Captain Dan Saves Beta Earth

by Jeffrey Henning

  Dan sighed and sat down. He looked at Amaya. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?” He asked her.

  Amaya looked at him sadly.

  Captain Dan pushed a few buttons on the arms of his chair. He stood up and somberly walked to his quarters, retrieving the data chip inside the box that he had shown Twang earlier. He put the crystal disk in a slot on the captain's chair and let the images flood the monitors.

  "Is that what I think it is?" Watts asked.

  "Is this why you wear clothes that cover all of your skin?" Belladi asked. "To cover the implants?"

  "Yes." Dan said. "The UPA did that to me and another man, Kirk Sparks." He said as he pointed to the front monitor.

  "So this Kirk Sparks is the one who took over Beta sector?" Watts asked.

  "Captain Dan and Mr. Sparks are the only two left that have this specific code." Amaya told them. "It would make sense that he wants his revenge on the UPA, and Beta is the Headquarters for the entire UPA. Destroying it would set us back tremendously."

  "This isn't possible - from an engineering standpoint I mean." Lieutenant Melton said. "You're saying that there is a backdoor inside every piece of UPA hardware and software that's capable of being exploited."

  "How do you think we're able to hide as well as we do?" Watts asked. He turned to Dan. "I've always known you had an inside connection to the UPA, but I thought it was the Admiral."

  "You're hiding inside the Beta sun!" Melton said, turning quickly to the Admiral. "Which is also a technology I'll be looking into, Admiral."

  "Good luck with that." Watts said as he jumped into his station and started processing the files Captain Dan is showing them.

  "Was this done to you against your will?" Belladi asked as she came up to Dan.

  Dan only nodded. Belladi gave him a hug.

  "You've removed some of these implants, right?" Watts asked.

  "The captain has removed a number of them, with my assistance." Twang said without moving. "these are the ones we have removed so far." He said as red X's appeared over a very small amount of the implants over Dan's body on the screen.

  Watts scrolled through the implants remaining. "Some of these could help us restore the UPA's systems."

  "Assuming we'd want to." Dan said as he sat down in his chair.

  "Why wouldn't you?" Amaya asked, incredulously.

  Dan stared at the monitors, ignoring her questions.

  "If the UPA did this to you against your will, then that makes them your enemy." Too'Zer said, surprising the crew that he had kept up with the conversation.

  "There are over a billion people on Beta Earth alone..." Amaya said quietly. "Would you let them die?"

  Dan took a deep breath.

  "I'm with you Captain, whatever you decide." Watts said. "But I'll be pissed off at you if you get my engine room blown to pieces."

  "I will help wherever I can, Captain." Belladi said.

  "I will help you crush your enemies." Too'Zer said, crossing his giant rock arms.

  "Like we said before, plenty of salvaging in war." Bort said, and Dort nodded in agreement.

  Dan got up and left without saying a word.

  * * * * *

  Dan laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling and absentmindedly feeling one of the implants on the back of his hand. He could risk his life, his ship, and his crew to save the people who turned him into part-cyborg, part-man. Or... he could move on.

  If he didn't help, Amaya would hate him forever and his crew would think less of him - but he'd have his ship. His ship which he had spent his whole life in since being freed. His ship, in which he was on a first name basis with all of its systems. He could feel them, if he reached out through his implants. He absently flicked his finger and made the lights in his room turn off. Another flip turned them on. He felt them. He could feel the energy pulsing through the cables running from the ship's engine. He could literally see the pulsing as the energy wound around the ship. Twang had told him that his ocular implants couldn't be removed without blinding him, and four of the implants in his spine couldn't be removed without crippling him. He closed his eyes.

  "Kirk, what have you done?" He whispered aloud.

  Almost as if he was there with him, one of the storage implants in his head brought forth a memory, which it transferred to his ocular implants.

  "You can make it! One more!" Kirk told him as he sat on his bed.

  "I don't think I can..." The old Trevor said. He grabbed the new implant on the upper left of his chest. It was a metallic octagon disk which was held in place by screws mounting to his ribs, mounted right above his heart. A plastic bandage covered it, with white bandages around the edges and a clear plastic center. He could feel his heart rate rising as he tore the bandage off.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Kirk told him.

  He tore the bandage off and was immediately put to sleep by the guards watching him, who had activated a backdoor in one of the implants in his head.

  The memory ended, leaving Dan shaking his head.

  He thought hard on his only friend from the program. Kirk was the stronger of the two. Kirk had kept him alive, kept him going until the next round of surgery. Could Kirk even be capable of destroying billions on Beta Earth? Dan had only known him inside the program, inside their cage. He could have been a serial murderer for all he knew - but inside the cage he had been a good friend to Dan.

  Dan sat up slowly when the door chimed.

  "Come." He said, activating the communication relay on the outside of the door with one of his implants.

  The magnetic locks on the door clicked, and it opened slowly. Dan looked to see Amaya standing his doorway.

  "May I come in, Captain?" Amaya asked quietly.

  "Sure." Dan said, just as quietly.

  She closed the door just as slowly and walked over to the bed, sitting down next to Dan. She put her hand on his, both his and hers rested on the bed between them.

  "Are you scared of going back to face the project?" She asked, looking at him with those beautiful blue eyes. "You know we're all here for you if you need us, right?"

  "That's the problem, Amaya." Dan said as he withdrew his hand from hers and stood up. He walked over and put his hands on the dresser and dropped his head. "If they follow me into this, they will all die. You know what we were capable of."

  Amaya lowered her head. "Maybe you can reason with him?" She said, knowing full well how this would turn out. "He would listen to you."

  Dan spun around. "We don't even know if it's him!"

  "Everyone else from the project is dead or buried deep in a prison that only a handful of us know about. I confirmed that." She told him as she looked up to him.

  "Doesn't mean someone couldn't have given someone else the implants. Hell, they could have given them better implants than we have now." He said, knowing it was unlikely.

  "Daniel," she said as she stood up and took his hand. "You know it's him. You can feel it in the code, can't you?"

  Dan pulled his hand back quickly and closed his eyes, rubbing his hands over them.

  "Have you even tried? To see if it's him or not?"

  "No."

  "Why not? He was your friend, wasn't he?" She asked.

  "Trevor, come with me." Kirk told him after the new Space Admiral had given them each a new ship, and enough credits to last years.

  Trevor shook his head. "I can't. I can't go down that road."

  "Why? Look what they've done to us!" Kirk shouted as he held out his arms, which were covered in implants. He pointed to his face, which were also covered in implants, two covered each side of his face, and a large one covered his forehead. The program was closed down before Trevor had received those specific ones.

  "You can't destroy the entire UPA! There are innocents who had nothing to do with what happened to us!" Trevor shouted at him.

  "Those innocents you speak of? What happens when the UPA starts another program like ours and decides to test it out?"

&n
bsp; "The new Space Admiral wouldn't let that happen." Trevor said in defense of Amaya. They had been talking every day in the two weeks that he had been freed.

  "One day you'll see as I do. The UPA is nothing more than a weapons manufacturer, and they always need someone to test their new weapons on." Kirk said, then shook his head. "Perhaps we'll talk about it again someday." He said as he walked away.

  "Doubtful." Trevor said.

  Dan took a deep breath.

  "What is it?"

  "I need to think." Dan said as he walked over and opened the door.

  "I'll let your crew know to not disturb you." She told him as she left slowly. She looked back at him and said, "I still care for you, and will always be here if you need me." And then she left.

  Dan closed the door when went to lay down on his bed again.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Kirk. He used his connection to the Heatseeker’s communication array to connect to the satellites in the Beta System. I was like watching out a window going through a series of tunnels - though you could only see the paths open to you. When there was a camera available, he used it to look out into the world. He saw damaged ships, floating slowly through space. He saw a tunnel leading to some of them, to access their systems - but he ignored it. He was looking for Kirk, and he knew where to find him. He followed the patch tunnel to Beta Earth Station 1.

  Beta Earth Station had thousands of systems to go through. He flipped through each one like one would flip through the televisions on Old Earth. After a few minutes of flipping systems, he finally found Kirk, standing in the observatory at the top of the station. The observatory was a giant dome, with metal strips running through the dome, crisscrossing their way from top to bottom. The only purpose of the metal strips was to implant systems - like cameras. From here, one could see all of Beta Earth on one side, and the blue sun on the other. If one stayed long enough, they could watch Beta's three moons orbit the planet.

  "Hello Trevor." Kirk said as he looked up at the camera Dan was accessing.

  Unfortunately, Dan had removed the implant that would allow him to access multiple systems at one time. The camera he was watching had a microphone in it, which was the only reason he could see and hear Kirk. He watched Kirk as he tilted his robed head towards the camera. He couldn't see anything else of the man, since the dark robes covered his entire body. He transferred to the speaker systems to talk, then swapped back to the camera/microphone instead.

  "Why are you only accessing one system at a time, Trevor? You are capable of so much more." Kirk said. His voice was strangely robotic sounding.

  A short time passed with Kirk just watching the camera. He could tell exactly which system Dan was accessing.

  Dan moved back to the speakers. "Why did you kill them all, Kirk?" He said, quickly moving back to the camera and microphone when he was done.

  "You know why." Kirk told him. He said nothing more.

  Dan moved back to the speakers. "We won our freedom. You could have built a new life with what they gave us, like I did." He said, quickly moving back to the camera.

  Kirk pulled his hood down, revealing a fully robotic head. It was mostly chrome, with two eye sockets that glowed red, and two antennas where the ears would have been. "They built me. They will feel the pain we felt, the pain we feel."

  Dan shook his head, and the camera moved back and forth, as though it was his avatar. Instead of moving back to the speakers, He just talked, and his voice came out the speakers while he was inhabiting the camera. "The project didn't do all of that to you."

  "I finished what they started!" The robotic head shouted. "Now I am the perfect human, capable of destroying entire systems!"

  "Genocide isn't the answer. Give up, I will do what I can to help you get back to your old self." Dan said.

  "NO!" Kirk shouted.

  Dan was hit with an electric current, which jolted him back along the communication lines he had traveled, right back into his body. From zap to consciousness on his bed, it only took a few seconds. He groaned as he rolled over on his bed, clutching his head in pain.

  Chapter 6

  "Watts," Dan yelled as he stood in the engine room. He looked around but couldn't find the little blue-haired monkey anywhere. "Watts!" He yelled again.

  "Captain!" Watts yelled from behind the new engine. He popped his head up so Dan could see him. He was wearing his goggles again.

  Dan walked over to the new engine and stood on a crate that had been parked next to it for Lt. Melton to stand on, just as he was now doing. "Watts, I need you to put on your spacesuit and build some external atmospheric vents that we can control from the bridge."

  Watts blinked at him a couple times. "You're planning on steering the ship with our oxygen?" he asked as he cocked his head.

  "A backup only, I assure you." Dan told him.

  "You think the new engine won't work, what with this human who is able to control everything electronic." Watts added, fleshing out Dan's plans verbally.

  "Always good to have a backup." Dan told him. "How long would it take?"

  Watts jumped up and swung on the pipes on the ceiling, swinging his way over to his desk, where he changed out his mechanical arm. He had been using a modified insulation-shooting gun, and swapped to his arm computer. He furiously mashed on the new appendage. "About six hours, Captain." He said as he mashed more buttons. "But you should know that if we do this, you'll only have about four minutes of propulsion before we run out of air." He said as he looked up.

  "Enough to escape, maybe." Dan said.

  "Not enough to evade the entire weapons defense systems in the Beta Sector." Watts added. There were forty two weapons platforms that were in range of the station.

  "I have another plan for that." Dan said with a smile.

  "You're the Captain for a reason..." Watts said as he unhooked his computer appendage. He used his remaining three arms to walk on, with his legs, to get to the other side of the room faster. When he was there, he opened a crate and pulled out his bright orange spacesuit, complete with a stub for his missing arm so that he could attach his robotic appendages while in space. "Haven't been in space in a while..." Watts mumbled. "I wonder if this thing still holds air."

  Dan smiled at the little Grot and walked into the hallway connected to the engine room. There he ran into Matthew Melton.

  "Captain, I've been studying the data from the project you were involved in and I believe that the new engine I've installed should be impervious to the code that the implants use to control UPA technology." the Lieutenant said with confidence.

  "Good. I need you to go help Watts with a side project." Dan said as he maneuvered around the man.

  "Captain." Matthew said, holding up a hand to Dan's chest before he could move past him.

  Dan put his hand on his gun. "I'd remove your hand, if I were you." Dan told him.

  Matthew quickly put his hand down. "Captain, you need a skilled engineer in command of the engine room if you want to go to war with a man who can control the entire Beta sector."

  "I have one." Dan told him.

  "Watts is mechanically intuitive, sure, but I think you and I both know that I would be a better Head of Engineering than he would."

  Dan looked him in the eyes and said, "Doubtful." Then he pushed past the man and headed down the short hallway, where he ran into Too'Zer.

  "Captain, I'm done modifying the missile with the scanning equipment that Watts gave me. We're ready to fire on your command." He said in his overly deep voice.

  "What missile?" Dan asked.

  "The one I told him and Watts to modify. It works on a different frequency than all other UPA equipment and should allow us to backdoor into the Beta Sector defense systems." Amaya said as she entered the short hallway. At least she put a shirt over the hydration vest.

  "You are not in command here, Amaya." Dan said defiantly.

  "I know, I just thought it might give us an edge." Amaya said. "I'm sorry."

  It would
give them an edge, if it worked. "How much time will it take to use the backdoor?" He asked as he moved to the bridge.

  "Twang said he could do it in seconds, but he's worried that the signal will take control of him if he turns his communications systems back online. Right now, he's just... like a normal human." She said, following him.

  "He's more human than some humans I know." He said, finally reaching the Captain's Chair. "Twang, how much time would you need to manually use the backdoor on the missile?" He said as he pulled up the console on the arm of his chair. He looked up but saw nothing. With the heat shields down, the room was like a metal coffin, with comfier chairs.

  "I believe I could take control of the Defense Systems in Beta in four minutes and thirty-eight seconds without my communications systems, Captain." Twang said. He was barely moving, what with all his systems offline.

  Dan looked to Amaya. "How long would it take you to do it?"

  "About ten minutes. I'm not as skilled in UPA systems as I should be." She told him with a sigh.

  "But you make one hell of a Space Admiral, and a great First Officer." He said, tapping on his systems as he talked.

  "You want me to be your First Officer?" She asked. There was no sound of joy in her voice, only questioning. She was very good at hiding emotions - which was part of the reason they broke up.

  "Until we can restore you to your seat of power, you're stranded on my ship. Makes sense to give you something useful to do." Dan told her as nonchalantly as possible. He tried to glance at her to see if there was any reaction, but she caught him looking.

  "Is that the only reason you want me to be your First Officer?" She asked.

  "What are you implying?" he asked.

  "I believe she thinks you have an ulterior motive, Captain." Twang interjected.

  "What?!" Dan's head snapped up and stared at Twang.

  "Even without the majority of my sensors, I can see you wish her to stay with you on board the Heatseeker when this is over." He said as he turned his head towards them - at an awkward angle in which no human could master.

  Dan's eyes opened wide. "I do not have an 'ulterior motive'," he said through clenched teeth. "I was implying that she could be useful as a First Officer while we are on this mission." He quickly looked down at his screen, and then to Amaya. "Never mind, it was a silly gesture." he said as he tapped a couple of buttons on his console, then got up quickly and started to leave the bridge.