Category Archives: aliens

Scherzo 14 – Spaceheart Joins the Space Opera

She was the size and shape of a blond-haired human girl of about fourteen years of age.  She wore one of those tech-level 25 armored space bikinis, and Dr. Hooey had to admit she looked pretty appealing in it.

“So, they issued you that armored bikini instead of the usual Time Knight’s eccentric, colorful costume?”

“Oh, yes, by my special request,” said the girl.  “It’s fully functional as a space suit, putting atmosphere around me inside an electromagnetic bubble that will also shield me from radiation, lasers, micro-meteors, blades, microwaves, nuclear blasts, and even slug-thrower bullets.”

“Ahem, yes…”  Hooey wasn’t sure whether he should be harsh with his evaluation, or just charmed with her natural enthusiasm.  Her enthusiasm alone was of a kind that could defeat space criminals, evade alien attacks, and charm world leaders.  And that happy grin could certainly kill a grizzly bear at thirty paces.  “Prepared for practically anything, aren’t we?”

“Well, being prepared is the key to everything you have accomplished Dr. Hooey.  I studied you carefully while I was in the academy.  You more than any other Time Knight we discussed.  I prayed to the Seven Goddesses of the Pleiades that I would be chosen to be your companion on this next journey through time.”

“Ahem… your name is Spaceheart, I believe?”

“Yes.  That is definitely my preferred moniker of the moment.”

“I suppose I can’t just call you Becky or Alice or something?”

“No, please.  I like Spaceheart.  It is a cool pulp-fiction sort of science-fictiony name.”

Hooey almost said, “Ahem” again, but he was running out, so he decided to save the last few for later.

“So, one of the main jobs of the time-travel companion is the keeping of order inside the time-ship.”

Spaceheart looked around at the mess inside the Star Wars.  She shuddered.  Wires were hanging from the dark space where the ceiling allegedly was supposed to be.  Burnt panels covered the control console with melted buttons, charred thing-a-majiggs, and a grossly detached doodle-ma-whoop.  You couldn’t make the chronometric time jumps without a re-attached doodle-ma-whoop.  And you would need to replace every single thing-a-majigg in order to prevent the Time Knights inside the ship from prematurely aging or turning back into babies.  A glitch in either direction could pop you out of existence without warning.

“It got damaged a bit with that last mission, huh?”

“Oh, yes.  It actually killed me, so that I had to reboot myself with an entirely new and better-looking reincarnation.”

“But, the Lizard Lady was successful before she died?”

“Well, technically…  Um, she’s not actually dead yet at this time… er, the relative dimension in time and space she currently inhabits.”

“Oh, that’s interesting…”

“Yes, um… she’s in position to help us win the battle at Outpost.  So, our job is mainly to correct whatever goes wrong with the ancient device that Ged Aero is trying to send to another universe.”-

“I guess I better get started on the clean-up and repair procedures.”

“Ahem… yes, I didn’t mean to use up that one, but if you don’t mind… I would like to pull up a lawn chair and watch you work.  Um, you are going to wear that armored bikini, right?”

“Um, yes…?”

“Can I take pictures too?”

Spaceheart smiled at the dirty old man who turned younger again.

Canto 144 – Digging In

Outpost was abuzz with activity.  The airless world had only limited defense from attack.  The primary protection had always been the secret of its location.  As an airless world, the surface could easily be lasered or bombarded with no atmosphere to interfere with the destructive force.  Tron had ordered the mirror fields raised, hoping that some laser fire could be reflected into the surrounding darkness.  He knew, however, that the only hope he had was in his fleet.  If they could somehow use the dinosaur-shaped starships made with Ancient technology to destroy enough of Admiral Tang’s fleet to make him feel the losses were no longer worthwhile, then maybe the ground-side installations could survive intact.

There were still very talented corsairs able to fly fighting ships.  Elvis the Cruel and Apache Scout were both peerless star warriors.  But Tron had to believe that Admiral Tang had a few potent killers left to his name too.  There was every chance that the situation was hopeless and would end in a massacre.

Still, there were a few unknowns on Tron Blastarr’s side.  The crazy alien starship known as the Megadeath was the most agile killing machine that Tron had ever seen.  The goofball rock-and-roll crew that flew it for Trav Dalgoda was now very adept at handling the alien thing, and Tron had kept them to help in his mad last stand.  They were not smart enough to be scared of the upcoming battle.  He was able to send his son onward to Don’t Go Here, the planet where the newly formed New Star League gathered its forces.  So, hopefully, Artran would be safe and carry on the Blastarr name long after Tron and Maggie’s bones littered the airless sands of Outpost.  

“Boss,” said Hassan the Elf, breaking Tron’s train of thought, “I have made something that I think might be of help.”

Tron looked at the child-like Peri and the invention he was now holding up.  “A suit of armor?”

“Yes, boss.  A special kind of suit of armor.  It is made up of nanites.”

“What?  Nanites?”

“Yes, microscopic robots that share a command pulse and can reform themselves into any sort of armor that might be needed.”

Tron looked quizzically at the bluish suit of nanite armor.  “How do you make it work?” 

“Well… for instance, if you want it to form an anti-grav pack on the back, you just say, “FLIGHTPACK.”  The suit rearranged itself at Hassan’s command and an anti-gravity flight pack instantly took shape on the back side of the armor’s breastplate.

“Does it have weapons?”

“FUSIONGUN!” said the elf with a grin.  A man-portable fusion generator and discharge barrel formed on the pauldron.

“That’s really good, Elf.  That will help.  But one isn’t going to be enough to save us.”  He grinned sadly at the small Peri Space Elf originally from the planet Djinnistan.

“Oh, that’s the best part,” said the Peri.  “Nanites can replicate themselves from raw metal ore.  Since the planet is mostly metal and crystal, we can set them to making a million copies of themselves in an hour.  You have to specify the number, though.  We wouldn’t want the little buggers transforming the entire planet.”

“Amazing,” sighed Tron.  “If only I had a million commandos to fill them with.”

At that moment Maggie came trotting up to him with a handheld communicator.  “The call is for you,” she said, looking grim.  “Arkin Cloudstalker has finally found his way back to this system.  And that Lazerstone rock-guy is with him. Admiral Tang is sure to follow.”

“Yes.  Sure to follow,” said Tron automatically, still gazing at the grinning elf and his newest invention.

Canto 143 – Morning Aboard the Starship Aboard the Starship

 I couldn’t help but fixate on the things Admiral Tang had bragged about knowing from the future during his villain speech in a previous episode.  Apparently, he had outwitted and killed a Time Knight at some point, and he had specifically told us that I was going to survive this adventure while poor Ham Aero was doomed to die in the upcoming battle for the planet Outpost.

I was sipping on my cup of designer coffee, my own special concoction called Isaac Newton’s Favorite Cup of Joe.  And I was staring out of the front viewport of the Leaping Shadowcat at the guards in the cavernous docking bay of Admiral Tang’s flagship, Bregohelma.  The Lupin child who served as cabin boy came out of the crews’ quarters completely naked and rubbing at his doglike eyes.  Of course, the boy’s shameless nudity didn’t bother me since Lupins are covered in wolf-fur and don’t really need clothing to cover up relentlessly white, pock-marked skin and rolls of fat the way I do.

“Professor Marou, do you think the Imperials will just execute me or toss me out into space?” Sahleck asked.

“Well, if they are frugal, they will toss you out into space.  It costs less.”

“Oh.”

The destroyed look on his puppylike face reminded me that maybe a strictly logical answer to the question wasn’t the kind of answer he needed to hear.

“But don’t go planning on dying yet.  Time is a relative dimension in space and, as such is totally malleable.”

He looked at me as if he wanted to ask another question, but didn’t really understand what I had just told him.

“You know that there are Time Knights constantly meddling with what they think happened in the past to correct the outcome to some sort of plan created in the distant future…”

“Oh, yes…” Sahleck stammered.

“And since Tang says he killed one of those Time Knights, we know for certain that somebody is out there working on solutions to the problems we are now facing.”

“So, maybe they won’t kill everybody but you?”

“Oh, you all are probably going to die.  Tang seems to know what will happen with information gleaned from the Time Knights themselves.  But nothing is ever certain.  Maybe I get killed too.”

That didn’t seem to help much.

Ham Aero wandered in drinking his own morning beverage, probably potent liquor of some sort.

“Sahleck?  You are out of uniform, boy.  You know that the job of steward aboard a starship is critical to staying alive in space.”

“Yes, Ham.  I know I am supposed to scrub floors, maintain the air quality, and do whatever the cook asks me to do, but we are almost all going to die.  So, what’s the point?”

“We are not giving up, my boy.  What we are blessed with is lots of time, and the freedom to plan without worrying about being overheard.  Tang doesn’t know it, but this ship is shielded from telepaths.  Ged had me do that back when he was first dealing with becoming a Psion.  So, we don’t have to just sit back and wait for death.  We can plan and carry out our own rescue and escape.  And I am not ready to die myself, knowing now that I am going to be a father for the first time.”

That made Sahleck smile.

“So, you have an idea about how to do it?” I asked.

“Not yet.  But we have more collective smarts than they do.  How many of their crew are rot warriors?  Skeletons with robotic life? Nearly mindless undead things?”

“Mechanoids and reanimated dead folks make up at least 75 percent of all Imperial Navy personnel.  You know this well, Ham.”

“Sure, but my point is… We have you.  You are one of the smartest living humans in the entire Orion Spur of the Milky Way.”

Now, I know, of course, when I am being flattered in order to manipulate me.  But he was not wrong.  Duke Ferrari was on board, and he carried considerable political significance, and potentially leadership ability.    And Ham’s young Nebulon wife knew a lot of secrets only formerly enslaved aliens really knew about.  Ham himself was a canny strategist and ship-board leader.  He knew how to solve the problems of living mostly in space aboard a starship.  And he was not wrong about me being smarter than practically everyone else in the universe.  (Not bragging, just an irrefutable fact.)

“Yes, you are right, Ham.  We are not helpless.  We do have an intelligence advantage over our enemies.  And we will think of some way out of this situation.”