The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum Read online

  All of it was enough to give the captain a severe migraine.

  "No effect!" Davis shouted.

  Quasar glanced down at his console as the ship's hull shook violently along with everything inside it. He hated to admit this, but Elliott was right: they were entering the atmosphere much too quickly.

  "How is that possible?" He frowned at the display. The Arachnoid vessels continued on course as if the torpedoes had merely ricocheted off their dilapidated hulls. There hadn't even been an explosion!

  "It appears they were able to neutralize each of the warheads prior to impact," Commander Wan reported. She sounded impressed. "Their capabilities outmatch our own."

  Well, that much was obvious. "Take the helm," Quasar ordered the quaking Elliott. If the moron was going to live through their encounter with the Arachnoids this time around, he might as well make himself useful. "Remain on this heading. Maintain course and speed until I tell you otherwise."

  Wide-eyed and mumbling to himself, the ensign returned to his post with a shaky nod, fumbling with his swivel seat and gripping the console with white knuckles.

  Quasar leapt into his captain's chair and punched the intercom. "Attention all hands. We are currently en route to the Carpethrian shipyards. Please pardon the turbulence. As you may have noticed, we are being pursued by a pair of enemy vessels which, undoubtedly, will not be pursuing us for much longer. Despite the rattle, our ship, the great Effervescent Magnitude, is strong enough for this situation. She was built to withstand such adversity." Quasar paused, doing his best not to allow the recent torpedo malfunction to sway his confidence. "Our enemy's ships are pieces of junk. Sure, they might be outfitted with the latest and greatest alien weaponry and countermeasures, but the fact remains that they look like they were pieced together from a toddler's imagination. A toddler living in a junkyard, I might add." He chuckled, forcing into his tone an underlying message: There was no reason to fear. The crew was in good hands. "That being said, please strap yourselves in. The ride's going to get bumpier before it gets smoother."

  Releasing the intercom button, he pulled the auxiliary harness out of the back of his chair and buckled it. The members of his bridge crew did the same. Those standing at their posts—Lieutenant Davis and Commander Wan—each pressed a command on their consoles, and padded partitions emerged from receptacles in the floor behind them, complete with belts and buckles to cinch around each thigh.

  "You think you're going to live through this?" Steve materialized beside the captain's chair, leaning for once on something other than his oaken staff: the captain's armrest. "Because if you don't survive here and now, this will be the end for you. No Amazonian with your potential heir in her oven, no Emperor Zhan's descendants to be punished for destroying your home world, no mysterious elixir manufactured in the depths of Opsanus Tau Prime." He snorted. "You and I will never even meet, for that matter!"

  "No loss there." The captain's low tone went unheard by his crew amidst all the turbulent vibrations. "Explain this to me." He turned to the gaseous hallucination. "If we've never met at this point in my timeline, then why the hell are you here? My younger self didn't have any of your quartz dust stuck up his nose!"

  Steve raised an eyebrow, his steady gaze set forward. "That's an interesting point to ponder."

  "Ha! You have no answer. I had a feeling you wouldn't. You don't understand any of this any more than I do!"

  "Very interesting." Steve nodded, pointing at the viewscreen. "Looks like you're taking us straight into that mountain."

  Episode 49: None the Worse for Wear

  "Pull up, you idiot!"

  Captain Quasar couldn't take back the words once he'd released them, and although they were by no means the correct way to give orders to a subordinate, they did have the desired effect. Elliott course-corrected as fast as he could, shifting the angle of the Effervescent Magnitude's trajectory enough so that only the bottom of the hull skimmed across the jagged peaks of a Carpethrian mountain range. The screeching, scraping sound that reverberated from the exterior plating throughout the ship was enough to make every crew member cringe as though the fingernails of a giant were running ever so slowly down a massive chalkboard.

  "Report!" Quasar half-turned toward his first officer.

  "No serious damage, sir. Our pursuers have kept their distance, remaining in the upper atmosphere." She nodded to him confidently. For now, they were safe from the Arachnoids' laser cannons.

  "I had a feeling they wouldn't follow us in." Quasar forced a chuckle, doing his best to breathe evenly. "Their ships couldn't take the heat."

  Wan cleared her throat. "It may have had more to do with that defensive array, Captain."

  She pointed at the viewscreen displaying a massive structure built into the side of a craggy mountainside, consuming hundreds of kilometers of rock and shale and apparently designed to be camouflaged by its surroundings. Every few kilometers, gaps opened along the structure, and the closer Elliott took the Magnitude in, the clearer it became that these were the Carpethrian shipyards, protected by multiple turrets with revolving cannons that locked onto the Magnitude as it approached.

  "I thought they were expecting us!" Quasar nearly yelped, fighting the harness as he unbuckled it to leap from his chair.

  "We're being hailed," Wan replied.

  The captain nodded to her, and the viewscreen switched to show a spacious office and a very hairy, four-armed Carpethrian who could have been Hank's twin brother.

  "Welcome to Carpethria, Captain Quasar and crew of the Effervescent Magnitude," the alien creature growled, clearing one throat and giving his voice an oddly harmonic quality. "We are pleased to see you have arrived none the worse for wear."

  Quasar set his jaw and dipped his chin, forcing himself to smile. These aliens were Earth's only allies this far out of Sol's system, and regardless of the way they'd been less-than-helpful with the Arachnoid bounty hunters, he had to show them the respect his superiors expected him to show them, whether the Carpethrians deserved it or not.

  "Thank you. To whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

  "I am Chancellor Frank." It was unclear whether that was his actual name or only the best guess made by the ship's translation program. "We are uploading the location of your docking bay. Please proceed to it directly, as we have much to discuss. Again, welcome."

  The screen switched back to a view of the mountainside shipyards. The turrets had shifted their muzzles away from the Magnitude. Quasar found himself breathing more easily.

  "Take us in, Ensign."

  Elliott nodded in a series of jerks. He'd yet to relax from their recent ordeal. "They don't seem very friendly," he observed.

  "It's their way. We can't assume every humanoid race we meet out here will be as jocular as you or I." He turned about-face from the viewscreen. "Lieutenant Davis, you will accompany me to the portside airlock. Commander Wan, you have the bridge."

  Davis nodded eagerly and joined the captain as he strode toward the rear door.

  "Interesting choice," mused Steve, appearing at Quasar's other side. "You take Davis but leave Elliott. Isn't it your responsibility to make sure both of them survive this time around? Or was I correct in assuming you are indeed playing favorites?"

  Gritting his teeth, Quasar stopped before exiting the bridge. "Ensign Elliott. Join us as soon as the docking clamps are secure."

  "Uh, me, sir?" he yodeled.

  "You heard me." Quasar looked Steve right in the eye, but to everyone else, the captain appeared to be staring at the wall. "You'll need to learn as much as you can about this near-lightspeed reactor they're installing."

  "Yes, sir!" Elliott saluted smartly like a scout in short pants and returned to his task, guiding the Magnitude into a wide gap in the Carpethrian structure just large enough to accommodate the star cruiser's girth.

  Steve's eyes glinted as he regarded the captain closely. "So you're going to have that cold fusion reactor installed after all. What changed your mind?"
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  Quasar ignored him. There were tight corridors and ladders to navigate, and it required all of his dedicated attention to keep himself and Lieutenant Davis on-course to the airlock below. Why hadn't the engineers who designed the Magnitude included an elevator or few? The question never ceased to perplex him.

  Pausing between decks, he activated the communication device in his stiff collar. "Chief Gruber," he contacted the ship's head of security. "Meet us outside Airlock 2. Alone." Quasar winked at Davis's surprised expression. "We don't want to alarm the Carpethrians, Lieutenant. Meeting four of us at one time should be sufficient."

  Davis nodded, looking as bright-eyed and eager to please as ever. Quasar did his best to avoid fantasizing about—

  "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Steve, clucking his tongue and leaning on his oaken staff. "How long have you thought of your weapons officer in this manner? It's really no way to honor the dead."

  "This way." Quasar pointed toward an alcove on the opposite wall with a ladder inside that would take them down to the airlock.

  Lieutenant Davis was not going to die. Not this time.

  Episode 50: First Contact

  Security Chief Gruber was already waiting for them by the time Captain Quasar and Lieutenant Davis—her blonde ponytail bouncing as if taunting the captain, which he refused to notice now that the quartz dust-induced hallucination named Steve seemed to be able to read his every thought—stepped off the ladder. Unexpectedly, Elliott had beaten them to the airlock and stood at Gruber's side.

  "I took a shortcut," he explained with a goofy grin, shifting from one foot to the other like he needed to use the restroom.

  Captain Quasar glowered for a moment, wondering how that was possible. Did the ensign spend his off-duty hours skulking about the ship, finding the shortest routes to various airlocks? The fact that the captain spent the majority of his time either on the bridge or in his quarters meant that he honestly didn't know the best way to get from one end of the Effervescent Magnitude to the other, a fact he would never share with the likes of this imbecile.

  "Still hoping he bites the dust?" Steve stood beside the captain and smiled at the other members of the team, though no one else noticed. Obviously, the hallucination intended to join them. "I suppose there are many ways for a young man to die on an alien world, after all."

  "Shall we?" Quasar gestured to Gruber, who quickly moved to open the airlock door. This younger version of Chief Gruber was just as stocky as his older self, and his perspiration disorder was equally severe at this point in time.

  "What do we know about their atmosphere?"

  Gruber consulted his forearm where a mobile display blinked on. "Oxygen-nitrogen mix, breathable. However, at this altitude and with the resultant humidity from the subtropical climate, I'd say we should pace ourselves."

  "Can you guys believe this?" Elliott was nearly bursting with anticipation. "We're going to be the first humans to set foot on this alien world! It's such an honor—I'm so honored, Captain, that you included me—"

  "Try not to wet your pants," Quasar muttered, pressing past him to enter the airlock with Gruber and Davis following close behind.

  Once inside, the captain could see the docking bridge had already been extended to meet the interior corridor of the Carpethrian bay. The Magnitude, having surrendered to the docking clamps, now sat suspended nearly a hundred meters above the floor where ground crews bustled about in vehicles. Powerful lights made the entire space as bright as day. With a nod from the captain, Gruber sealed the ship-side airlock and opened the door onto the enclosed docking bridge.

  "Remember folks," Quasar said with a broad smile, raising his chiseled chin as he forged ahead. "We're here to make a good impression and collect on years of cooperation between our two planets." The collecting would, he hoped, involve deactivating the Magnitude's self-preservation program and setting in place certain safeguards before the cold fusion near-lightspeed reactor was installed.

  "So I was right," Steve said, striding abreast of the captain. "You have changed your mind. Now you want that reactor in place?"

  "With certain safeguards," Quasar said in a low tone, quickly clearing his throat and faking a short cough for the benefit of his team.

  "Yes, I heard your thoughts the first time, Captain. Perhaps the only way to evade those bounty hunters circling like sharks in orbit will be to flash out of here at something near the speed of light. Perhaps not. But why risk losing your entire crew all over again and spending five centuries in limbo before reappearing due to a convenient encounter with a certain black hole?"

  Quasar lengthened his strides, putting some distance between himself and his crew. "Don't remind me," he muttered, teeth clenched.

  But the reactor wasn't the only reason for visiting Carpethria. He was also here to meet Hank.

  "I see." Steve nodded in rhythm with his steps and the clump of his oaken staff. "I suppose that makes some sense."

  Quasar gave him a steely eye. "You said it couldn't be done. Changing the past."

  Steve shrugged. "I don't see that it's been changed significantly—yet. But if you manage to leave orbit with these two still alive…" He jerked a gnarled thumb back toward Davis and Elliott who were doing their best to keep up while the heavily perspiring Gruber fell behind. "Then maybe I'll have to reconsider my stance on the issue."

  With that, he disappeared.

  As always, Captain Quasar was glad to see him go. Beckoning for his team to pick up the pace, he approached the end of the docking bridge and the hatch with its clear plasticon window. On the other side, in what appeared to be a corridor made of something that resembled steel, three Carpethrians stood, not wearing a stitch of clothing. Not that they needed any with so much fur covering every millimeter of their bodies, but it was interesting to note that the Carpethrians felt no need even for rank insignia to be displayed by any sort of attire.

  Quasar waited for his team to join him—Gruber bringing up the rear and mopping his forehead with a hanky—and spun the wheel on the hatch, allowing it to swing inward.

  "Greetings from Earth!" Quasar said with a flourish.

  The Carpethrian at the front of the trio nodded once. "Yes, we spoke earlier." It was Chancellor Frank, brusque as ever. "I'm afraid there's been something of a change in plans."

  "Oh?"

  Another nod from the chancellor. "You were unfortunately not the first to arrive." He cleared both of his throats. "The Arachnoids have demanded that we give them the cold fusion reactor we designed for you."

  Episode 51: Training for Battle

  The chancellor was all apologies, but the shrugging of both his superior and posterior sets of shoulders made him look indifferent. "We are a peaceful people, Captain. Our planet is—"

  "A Garden of Eden," Quasar mused as the Carpethrians led him and his team from the busy docking bay to the upper levels of the mountainside structure. At regular intervals, the bare hallways and corridors opened to reveal breathtaking vistas of the planet's lush jungles, the flora growing to a size not seen on Earth since prehistoric times.

  Chancellor Frank grunted at the captain's reference, either not understanding the phrase or not seeing its relevance or not caring to ask for elaboration—or all of the above. "We live in a symbiotic relationship with all that surrounds us. Over the centuries, the shipments of minerals and ores from your world have helped us to create this entire complex and to advance our technology to the degree we have today. We would never think of harvesting such things from our own planet, of course."

  Quasar found that interesting. Carpethria remained a paradise while portions of Earth had devolved into polluted, strip-mined atrocities in what remained of the sectors not qualified as natural preserves—and even those were encroached upon as major cities sprawled in every direction, both upward and outward. Perhaps Emperor Zhan wasn't entirely to blame for the planet's demise.

  "We have honored our agreement, Chancellor—" Quasar began.

  "Call me
Frank."

  "We were never told there would be other interested parties. We assumed, from what you told us, that the cold fusion near-lightspeed reactor would be ours." The captain did his best to hold back his temper and remain patient even as the Carpethrian trudged along, leading them almost as slowly as one of Earth's long-extinct sloths.

  "Your confusion is understandable. Believe me, we had every intention of installing the reactor as soon as you arrived. But then you didn't appear in orbit on schedule, and the Arachnoids arrived instead, making their demands." He let out a long sigh, his thick facial fur swaying with gusts from both of his throats. "They threatened to destroy a square kilometer of our forests for every second we remained indecisive. Which is why we were pressed to make a decision." The chancellor pivoted to face Captain Quasar as they came to a massive pair of double doors on the interior side of the hall. He nodded solemnly. "You will have to fight the Arachnoids for it."

  The two Carpethrian attendants moved to the doors and shoved them open with all their might (and all their arms). Apparently, although they'd perfected near-lightspeed travel, they hadn't yet figured out how to create automatic doors.

  "Captain—" Lieutenant Davis stepped forward, her hand on the captain's arm. He'd been sure to flex his bicep as soon as he caught her movement from the corner of his eye. "I don't like this."