The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum Page 26

  Quasar cleared his throat. "Is it true that in the wake of nuclear war, you came to Earth promising salvation?"

  "I offered work on my home planet," the Zhan faces sneered.

  "Slave labor."

  "Meaningless words."

  "The people of Earth agreed to your terms, but many escaped off-world instead. So in retaliation for their betrayal, you landed thousands of annihilation bots on the surface. You stated, and I quote, 'If I cannot save the earth, no one will.' Is that right?"

  The Zhan drones chuckled and shook their heads. "An exact quote would be, 'If I cannot have the earth, then no one will.'"

  Good to have that on record.

  "Meanwhile, growing bored with Earth and its people, you moved on to pillage Carpethria, and what took centuries of Earth-time has been for you only…what? A few decades?"

  "Space has been kind to me." Zhan nodded, stroking his mustache with a grimy finger.

  "You found a supplier of Goobalox chew-slugs and a great planet to hide out on—complete with an incendiary atmosphere to keep assassins at bay. By the way, how did your ships leave the surface without blowing themselves up?"

  "Phase-shift propulsion systems. Far beyond your pathetic human technology."

  "I'm sure." Quasar glanced at the drones around him. "Well, all I need now is your apology for the grievous atrocities committed against humankind, and we'll be on our way. You'll never see the Effervescent Magnitude again."

  Zhan grinned, and it was his most gruesome facial expression yet. "That is where you are wrong, Captain. From this day forward, I will hunt you down. There will be no safe harbor for you. I have many loyal subjects in this quadrant. All it will take is a word from me, and you'll find this corner of the galaxy to be most inhospitable." He released a low, gravelly chuckle. "Is it worth it to you? To live the rest of your days as a hunted animal?"

  Quasar's gaze did not waver.

  Zhan raised an eyebrow. "Then I am sorry—for underestimating your species. They are not all mindless cattle. Apparently, there is one among them with the stones of a Xenodian hornbeast." He paused. "I am sorry for thinking I could destroy your planet without consequence. I am sorry for leaving weapons of mass destruction to be destroyed by the likes of you. And I am sorry that the next time we meet, there will be no delightful battle of wits and meaningless words." His eyes, cold and abysmal as black holes, filled the holo-screens. "Next time, you will have only a moment to recognize me before you cease to exist!"

  The screens went dark. Without warning, the drones rippled out of phase, dissolving into the air. Gruber and his men stared in wide-eyed wonder.

  "That went well," Quasar observed.

  Returning to the bridge a little winded from all the ladder-climbing, Captain Quasar nodded to Commander Wan. "Let's get out of here."

  She switched the viewscreen to a rear-facing vantage point as the Effervescent Magnitude powered up its engines. "Are we still going to detonate, sir?"

  "We can't have them following us."

  "But the blast—"

  "That's why we've got to vamoose."

  "Captain, you know I'm never one to question orders."

  "Besides the occasional raised eyebrow? No, of course not." Quasar almost smiled.

  "We can't kill all those people. It makes us no better than Zhan!"

  "You have a point there. But remember, we've got a job to do. Namely, uniting humankind somehow and returning them to Earth so we can start cleaning things up there. Isn't that more important than one evil emperor with megalomania and a few of his spineless minions?"

  "If we behave no better than our enemies, what good are our hopes for the future?"

  Captain Quasar's eyes stung a little as he gazed upon his noble first officer. "Well said." He punched the intercom on his chair. "Bill, I'd prefer you do the honors, considering your history with Zhan and all. I'm transferring the detonation sequence to you."

  "Gee thanks, Captain," Bill said brightly.

  Zhan's ships—still carrying the massive bot in their web—had begun jettisoning escape pods. Apparently, they knew the countdown was drawing uncomfortably close to zero.

  "Make sure we're well out of range, Helmsman." Quasar held Hank's somber gaze.

  Jumping to full speed, the Effervescent Magnitude put plenty of space between them and Zhan's fleet.

  "Take that, suckas!" Bill shrilled on the comm.

  All eyes on the bridge focused on the screen as it zoomed in to capture the massive explosion above Zhan's planet. Only the blast didn't resemble a power cell detonation like anyone had ever seen before. Instead, it looked like a pulse of wave energy bursting outward in a giant bubble of blue light, striking each of Zhan's ships without structurally damaging a single one. They were left dead in the water, so to speak, yet still intact.

  Wan faced the captain with the closest thing to a grin he'd ever seen on her. "EMP," she said with approval.

  "I might've asked Bill to augment that bot a bit," Quasar said.

  Bill whooped and hollered on the comm. The captain muted him. Gazing at Zahn's disabled fleet as they drifted apart like dead fish in a pond, Quasar stroked his clean-shaven chin and narrowed his heroic gaze.

  Emperor Zhan wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, which left Quasar plenty of time to fulfill his next mission: assembling a fleet, gathering the human diaspora from across the galaxy, and returning them to Earth to start over. A full order, but he knew the crew of the Effervescent Magnitude were up to the challenge. They'd proved themselves time and again, and he was proud to be their captain.

  Steve the non-temporal entity had been right, after all. The past was long gone, and the future wasn't written in stone. There was only the present, this moment, this breath.

  And it was a gift.

  "Hey there, Handsome." Asteria sauntered onto the bridge carrying their full-grown son on her back. He appeared to be at least eighteen Earth years old now, drooling and babbling as happily as ever. "Did you forget about us?"

  Collapsing into his deluxe-model captain's chair, Bartholomew Quasar covered his face in his hands and groaned, "If only."

  CAPTAIN QUASAR WILL RETURN

  Find out more:

  Captain Bartholomew Quasar

  About the Author:

  Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a dozen alternate realities. Over the past 5 years, his short fiction has appeared in more than 100 publications, including AE Science Fiction, Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, Shimmer, and the Wastelands 2 anthology.

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