The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum Page 8

  "Like I brained you with a rock," he finished her thought.

  "Great minds." She gave him a wink and hauled him up onto his tiptoes, planting on his mouth the most forceful kiss he'd ever experienced—besides the few she'd already given him in the future time that hadn't occurred yet, when they'd be hauling the spare reactor coils out of her ship's cargo hold.

  Swooning from a lack of oxygen as her massive lips devoured the lower portion of his face, Captain Quasar had a few moments to ponder the situation. Oddly enough, he already knew how it would pan out—he'd lived it. And as long as he followed the course presented to him, he could weigh the potential outcomes against what he knew would transpire in the near future.

  Hitting Asteria, for example. When he'd seen her before—later in this timeline—he and Hank had been at the mercy of Luscenta, the commanding officer, in the cargo hold. Asteria had appeared on the scene with her hand on the back of her head, where she'd apparently been hit. Minutes later, she'd told Quasar, "You don't pull your punches." So, obviously, he was going to hit her with this obsidian sculpture right here, right now. If he didn't, then things would not pan out as they had, with both Quasar and Hank escaping to return to the Effervescent Magnitude.

  But was it presumptive to assume this was what must be done? What if he hit her too hard and killed her in the process? The ship's brig would be the least of his concerns. He shuddered to imagine what an Amazonian prison colony could be like.

  Asteria pressed the rock into his hand as though it weighed nothing. He nearly dropped it. "Too heavy?"

  It had to be twenty-five kilograms, at least. Not too heavy for him, of course, just not what he was expecting from something its size. "Not at all." He curled his arm toward his chest and felt the bicep strain against his uniform.

  She gave him another wink. "All right then, your majesty. Crown me." Bare as the day she was born, Asteria released her hold on him and knelt, bowing her head so he could reach the back of it with a mighty swing.

  Gripping the rock, Captain Quasar prepared himself to do the unthinkable. He had never struck a woman before in any way, always fancying himself a classic sort of hero and maintaining a rather archaic view of the female of every species as the gentler sex.

  Until he'd met the Amazonians, that is.

  Episode 23: A Real Knockout

  Captain Quasar readied himself, hoping he wouldn't have to hit Asteria more than once to render her unconscious.

  "Would you like to get dressed first?" In his mind, it was wrong enough to be hitting a woman in the first place and twice as wrong to be doing so to a naked one. The whole situation reeked of impropriety, and Quasar couldn't shake the queasy feeling it induced.

  The sooner he and Hank got out of here, the better; but even so, there was a right way and a wrong way to go about anything, and he had to believe if there was one reason for his moving through time to relive moments from his past, it was so he could make things right the second time around. That only made sense.

  "Sense?" Steve materialized behind Asteria, raising an eyebrow at her nude form with appreciation. Apparently, gaseous entities such as himself preferred the gargantuan female form above all others. "What about any of this makes sense to you, Captain?"

  Quasar shut his eyes tight and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Not now," he groaned.

  "What's wrong, Babe?" Asteria leaned in. "Are you having second thoughts? Thinking maybe we should hit the sheets for some pillow talk instead?"

  "No." Anything but that! "I have to hit you, I know. I'm ready." He nodded, squaring his shoulders.

  "Hold on now, Captain." Steve looked aghast. "Can't you see this female wants to—?"

  Quasar swung the obsidian sculpture with all his might, cracking it against Asteria's head. She dropped to the floor as if her life force had suddenly evacuated her body, and the black rock lay beside her in two pieces. Dark crimson blood oozed from the fresh wound onto the bedspread, rumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  "I've killed her." Wide-eyed, the captain dropped to his knees to check her jugular.

  "Didn't you already see her later on? In the airlock or something?" Steve shook his head. "All this jumping about through time is starting to get to me too, I'm afraid." He chuckled.

  Asteria's pulse was steady. Quasar draped the bedspread over her, for decency's sake and because the sight of her biceps did nothing for his self-esteem. "That's the very nature of time travel, Gasman. Whatever happened after this point may not turn out the same way this time around. I have no idea what repercussions my actions will have on the near future."

  "Gasman? Are we familiar enough now for nicknames, Captain?" Steve's eyes twinkled.

  Quasar turned to the mirrored shelves and cabinets nearby. "Help me find a gun—any weapon will do."

  "How about that rock?" Steve regarded the bloodstained obsidian closely. "You sure did give her a whack."

  "I'm not proud of it." If he had to guess, the sculpture's demise had more to do with the density of Asteria's skull than his own strength.

  "What do you suppose it was meant to be? Some sort of animal? A poor representation." Steve prodded the rock with the end of his oaken staff, but the wood passed straight through it. "Right." Steve shook his head again. "I'm not really here."

  The captain remained on task, shuffling through every storage space he could find, but to no avail. Where did Asteria keep her weapons? "As soon as we return to the Magnitude, I'm having my nasal cavities vacuumed. That's all there is to it."

  "What for?"

  Quasar reeled to face the apparition. "You told me yourself. The quartz dust I inhaled on your planet is causing me to have these hallucinations, and if—"

  "Right. That." Steve chuckled. "Well, it might have worked if you'd taken care of it right away. But by this point, that dust has worked its way up into your frontal lobes. So I'm afraid there won't be any easy way to get rid of me, Captain. Not without major brain surgery."

  The captain clenched his fists. He could feel a scream coming on. "Help me find a gun!"

  Steve blinked at him, then turned to point at the bed with his staff. "Did you check under her pillow?"

  A ridiculous place to keep a weapon, to be sure. How could anyone sleep with something like that stuffed under her head? And what sort of person would keep a weapon so close at hand? Someone who feared for her life on a regular basis. Would Asteria feel such fear? She was second-in-command, for crying out loud.

  But if there were others on board jockeying for position—

  Without any knowledge of how officers rose through the ranks aboard the Formidable Grace, Quasar wondered whether the ship's third-in-command could have Asteria's position in her sights. If so, then keeping a weapon under one's pillow would be the wisest course of action, after all.

  Quasar whipped the meter-long pillow aside to find a Cody 52 pistol underneath—which was strange, considering the fact that it was an Earth weapon and that the captain owned one just like it, as did Hank and every other member of the Magnitude's crew.

  "How in the world?" He grasped the grip and hefted the gun in his hand, checking the magazine for pulse rounds—nine of which remained unfired. Had humans actually traveled this far into outer space before, and had their kind already met the Amazonians? How else had such a weapon come to be in Asteria's quarters?

  Steve smirked. "You don't think they just transported you and your helmsman over here, do you? I'm pretty sure their interests range beyond sexual conquest."

  Captain Quasar raised the Cody 52 as the situation dawned on him. "They're after our weapons."

  Episode 24: Dead or Alive

  A warble came from the door to Asteria's quarters, followed by a voice demanding that she open it, succeeded by a warning that the lock would soon be overridden if she did not comply. Considering the fact that she was out cold on the floor with a nasty wound on the back of her head, it seemed unlikely that she would be able to fulfill the role of a gracious host.

 
Captain Quasar gripped the weapon he'd taken from under her pillow and aimed at the door. As it swished to the side, revealing two of Asteria's crewmates in slick, blue snakeskin spacesuits, Quasar strode toward them.

  "Show me the way to your brig," he demanded.

  Their eyes widened with a mixture of surprise and indignation. They had yet to reach for their holstered sidearms. "Put that down. You'll only hurt yourself."

  "Not where I'm aiming it, I won't." The muzzle of the Cody 52 shifted from one woman's abdomen to the other. "You know what a pulse round can do at this range? Of course you don't. This is an Earth weapon. You have no idea what it's capable of."

  He could tell by their expressions that he'd guessed correctly. They had no experience with such a gun.

  "Where is Asteria?" One of them glanced around the room, but the massive bed obstructed her view of Asteria's body. "What have you done with her?"

  "Only what I had to. I was taken against my will, as was my helmsman. I intend to free him and return to my ship." Quasar narrowed his gaze up at the two giant women. "So you can either help me or get yourselves shot. The choice is yours."

  "You won't make it to the brig, with or without our help. You're just a little manimal with delusions of grandeur!"

  Quasar pulled the trigger, and a pulse round blasted the doorframe above them, fizzling to leave a black burn mark. "Show me to the brig. And while you're at it, I want you to collect all of the Earth weapons your commander transported off my ship. Where I come from, that's called stealing. I could have your vessel seized for piracy."

  "Where do you come from?" They regarded him as if he were some bizarre species of alien.

  "Earth!" Hadn't he referred to it enough already?

  They shrugged their muscle-bound shoulders. "Never heard of it."

  How was that possible? How far off-course had that black hole thrown the Effervescent Magnitude, both in time and space? More to the point, how long would it take them to return home?

  Quasar raised his Cody 52 and aimed it at the head of the one who'd spoken. "Shall we?"

  The two Amazonians glanced at each other. Then they chose the only logical course of action presented to them. Leaping sideways outside the door, one to the right, one to the left, they returned an instant later with weapons drawn. Before the captain knew what was happening, they had advanced, one high and one low, opening a barrage of fire.

  Yelping in a way that did not befit his position or his manliness, Quasar dove behind the bed as Incinerator blasts tore across the bedspread, burning streaks of flame.

  "Surrender, Earthman!" one of the women boomed in a baritone's octave. "Our commander wants you dead or alive. She has no preference!"

  Captain Quasar, on the other hand, did have a preference. And he made it known by springing up from the floor and twisting his body sideways—an ancient gunslinger's tactic giving one's adversary less surface area to target. The first shot he squeezed off sent the woman in front over backwards with the impact of the pulse round, flaring white-hot as it burned through her uniform and singed the flesh beneath, jolting her nervous system with a charge strong enough to shut down her conscious functions and leave only the autonomic variety. In other words, she was out cold.

  The other woman dove to the floor and sprawled out on the other side of the bed. With the monstrous mattress between them, neither the captain nor his adversary could see one another. But that didn't stop the Amazonian from firing blindly over the ruined bedspread. Quasar, on the other hand, needed to conserve his rounds. Only seven remained in the clip, and he still had to find the brig, break out Hank, and return to the Magnitude.

  Then he remembered where and when he'd found himself later on in the timeline of things: pinned down in that cargo hold with Hank, each of them armed with atom rifles and hand guns, while the commander of the Formidable Grace and her Amazonians fired incessantly, causing a rupture in the wall that had started to suck the air out into the cold depths of space. Had this present fire fight occurred the first time around? Or had things changed? And, if so, would events transpire along an entirely different course now?

  There was only one way to know. Quasar had to incapacitate this Amazonian and get the hell out of here.

  "I may not recognize your weapon, Earthman, but I doubt it holds an inexhaustible supply of ammunition." The woman chuckled on her side of the bed. "Mine, on the other hand, contains a rechargeable power source, something you wouldn't know anything about. But would you like to guess what that means?"

  Quasar already had. Unless she was bluffing, this Amazonian would be able to hold out against him indefinitely.

  Episode 25: Surge Blast

  Crouched beside Asteria's enormous bed, Captain Quasar cleared his throat loudly and with great force, hoping to intimidate his opponent.

  "Something you may not know about the Cody 52 revolver: it can be rigged as an explosive device." He remembered clearly the last time he'd tried doing the same thing with an atom rifle in the Amazonians' cargo hold. It hadn't worked. But since these present moments were occurring well before the cargo hold incident, he had reason to believe the Amazon woman would not know to call his bluff. "I'm rigging it up for a surge blast even as I speak." He did so, hoping this time his plan would actually work.

  "If I am to understand correctly," the woman said after a prolonged pause, "you intend to…blow yourself up?"

  The captain chuckled. "I can see how it might appear that way to the uninitiated. But truth be told, it is you that will be doing the blowing up part. You see, I plan to toss this weapon over to your side of the bed and then take cover inside yon closet." From the size of the closet door, he had to assume he'd be able to fit inside—as long as Asteria was not a hoarder.

  "Are you able to fire your weapon while it's set for this surge blast of which you speak?"

  Quasar frowned. "Uh, no…"

  The bed heaved beneath the woman's weight as she charged across it, firing her weapon. The closet door across from the captain burst into a ball of flame and quickly dissolved into a black, charred mess. Quasar's hands moved in a blur of speed to disable the surge blast—but it was too late. The woman was already upon him, kneeling at the edge of the bed with the glowing-hot muzzle of her Incinerator directed between his eyebrows.

  "Hand me that." She reached out, as steady as could be, now in complete control of the situation.

  Quasar thought fast. "Very well. But you won't be able to disarm it."

  She narrowed her gaze. "Isn't that what you were doing just now?"

  "I failed." He shrugged. "It's going to explode in exactly ten Earth seconds."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Eight Earth seconds now." He handed over the Cody 52, his grasp lingering on the grip. "I would get out of here, if I were you."

  She made no move to leave. "Then we'll die together." The makings of a smile twitched along the side of her square jaw. But then she caught sight of Asteria on the floor and the broken obsidian sculpture and the blood. "What did you do, Earthman?" she cried in dismay, her gaze now fixed on Asteria even as her fingers found purchase on Quasar's weapon.

  "Only what I had to." He pulled the trigger, and the pulse round sent her flying head over heels, jittering in spasms once she hit the floor to loll unconsciously. In the process, her Incinerator discharged, and the captain wasn't quick enough to duck the blast. He grit his teeth as his eyes widened, turning to look down at his left shoulder where the uniform had been burned to a crisp—along with the skin beneath, rosy and blistered through the scorched hole. It was far from a pretty sight.

  Cursing under his breath, he got to his feet to survey the damage: three Amazonian women out cold and sprawled across the floor, clear signs of a fire fight with the burn damage everywhere to see, and a broken sculpture. It would be clear to the first Amazonian upon the scene that an Earthman had gotten the better of his superior adversaries. He had to smile at that.

  And he had to get moving.

  Hank was b
eing held in the brig of the Formidable Grace and would need to be broken out, and they would have to locate and return all of the weapons the Amazonians had stolen from the Effervescent Magnitude as well. There were only two problems that he could foresee. First of all, he had no idea where the brig was located. And second of all, he had no idea where the stolen weapons were being kept.

  For a lesser man, these obstacles would have proven insurmountable. But not for Captain Bartholomew Quasar. While perhaps merely an Earthman, he was more than these Amazonians had bargained for—if there, in fact, had been any bargaining in the mix, which he doubted—and besides that, he was known as something of a hero in some parts of the galaxy, not to mention his entire home planet. At least he had been, over five centuries ago. It was possible that someone else could have usurped his title as United World Hero of the Year during the time he and his crew were stuck in that awful limbo—which he still had difficulty comprehending.

  Not that he had the time to do so. Precious seconds had already been lost. Stooping to retrieve the Incinerators from the two unconscious Amazonians, Quasar made for the door, jumping over their large, long limbs and wincing at how the jostling jarred his badly burned shoulder. He would have to see Dr. Yune as soon as he returned to the Magnitude. Such a burn could become infected quickly while aboard an alien ship. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

  Holding the Cody 52 with his right hand, Quasar tucked one Incinerator into his belt and carried the other in his left—which he held close to his abdomen to keep the strain off his wounded shoulder.

  He peeked outside. The hallway, a dark plasteel-riveted corridor with luminescent glowstrips along the floor, was empty. Leaving the door to shut automatically behind him, he stepped out into the unknown with no clear idea where he was going exactly, only knowing he had to get there fast.

  Hank's life depended on it.