Custodians of the Cosmos

by Drayton Alan

Lou stopped laughing as the idea of a mutiny sunk in, but he couldn’t be certain. Trying to look inconspicuous, he made his way down to where Nord had been seated. He carefully examined the fluid dripping from the rafters above. In an instant, he knew it as real Warfian brain matter, he had cleaned enough of it to know the real stuff from a prop. Lou was convinced this disaster was real and went back to where Belle and the custodians were standing to report his findings.

  Perhaps he should alert the visiting Coalition Admirals. But they were currently body surfing twenty feet in the air, courtesy of the squidmen delegation.

  “Okay Nigel,” Lou asked. “Did you bring the spray? We need to do a preemptive cleanup on these squid to stop this insanity before anyone else is killed.”

  Nigel produced a few bottles of the toilet cleaner they had found to be so effective in their last encounter with squidmen. He, Chopi, and Nigel climbed the rigging in the back of the auditorium to gain access to Frakes’s squid crewmen in the rafters. These had to be dealt with first, since, with their reach, they controlled everything that happened in the audience and on stage.

  Before the custodians were all the way up, during a dramatic climax in the music, Frakes decided the audience was tiring of the sword fight. So, he ended it. Casually he knocked the sword from the captain’s grip and pummeled the man’s head with the butt of his weapon. The captain collapsed unconscious, bleeding from a head wound. Before he hit the floor, however, a tentacle grabbed him, held him up, and shook him like puppet, to make it appear he was fine and just dancing off the stage. No one in the audience realized it was real. Kale ad-libbed a joke to distract Frakes and prevent him from killing anyone else. Frakes laughed and smiled at the witty Frederick.

  Frakes turned to look at the audience, smiling. That’s when he noticed Belle standing in the back of the auditorium horror lining her face. Frakes waved to a squid henchman that dropped from the rafters to give him some new instructions. Kale soon ran out of material and the play stalled.

  That’s when the unfortunate lieutenant, that had gotten the part as the major general, was pushed out onto the stage by a tentacle, along with the actress playing Mabel. The musical score for the famous I am the model of a Modern Major General song began, long before it was supposed to.

  Some in the audience didn’t like this quick change of plot and murmured that this was out of place, but it seemed Frakes was pulling all the strings—or tentacles, if you like—in this performance. It soon became obvious that he’d dispensed with the original storyline and in his new version, he gets to marry Mabel.

  The lieutenant, acting as Major General, was confused and tried to catch up with the music, singing the words even more quickly than usual;

  I am the very model of a modern Major General,

  I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,

  I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical

  From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;

  While he was still singing, the actress playing Mabel was pulled into the rafters and a new tentacle dropped on Belle, grabbing and depositing her on the stage in Mabel’s place. She tried to struggle but was held by the squidmen.

  I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,

  I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,

  Suddenly, Frakes broke into a love song, serenading Belle and drowning out the words to the major general’s song. To his credit, the lieutenant persisted his song throughout the chaos.

  About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news…

  With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

  Frakes had stepped on one of the classic scenes of the play and that was the final straw for many of the fanboys in the audience. They were all for fun adlibbing, but no one steps on the major general song and gets away with it! The fanboys made a fuss, booing and ridiculing Frakes.

  I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;

  I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:

  In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

  I am the very model of a modern Major General.

  Tentacles descended upon the fanboys. The squid grabbed each of the booing fans, and without warning, launched them at the nearest wall. The sickening thuds of the poor victims shook the audience into a sober understanding of what was happening. Their mood went from frolicking fun and laughter to sudden horror. A disturbed murmuring arose as panic welled in their hearts.

  Frakes stared sharply out at the audience and even more tentacles dropped down threatening any that might be tempted to boo again. Theatregoers ducked low in their seats and uneasy nervous laughter had replaced the genuine humor of a minute ago. The lieutenant kept singing.

  I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's;

  I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,

  I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,

  In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;

  The squidmen delegates in the audience seemed to enjoy the new twist, and taking a cue from the sudden change of mood, they released their hold on the crowd-surfing human dignitaries, propelling them toward the stage at a high velocity. They smashed into the backdrop and scenery. The play had taken a dark turn.

  I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,

  I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!

  Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,

  And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

  In the commotion, Belle yelled a single word command to her robots, “Mikado!”

  Frakes face went ashen. He looked at Belle, betrayed.

  The lieutenant playing the Major General fled the stage in terror. The computer still played its melody until Reggie, Bernie, and Fred moved quickly toward the stage. They produced what looked like sharpened metallic fans at the end of their robot arms and slashed at any tentacles that tried to hinder them. When they reached the stage, the music somehow changed again; another Gilbert and Sullivan song played. The three robots deployed paper umbrellas and charged Frakes.

  The audience, the squidmen, and Frakes, all stared in shock as the singing robots crossed the stage, stealing the show, again.

  Three little maids from school are we

  Pert as a school-girl well can be

  Filled to the brim with girlish glee

  Three little maids from school!

  Everything is a source of fun.

  Nobody's safe, for we care for none!

  Life is a joke that's just begun!

  A squidman dropped to the stage in front of Frakes, foolishly trying to stop them. Yum-Yum’s (aka Reggie’s) razor-edged folding fans sliced him eight new stumps. Upon seeing this the other squidmen, retracted their tentacles in sympathy and rolled out of their path.

  Three little maids from school!

  Three little maids who, all unwary

  Come from a ladies' seminary

  Freed from its genius tutelary —

  Three little maids from school

  Three little maids from school!

  Three robotic Japanese schoolgirls attacked Frakes, matching both his speed and cunning. Belle had reprogrammed them with the same subroutines she had written into the code used for Frakes cybernetic brain. She hoped it would end quickly.

  Frakes, having recovered from the surprise, threw his head back and laughed. Soon he began dancing and playing with the other robots. He fought them like a true pirate king. He climbed into the rigging of the fake ship and swung down on them. The poor M-bots were confused and disadvantaged. They had only limited sensors, and little peripheral vision. Frakes knew this and so attacked them from their blind spots. They lacked the lightning fast reflexes of the bio-muscle Frakes had been given. Belle tried to shout helpful cues to the robots, but it became apparent they were outmatched.

  Tak
ing advantage of the distraction. Kale, Idonna, and the remaining human actors fled the stage. Nigel, Chopi, and Lou attacked the squidmen in the rafters with their cleaning spray. The panicked squidmen dropped on the audience screaming in pain from the caustic solution. Pandemonium ensued. The audience, seeing a chance to escape this murder hole, all ran toward the exits. It was a crush of tentacles, arms, legs, mantles, and torsos, as everyone clawed and fought their way to the door.

  Idonna pulled Belle away from her poor robots. Kale helped the captain get to his feet, blood oozing from his head, but conscious.

  Belle, realizing her robots would lose, produced a hand full of teleport tags from her pocket and slapped them on everyone within reach. Instantly, she, the captain, Kale, Idonna, ensign redhead, Erma, and a few of the play’s extras were standing in the ship’s morgue-receiving area. An assortment of cadavers were propped up in chairs and seated in rows, patiently awaiting Erma’s next performance.

  “Oh my!” the captain exclaimed. “That woman does have a problem.”

  Erma ran over to her test audience, and in a futile attempt at concealment tried to cover them with a large cloth. Failing this, she made some worried mumbles and tried to look innocent. She broke into tears and ran to her private quarters nearby.

  “Sorry, sir,” Belle said. “I only had time to grab mortuary tags, we had little time to prepare for this rescue.”

  “Yet you could reprogram the M-bots to become ninja schoolgirls?” Kale said.

  “Actually, since that last attack, I’ve been experimenting with mixing various dance routines into my defensive program. It worked surprisingly well. The rhythm of the music helps provide the timing for coordination they lacked.”

  Nigel, Chopi, and Lou teleported in.

  “How are my boys doing?” Belle asked.

  “Not well,” Lou said. “The Pirate King has already destroyed Pitti-Sing, and I don’t think Yum-Yum and Peep-Bo can hold him much longer.”

  “Who?” Kale asked.

  “Oh, I mean Fred is down, and Reggie and Bernie are losing,” Lou corrected.

  Belle realized the robots would all be destroyed. She broke into a run to get to her office and retrieve them before it was too late.

  Lou looked at the captain. “Are you okay, sir? You look a bit shaken. Perhaps you should sit a moment?”

  “Nonsense, I’ll be fine, just a little bump on the head. I’m totally fit for duty,” the captain said to the lab coat hanging on a hook near the door.

  “Sir, you should go to sick bay. You’re not well.”

  “Nonsense! I’m fine,” he answered, poking the lab coat in the chest. “Computer, this is the captain, prepare the ship to get underway immediately. Begin beaming back any crew members left on the station. Alert the Coalition and request support. Beam me to the bridge now!”

  “Sir, perhaps we should evaluate the situation more thoroughly before we get underway?” Lou tried again, but the captain shimmered into nothing.

  The ship shuddered violently. It was still docked to the station. The captain must have ordered the ship to move before undocking.

  A few unfortunate crewmen who were traversing the air lock between the station and ship at that moment, found themselves swimming in space and extremely short of breath.

  To make matters even worse, dozens of squidmen pods, filled with Frakes’s pirates, launched a full attack on both the station and the Cosmos.

  Falcon’s automated defense system triggered and soon the space around Falcon was a chaotic mess of ships, pods, and plasma.

  The captain didn’t wait; he ordered the jump to warp immediately. The ship was only a hundred meters from the station when it went to warp. The disruption of space-time this triggered sent a violent shudder through Falcon Station and all the ships docked there.

  Inside the Cosmos, lights flashed and red alert was initiated. The custodians ran to their shop. Just before the jump, Belle issued a recall command for Reggie, Bernie, and Fred. The bot’s automatic retrieval circuits activated and pulled what was left of them off the station, teleporting them onto the repair chambers in her lab. They were badly mangled. It seemed Frakes had taken out his rage on the poor things. Soon the repair pods began the deliberate process of scanning and replicating the missing parts for all three.

  Chapter 17

  The jump to warp had not been well planned. It overloaded many of the ship’s systems. After twenty minutes, the ship dropped out of warp. The abrupt drop in speed, combined with a partial failure in the inertial dampeners, threw everything and everyone against the wall. A shower of sparks spewed from a control panel in the shop. Immediately, Chopi jumped up and extinguished the panel.

  “Why do we have a control panel in the custodial shop, anyway?” Kale asked.

  Chopi shook his head and smiled. He helped Kale up.

  Lou’s arm was hanging at a strange angle at his side and Idonna was tending to it. “Belle can you give me a status update on our situation please?” Lou yelled.

  Most all items on the shelves and hanging on the walls were still in place. An interesting fact is that Coalition starships had localized gravity generators built into all of its storage systems. That explained why in old videos when the ship pitched back and forth violently, it appeared that only the people were running back and forth.

  The inertial dampening system was supposed to keep the crewmen from being tossed around when the ship moved. The dampening system was a most vital system on a starship and because of this, it had numerous independent backup nodes throughout the craft. If the dampening system ever failed totally, the crew would strike the wall of whatever room they were in at approximately five times the speed of light. Making a mess that the robots would have to clean up, unsupervised.

  The ship was still spinning and everyone was forced to lean to compensate for the centrifugal pull. Kale ran to check on Belle in her office. The strange motion made it difficult, and he missed the door on his first try. He found her sitting at her terminal checking ship status and dispatching robots to the worst damaged areas to effect repairs.

  “We’re pretty beat up, the captain’s idiotic maneuver did some real damage,” Belle yelled back to Lou. “Looks like at least fifty crewmen are injured. The crew count is sitting at about thirty percent of recommended. Engineering is woefully understaffed; seems many of them had been at the play and didn’t make it out. The ship is dead in the water until the bots get those systems replaced.”

  “Good job, keep me updated,” Lou yelled back.

  “Also, the comm link is lighting up with lots of nasty messages from Falcon Station. We’re getting some strong and colorfully worded reports, seems they had some serious casualties as well.”

  “The captain isn’t thinking clearly,” Lou said. “That was plain stupid. We had better get him off that bridge before he kills us.”

  “Oh crap!” Belle exclaimed. “Frakes’s ships are here and they are launching an attack.”

  “Are they launching pods?” Lou asked.

  “Nope, they are teleporting—we have no shields,” Belle reported.

  “Okay,” Lou announced. “Listen up. I prepared a little better this time. I don’t care about the Coalition’s regulations. I’m not about to sit here and watch my people butchered.” He stumbled to a locked cabinet and pressed his hand on a scanner. It opened. Inside were six heavy-duty plasma rifles. “Not a lot of time for training, but aim the pointy end at the bad guys and pull the trigger. Any questions?” He looked around; no one spoke.

  “Oh, and try not to hit the walls, it tends to rip holes in the hull.”

  Chopi dropped his spray bottle and quickly grabbed a plasma rifle. He gave a big smile and nodded in appreciation.

  Kale brought a rifle to Belle who was still working at her station. She had put the robot repair pod in high gear. She wanted to have some backup when the battle started.

  Frakes’s squidmen didn’t waste time. They transported onto the Cosmos in squads. They didn’t bother
to teleport to the custodial shop; Frakes knew what areas of the ship were important.

  So when the air shimmered blue in the center of the shop everyone was surprised. The custodians trained their weapons on the spot ready to kill.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, it was the captain and a few of the bridge crew.

  “Sir?” Lou asked.

  “The entire ship is overrun! They have captured the bridge,” the captain said.

  “Frakes won’t look for me here, we don’t have much time. Computer, activate self-destruct authorization Sigma, Charlie, seven…”

  “No! Wait,” Kale yelled.

  Everyone looked at him surprised.

  Kale continued: “Computer, replicate one centimeter of toilet cleaning solution on all ship floors and produce a mist of it in the air for thirty seconds on the count of ten. Alert all crewmen to keep their eyes closed and hold their breath.”

  “Okay, we can try that first, I guess...” The captain seemed dazed and sat down on the floor in a corner of the room. His head was still bleeding. A crewman came over and attempted to bandage it.

  Kale ran to a shelf and quickly distributed goggles and respirators.

  The computer said, “Ten.” Every room filled with a misty haze of toilet bowl solution and a flood of it filled the decks.

  “That should give the squidmen a nasty burning sensation!” Kale smiled at his cleverness.

  “Uh. Excuse me, I hate to interrupt, but do you think the mist will affect them in their space suits?” the red-haired ensign, who had teleported in with the bridge crew, asked.

  “Wait, what? They’re wearing space suits?” Kale said in shock. “Oh crap!”

  “Yeah, I guess, I could’ve mentioned that sooner, huh?” Ensign redhead said.

  “It was still a good idea,” Belle said in defense of Kale.

  “Yeah and it stopped you-know-who from blowin’ us to bits.” Nigel pointed at the captain who was trying to grab the clouds of toilet cleaner mist as it settled near him.