the intercom on the wall. “Bridge? This is the captain. Have navigation turn the ship white, straighten our flight plan and feed in the coordinates for the planet Darden."
“Acknowledged,” Lt. Jones squeaked from the box. “Any further orders?"
“Tell you when I get there. Captain out.” Keller rapped his knuckles on the polished tabletop. “Meeting adjourned, gentlemen. We reconvene on the bridge in six and a half hours."
“And may the Prime Builder grease us with his own ear wax!” Trell cried, climbing on top of his chair and brandishing a green fist in the air.
The precise meaning of that phrase was unclear to the human officers, but the tone was positive, so they cheered along with him anyway for the sake of solidarity.
TWENTY
Centuries ago when the Galactic League was formed, it had been decided, for major political reasons and minor military ones, that the league should not be placed on any existing planet and thus elevate that race above others. So an uninhabited star system was arbitrarily chosen, and in a historic feat of engineering a sphere of metal was slowly built about the local sun to totally encase the solar body. On Earth, the structure would have been called a Dyson sphere, after Freeman Dyson the American scientist who first postulated the mind staggering concept. The rest of the galaxy simply called it impressive.
Inside the sphere, houses, buildings, parks, forests, lakes and buildings-buildings-buildings were constructed at an astonishing rate. Then the population of a dozen worlds poured into their new homes. But with 900 quadrillion square kilometers at their disposal, overcrowding was a word that would never be used on the artificial construct. Even now, with the population at 12 trillion, people often rode to work alone in the car of their monorail train during rush hour.
Interestingly enough, the debate over what to name the titan sphere raged for less than a planetary rotation, when a particularly sentient sapient suggested it be called Big, for notwithstanding its many other qualities, that one could not be denied. The name was readily accepted.
Extending like a spider web into the heart of the flaming sun, were mighty solar energy cables; coal black superconductor ribbons, kilometers thick, that collected the raw power necessary to run the contra-gravity generators, so vital to an upside down community and the distance annihilating telecommunicators that made the smooth operation of a galactic society possible.
On the outer hull, were continent wide clusters of Nova Grade lasers, batteries of giant Dispersal Ray cannon that used multiple thermonuclear bombs just to blow the dust out of their barrels, million kilometer long quasar spitting antennas, force shield towers each built from a small planet, docking facilities for a hundred million superdreadnought starcrafts and one fast food outlet run by a slug-like being who was very rich indeed.
As hard as it is to believe, Big was not an original invention of the League. At the other end of the galaxy (second spiral arm, fourth sun to the left) another solar body had been found enclosed in an artificial globe of metal. When a team of eager young explorers landed and entered to greet the builders, they found a dark and deserted interior, with a smaller sphere inside. Obviously the inhabitants had constructed it as the sun had shrunk from usage. A natural phenomenon that would take several billion planetary rotations. Bravely entering the second sphere, the explorers found another sphere, and another, and another ... After four hundred and twelve of the things the team of explorers (now quite old) finally gave up and went home.
The current theory is that the mad builders are still in there somewhere, but nobody is particularly anxious to meet them. There were quite enough amateur loonies in the universe, no need to bring in professionals.
On Big, amid the sprawling grandeur of the inverted mega metropolis, at the mathematically chosen North Pole—longitude 0, latitude 0—was a small, stone amphitheater. The open air structure was brightly illuminated by the dominated sun in the overhead sky. The architect had claimed that this was a purely dramatic touch and it had won her much acclaim. But honestly, the auditorium's lack of a roof had been done just so the plant wouldn't have to stop work every few hours and go outside to eat.
A thousand seats filled the amphitheater, each facing inward towards a raised stone dais in the center where there stood a simple podium of solid gold. This was the audience chamber of the Great Golden Ones, where the guardians of the galaxy released bulletins to news reporters or sought the council of learned beings.
Today it was reporters; a hundred gatherers of news from as many different worlds. A true cornucopia of beings who bore only a faint resemblance to Earthlings: tugs and rugs, rats and bats, apes and grapes, logs, frogs, dogs, lizards, birds, rocks and even the occasional humanoid or two. The reporters had been brought here on a Double Star, Alpha Prime, Ultra Emergency Summons, which meant interstellar war, the sun was about to explode, or a really major party.
Floating in the sunny air above the crowd were thousands of shiny metal balls. Most of them were remote broadcast cameras, some were reporters from machine cultures, some containment vessels for energy beings and a good half
dozen or so that nobody was exactly sure what the heck they were.
At the sound of a gong, a muscular golden male in a flowing amber tunic walked out onto the dais and the murmuring crowd grew quiet. With a sigh, The 3000, the supreme commander of the Gees, braced himself and once again wondered whether or not it was really worth his while talking to these idiots. Reporters were the bane of his existence.
“Attention gentlefolk,” the tall humanoid said into the forcefield microphone floating invisible in the air before him. “I bring you news of a shocking and most unpleasant nature."
The reporters grew tense, they knew what this meant. No party.
The 3000 cleared his throat. “A race of violent primitives has escaped from the blockade about their world, and is loose somewhere in the galaxy."
For a moment there was shocked silence at this unprecedented announcement, and fevered images of the RporRian plague flashed through everything's minds. Then came the expected barrage of questions.
“Do they have pets?” a reporter asked in the front row, shouting over the ruckus.
Startled by the unexpected question, the Gee blinked. “Ah, yes, they do have pets."
“What kind?” the newsgatherer persisted.
“Various kinds, I believe. Is this germane?"
“Insects? Do they keep insects for pets?"
“Yes-yes! They keep insects for pets!” the golden male snapped irritably.
“SLAVERS!” the hysterical spideroid screeched, its eight arms and legs undulating wildly. “My people must be set free!"
“Non-sentient insects,” The 3000 said loudly over the commotion. Just like you, he added privately.
“Oh.” The reporter averted all of his eyes and blushed. “Never mind."
A potted plant next to the arachnid kicked it with a convenient frond. “Come on, grow up,” the evolved rutabaga chided. “It's not like they eat vegetables or anything."
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