The Legend of Grand Mechapolis Chapter 10

THE LEGEND OF GRAND MECHAPOLIS

STAR BLAZERS/GALAXY EXPRESS 999

Founding of the Dual Monarchy and Galaxy Express System

By: Frederick P. Kopetz

Chapter TEN: Fallout…

Input contributed by Gail Kopetz, Jamie Tucker, and Margaret and Steven Diviney

All other original art is by Frederick P. Kopetz along with altered captures from the old and new Yamato series

----------------------------------------------------------------

PROLOGUE:

COSMOS DREAM (CONTINUED)

Planet Earth

Tokyo Megalopolis

The Undercity

June 19, 2972

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The woman who travelled under the name of Dawn walked down a passage in the Undercity.

In her youth, the dark streets of the Undercity HAD been the Tokyo Megalopolis, before the Neo-Guardiana War, before the Gamilon Secession Crisis, before the Dark Times, well before the Secession of Earth from the Commonwealth, the horrid years of war of brother against brother, as comrades, friends, and even family members found themselves split in two camps just as Terra and Pellias had been split again centuries beforehand, and then there came the invasion of Earth by the Illumidas after what remained of the Commonwealth had reduced their numbers so that they had not conquered the whole galaxy as they had originally intended.

Dawn walked down a street that she knew well, as she thought, her eyes unreadable behind her sunglasses, To this day, Earth is still unaware of the sacrifices so many of us made for so long to keep the invasion from being far worse than it was…the Terrans never learned Illumidas originally wanted to destroy the planet. We spared them from that…and as for the remainder, we spent decades shrinking it down to the point where Harlock could harry them down to almost nothing…and we finished off the job near Garland Bight Nebula…was it over a hundred years ago now? Or was it two hundred years ago? Time passes like sands. Gets hard for me to keep track, Dawn thought.

I wonder where she is? Dawn thought.

Then, with finely-tuned hearing and reflexes, she heard a footstep. She knew the sound, and knew it had to be one out of two men.

Either it’s the Resistance Cell Boss…or HIM, even though I all but ordered him to keep out of this! Dawn thought.

“Miss, would you kindly do me the courtesy of turning around?” said a rough voice.

“You’re not him, I hear” Dawn said out loud, with a strange mixture of relief and longing in her voice. “Although a part of me wishes he had decided to show up…”

“Who, Miss?” said the heavy, white-bearded man who wore something like a pirate bandanna on his head over his messy white hair.

“I’ll tell you in time,” said Dawn. “Tell me who you are, first…low voices, please. They could have snoopermikes all over the place.”

“How about you take off those damn shades and show me you’re not some mechanical bitch?”

“Then, we don’t get anywhere. A pity. I really needed to talk to Gren Hallford, though. You look like him, but you could be a mech, too…”

“Would a mech be carrying this?” the old man said as he tossed Dawn a belt buckle.

Dawn recognized it at once. “Star Force,” she said softly. “Yours?”

“Haven’t worn that since Garland Bight,” he whispered. “Give it back, please…”

Dawn looked around, came up, and whispered. “I certainly will. OK…you have shown me what I need…now…to show you what you need,” Dawn said as she looked around again, handed Hallford his belt buckle, and merely tipped her sunglasses down her cute but long aristocratic nose so he could look into her eyes.

Hallford recognized those deep, dark brown eyes at once, and read some of the depth of the age and power in them.

No mech had those eyes, or could fake them.

Hallford gave Dawn an old hand-to-the-heart Star Force salute and then genuflected on one knee.

“What you just did was very dangerous,” Dawn whispered as she pushed her sunglasses back up and helped Hallford up. “Now, you tell me where Maetel is, please…”

“This way. I can lead you to the Undercity entrance to this apartment building where she’s staying…twelve blocks from here…”

“You mean Paradise Tower?” Dawn whispered.

Hallford nodded.

“I’ve got it from there,” said Dawn. “Long ago, my…our…company, Forrestar Investments, built it. That’s when it was just fifty floors. Now…”

“Her place is on the hundred and fiftieth floor…” whispered Hallford.

“I remember that,” whispered Dawn. “He and I were staying there once as a safe house before we got off Earth during the Secession War. Those were dark days…”

“They were,” said Hallford. “I was born then…”

Dawn said, “Go with God. You will get new orders in a few weeks.”

“When?”

“When I get Home,” Dawn said. She then dashed off like a will-o-the-wisp into the dark.

Hallford stood in the dark, and then he whispered, “May God be with you…Your Majesty. Running into great danger again…as you have been doing for centuries…”

I. GOING OVER THINGS…

Planet Earth

The Tokyo Megalopolis

The Wildstars’ Home

August 21, 2233

1000 Hours: Earth Spacetime

------------------------------------------------------

Higail Salarn was a Ralkhen CPA who had recently completed a PhD dissertation at the London School of Economics on the foundations of interplanetary trade between Earth, Pellias, Iscandar, and Gamilon.

She was here today at Derek and Nova’s home in the Tokyo Megalopolis speaking with them and Jordy and Ariel Venture.

Doctor Salarn was a lovely felinoid with reddish-golden fur dressed in a skirted three-piece suit. She wore glasses, and her tail went back and forth and her ears moved around as she spoke. Jordy and Ariel’s toddler daughter Samantha sat on the floor watching the beautiful Ralkhen girl, and she looked at her mother. She blurted out, “Mommy…is she a kitty?”

“I’m not really sure if it’s polite to call her a…” Ariel began.

Nova raised her hand. “Yes, dear. She’s a kitty. The Ralkhen people are in catlike forms, so she’s a person, and a very bright kitty!”

“WOW!” said Samantha with wide eyes as Ariel sat down on the floor and pulled her into her lap.

“Doctor Salarn,” Derek said formally. “We are sorry if our granddaughter has offered any offense.”

“No offense taken; I’m rather used to this reaction,” Doctor Salarn said in a very formal accent that sounded like a very upper-class British accent. “Our issue today is to discuss your net worth, Admiral, combined with that of Her Majesty here, and the tax consequences to you of certain…gifts…”

“What sort of gifts?” said Jordy as he sat with his boots off in uniform.

“I have something in mind,” Nova said.

“Ma’am…it amazes me that we have stayed here for some time and you have not asked Ariel and I to pay rent…” Jordy said.

“The issue of your net worth is why I came here, first,” said Doctor Salarn as she kept her claws retracted with her long fingers/forepaws and she began to type on a laptop. “Totaling the balances from your salaries, commercial endeavors, including rents you receive for your other properties, royalties for books and musical media and music publishing, and various honorariums paid to you by the Commonwealth Government,” said Higail as she totaled the figures. “This figure, Your Majesty, is your net worth, and this one is the Lord Admiral’s net worth. The bottom line is your combined net worth as shown in red on the graphic.”

Higail turned the laptop to Derek and Nova and said, “Please note the combined figure is after your expenditures, charitable donations, and tax liabilities.”

Nova looked at the figure, and her eyes went wide. Her mouth fell open and she pointed at the screen to Derek.

“How much are you worth, Dad…Mom…?” said Ariel.

“I don’t…I don’t believe this,” Nova gasped. “Going by this figure alone, we bring in over fivefold with regard to any of the remaining Royal families or…I think…Industrialists on the planet…”

“Doctor “Flash” Contrell of Contrail Enterprises brings in more, and Doctor Steven Sandor brings in a little less than you do, and Aurora Forrester is bringing in just a little less than you two, but I must say that you two are among my wealthier clients,” Higail said. “Therefore, as we discussed earlier, the liability in tax to you two with regards to certain gifts of real estate would in fact be negligible, given your extreme net worth at this time.”

Derek smiled, and Nova nodded. Then, Derek slid a set of keys towards Ariel. “Do you see this house?”

“Yes, Dad?” she said.

“It belongs to you and Jordy now,” Nova said. “We agreed upon it. You are here, and you need this place far more than we do,” Nova said. “We’d prefer to remain in Vienna or hidden away in Philadelphia when we are on Earth. Because…we will not be on planet long.”

“Mom?” Ariel said.

“Nova and I have things to do. Places to go. We have to go to Rikasha soon, and then continue a search for…Astrena’s assassins. Desslok has asked for it, and we intend to honor our promise to him.”

“I also need to cement our alliance with Desslok,” Nova said. “Even though he has been…difficult at times…”

Nova then shut her eyes, and a look of something like pain went over her features.

What’s wrong? Derek sent to her.

I’m sorry…bad memories. Years ago…when we had made alliance, and when he went very cold for a while and let his secret police imprison me after that Baroness and I fought. Do you remember that?

I do…God above…I do… Derek sent.

Twenty-five years ago, Nova had been part of a rock band at keyboards playing a concert for Desslok on Gamilon. A Baroness Krista Dajal had not liked the band’s song, and she had heckled them and thrown rotten fruit at Nova, who basically lost it and got into a fist-fight with the Baroness. (Derek teased her afterwards with “You were acting just like Ozzy Osbourne at that moment.”) Leader Desslok’s secret police had arrested her and the erring Baroness; and Nova had been placed in a cell intended for psionics and had been tormented with electricity for “insulting Desslok” by some overzealous Secret Policemen before Derek and Astrena had negotiated her release. That had left Nova resentful and way of Desslok for a while, even though he apologized profusely, and angry at Derek for a day. She occasionally had flashbacks of being suspended manacled by her wrists and ankles in a field stripped of her stage suit, naked like some wild animal. Nova sent those memories to Derek and he held her hand, remembering her pain all too well.

“So, you’ll arrange a closing?” Jordy asked Derek and Doctor Salarn.

“Yes,” said the Ralkhen woman. “Your parents will cover the taxes, transfer charges, and other required closing charges, and you will meet with us in two days to complete the closing here, if that is acceptable.”

“It is,” said Ariel as she came back in carrying Samantha. Nova took her granddaughter and began to sing to her and tap her nose. The little girl giggled and then Nova said, “See that man there…with the messy hair? He’s your grandfather. He loves you as much as we do!”

“Hellosie, Pop-Pops,” Samantha lisped. “You don’t look old.”

“Pop-Pops is not old,” Derek said as he looked at her with crossed eyes and stuck out his tongue. Both Samantha and Nova laughed at this. Samantha looked at Nova and said, “Grammma, he’s weird!”

“We know, but we love him anyway,” Nova whispered as Derek gave them a look. Then, Samantha crawled back to Nova’s lap. “Gramma warm. She glitters,” she said.

“I can’t see you glittering right now, Nova,” Derek said. Indeed, Nova did not look very spectacular, in her simple white sleeveless top, sky-blue shorts, and bare feet with an ankle bracelet.

“Children can see things that we can’t, Derek,” Nova said.

“Interesting.”

---------------------------------------------------------------

In the meantime, on Iscandar, Desslok was sitting with Starsha in a garden near her cousin Sasha’s palace. Birds were singing, the sun was out, and Desslok was looking at Starsha and holding hands with her.

“Does your cousin now have a Queendom?” Desslok said.

“Yes, a small one, as you know,” Starsha said. “Only Iscandar and a planet in the inner part of the system you gave to us so that we could Terraform it. Two worlds. I know you have many more.”

“My Empire grows over the years,” Desslok said. “Now just over a hundred worlds, in the Milky Way, Great Magellenic Cloud, Small Magellenic Cloud, and one world at Harnam’s Nebula near the Andromeda Galaxy not far from Leztranad, claimed by the Mechanoids, the Larmetallans, and your mother’s Commonwealth. I will not lie. Some of those worlds joined us via treaty; some via exploration and colonization…some…by way of honorable conquest.”

“You are still conquering worlds?” Starsha said. “I have memories of that. Explain your reasoning, please?”

“Much more slowly than years ago,” Desslok replied as he sipped at his tea. “Liberating worlds from Promethium’s polity, and from the hostile Gakhalian United Worlds. Gakhalia. An aggressive world. They are a threat to your mother’s Commonwealth too, you know. Now and then, our forces take Gakhalian bases or stop Gaklhalians from claiming hitherto free worlds.”

“The Gakhalians are aggressive,” Starsha said. “Father says no one knows what they look like; they never show themselves upon hailing. They blow apart their ships when boarding or capture is imminent. When remains have been recovered, they appear to be…crystalline, like their warships. Maybe silicon-based.”

“My primary reason for conquest at this time,” Desslok said.

Starsha looked at him and said, “I do love you, Desslok. However, be wary of conquest. It can be like a heady wine. It tastes good at first, but the dregs, pain, and hangover can be terrible. It can become a bad habit, as it once…”

Desslok laughed slightly. “Starsha, do you not think I am aware of that? I intend to be more temperate.”

“I am glad,” Starsha said as she smiled. “I would hate for us to ever come to odds over this. Or for you to come to odds with my…parents…”

“We have discussed the borders of our polities before and will discuss it again shortly. I expect to see Yamato on Gamilon within the next few weeks. Then, your mother and I will…talk. You may even be invited to the summit.”

“I am glad,” Starsha said, smiling again at Desslok.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Some days later, in the Combat Practice Room aboard Yamato, which had cast off again, heading for Planet Rikasha, two figures with sabers were facing off in the shadows of the almost-darkened room.

They wore hooded cloaks with belts. One figure wore a cloak in navy blue; the other wore a cloak in white. Both wore tights and boots in black.

They saluted, and then the figure in blue swung and jabbed at the figure in white, moving very fast.

The smaller figure in white parried his swing and his jab, and then she jumped back and glared at him. “Come on,” she hissed in a guttural whisper. “You’re better than THAT, damnit!”

The figure in blue did another thrust and slash, again parried by the figure in white, who riposted and slashed back, moving so fast her body was a blur.

The man in blue responded and jabbed, being met this time by a wall of invisible force. “Oh, we’re adding Matrix tricks to this too, are we?” he growled.

“It’s necessary,” she hissed back. “Use you connection! We may need it someday,” she said as she jabbed at him and was met by a wall of force. “Very good…now try this!”

She raised her hand, and the figure in blue was pushed back with the Power. “You’re sneaky!” he hissed back. “Have this!”

He raised his left hand, and he grinned a little as the Power met her and pushed her back. She kept from falling over by pulling a flip in mid-air, and propelling herself over his head. She screamed and attacked him from the back.

He pivoted, his cowl flying back to expose his chestnut-brown mane and eyes burning with an honest battle rage for a moment as he slashed and jabbed twice in succession, almost knocking the saber out of the hands of the woman in white, whose brown eyes began to burn with a blue light in rage.

“Not bad, dear, not bad!” hissed the figure in white as she slashed, jabbed, and used the Power in quick succession to knock her partner off balance. He stumbled, fell, and she slashed his saber out of his hand and stood glaring at him with a foot on his chest and a saber at her throat. “You’re dead, Derek!” she said, giggling for the first time as she used her Power to flip back her hood and expose her flowing honey-blonde hair.

“Nova, you’re mean. You use dirty tricks!” Derek said with a smile. “But you’re good.”

“You’re learning this Craft too, m’love,” Nova said as applause came from the gallery over their heads and the smaller woman helped the defeated man up and cast aside her saber and gave him an affectionate hug as she patted his back. “When Maetel gets back from her latest journey, she’ll catch a liner to Rikasha and meet me there, and she and I will go at it in the Cha’rif family keep! Get faster, or some psionic Mechanoid will take your head off.”

“Yeah! I told you the same thing when I was teaching you swordcraft on the beach at our old house years ago,” Derek said. “Who’s the sensei now?”

“Santa and His Old Lady, mon?” Nova said in a put-on voice that cracked her husband up.

“You need a shower, Peppermint,” Derek said as they left the practice area.

“Would you like to jump in and wash my hair?” Nova said with a wink as they went down the passage.

“I’d be honored.”

“Then…uhh…afterwards, we’ll need some tea. It’ll be a few days until we get across the Galaxy to Rikasha.”

---------------------------------------------------------------

Alex Wildstar III had the Yamato’s conn for now in the absence of the Admiral.

“So, what’s Rikasha like?” Yuki Neuve asked from her post.

Roberto said, “I was there…many times. It was once a burning desert, all over the place, during the War back in 2202. It became a much nicer place after we used the Cosmo-DNA on it a while later.”

“I get confused,” Presha said from her post at Combat, where she was filling in.

“Hmmh?” said Yuki.

“I look at you out of the corner of my eye behind that radar thing and think you’re my damn granddaughter until I hear your voice; sounds totally different from her deeper, slightly smoky voice.”

“I’m a kid,” said Yuki. “Her majesty is twenty-one going on sixty...wait…faulty. Calculations are off…”

“Do the damn math later,” said Presha.

“Her Majesty’s chronological age is exactly fifty-five years, five months, eighteen days, nineteen hours, six minutes, and forty-two point three two five seconds,” said Yuki.

“I was afraid you’d do that,” said Alex with a groan.

“I’m an android. I am very precise,” Yuki said.

Roberto began to snicker. “Shall I advise them how many minutes, seconds, and milliseconds it takes for you to…”

“NO! DAMN YOU!” said Yuki.

“I have all of the data,” said Roberto. “My subroutines measured it while we were having our wedding night.”

“You are still fairly graceless,” Yuki said.

“Kids. Cut the crap,” said Yvona from her post.

“Don’t know which one of my kids is worse,” said Presha. “You or Teresa.”

---------------------------------------------------

“This is relaxing,” Nova said as Derek rubbed her back in the shower.

“You found another unique way to get sweaty earlier,” he said.

Nova giggled at that. “Least we’re not up a tree,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, like our honeymoon years and years ago,” Derek said. “We were two pretty naughty kids then, huh?”

“You’re still naughty,” Nova said as she kissed her husband.

“You’ve been a mother and you still look one hundred percent luscious,” Derek said.

“Resurrection and the Matrix had a lot to do with it,” Nova said as she closed her eyes, luxuriating in the hot water. “Get my tush with that loofah?”

“I’ll do more than that, maybe,” Derek said with a wink.

“Let’s see what…yes…you’ve got it,” Nova said. “And what are you going to give me?”

“Second breakfast?” he said.

“You’re adorable,” Nova whispered as she went up on her toes.

“M’God, this is fun,” Derek said.

Nova began to squeal as Derek tickled her.

He was being a bad boy.

Her Majesty did not mind.

-------------------------------------

A FEW MINUTES LATER…

“Captain on the Bridge!” Alex screamed as he jumped up as his parents came back in, hand-in-hand, with slightly wet hair.

“Taking the conn; Presha, prepare a fighter to go out on patrol with Yamamoto’s squadron and Keyman,” Derek ordered as he took his post.

“Roger,” she said as she gave Alex the Combat seat.

“Want me to go back to Sickbay?” Nova said.

“No. Please check on Yuki over there. Some of these readings look awfully weird,” Derek said as he looked at his screen.

“Aye-aye, sir,” Nova said. “Yuki, what are you doing?” Nova said as she walked over in her lab coat, blue scrub dress, and sandals.

“Operating my station, ma’am,” sniffed the android. “Probably better than you ever did!”

“Balderdash!” Nova said slowly in her smoky, slightly flat voice. “Look! Your sideband scanner is barely up, you have your Doppler scanner at eight when it should be at twenty, at the very least, and your gain is off! Are you running your damned board or just looking at Roberto?”

“Well, I…”

“Get it fixed, one of you,” Derek snapped.

“You’re endangering the ship in what could be hostile territory beyond our territorial space if we don’t fix this!” Nova snapped. “Derek, okay if she takes Analysis and I take over?”

“Make it happen, please, Nova; especially if she can’t do it,” Derek said.

Nova gave Yuki a tap on the shoulder and motioned for her to get over to Analysis. Yuki gave Nova a look as she took over her old post and began to adjust settings with rapid computer commands and clicks of knobs while muttering under her breath. Derek picked up through their bond that she was muttering some pretty nasty words. He had noticed that Yuki played the board like a toy fiddle while Nova played it like a Stradivarius. The High Queen still had that touch at the radar.

When Nova had everything reset, the board began to bleep. “Guess what?” she said.

“Company?” said Roberto.

“Twenty of them, right at the edge of our scanner range, five degrees above the ecliptic, and twenty degrees two minutes off starboard,” Nova said. “I’m not getting an ID from them…ships do not match anything we know of,” Nova said as she pulled up the video panel and magnified the dark blue fleet approaching.

“They look ugly,” Derek said.

“Incoming, incoming!” Roberto said. “Five missiles fired from their location!”

At the same time, Akira became angry beyond angry in her Command Cosmo Zero Type 53 as enemy fire broke out all around her.

“Klaus! Klaus! Cover my six!” she barked to her wingman in his Czvarke. “Captain! Someone’s shooting at us! Vampire! VAMPIRE!”

“I’m covering you,” Keyman snapped from behind.

“Intercept the bastards!” Akira said as she, Keyman, and the rest of her squadron jinked around at high speed to counterattack.

“I’m done with this!” Derek snapped as he brought up the red alert klaxon. “All hands, combat stations, all hands to combat stations!!”

Yamato went up to combat stations in a hurry, in battle for the first time with her new crew.

“You want me down below in Sickbay or up here?” Nova said.

“Here! You can help Doctor Jiménez with the mess after this furball!” He sent to Nova. Remember, she doesn’t know what she’s doing?

Right Nova sent back. “They’re eleven megameters away now.”

“Ready main guns; load Bravo Turret with wave-motion cartridges, Commander Wildstar!” Derek said.

“Done,” said Alex a moment later.

“Firing energy weapons!” said Nova.

“Wave motion shields up and holding,” said Steven Wildstar as the Yamato shook from a hit but took no damage.

“Engine’s holding,” said Diane Sandor from the Engineering post. Aside from Derek, the only old veterans on the bridge now were Diane, Chris Eager, and Nova.

“FIRE!” Derek snapped.

Alex repeated the command and the Yamato’s fore turrets spoke. Six energy shots, three wave motion cartridges. Then, another salvo, just energy shots.

“Four vessels splashed,” Alex said.

“More of them coming,” said Nova. “Five more warped in.”

“Can you read their minds?”

“Trying,” Nova said after she sat and shivered for a moment. “Lots of rage, nothing much more than that.”

“Incoming hail from the enemy flagship!” Reiland said from Communications.

“Put it on video,” Derek snapped.

The grid lines on Yamato’s screen vanished (a new feature) and an image of an angry-looking young man with blue hair appeared on the screen. Or, at least he appeared young. “I am Admiral Fala of the Cosmic Naval Forces of Larmetal. I act in the Name of our Grand Queen, Promethium! I recognize you, Lord Admiral! I am sorry, because I have respect for you, but I have been ordered to destroy your vessel. You came out of warp in our territorial space! Prepare to meet your demise, Star Force. Sad but necessary!!”

“Admiral Fala,” said Derek. “This space is claimed by the Commonwealth. It’s fifty parsecs away from where we believed the borders of your territorial space were. This is crossing our trade routes and a planned Galaxy Railway Line. You pull out of our space!”

“You fool!” said Fala. “Lord Admiral, is your High Queen or your Government aware of your claim, or did you pull it out of your butt?”

Nova stood. “The High Queen is aware, hell, yes!”

“Miss, you look like her, but…I don’t want to talk to some doctor manning a post on his ship.”

“You mean you don’t want to talk to the High Queen, Fala? Because she is looking you in the face, my friend!”

“By the Cosmos, you look so common!” hissed Fala. “Do you approve of this?”

“Like my husband told you,” Nova snapped. “You are in MY territory. Kindly get out or you’re finished!”

“Majesty, I am sorry,” said Fala.

“So are we,” Derek said as Nova nodded approval.

Fala faded out before anything else could happen, and his fleet split into two.

“Time to warp around a bit, people!” said Akira from her plane.

“I think we need backup,” said Klaus from his customized Czvarke.

“Yamato, would you get the rest of Presha’s squadron out here…NOW?” barked Yamamoto from her Zero as she prepared to execute a warp with the upgraded engine.

“Squadron One requesting backup!” snapped Reiland as he held his headset. “Admiral!”

Derek barked, “Change bearing and aim of turrets, and launch MORE Black Tigers! Alex…send out Squadron Two to assist Yamamoto!” said Wildstar.

“Tigers on the way!” said Presha from her cockpit, grinning a little behind her helmet visor as her squadron mates joined up with her in battle. “Okay, you people, you are about to learn how a nice, elderly grandmother with an attitude fights!”

A moment later, Fala’s fleet fired again at the Yamato. One hit got through the shields, and damaged “A” turret.

“The turret’s burned out!” said Steven from his post.

Nova flipped a switch at her post. “Doctor Jiménez, get medics up to Alpha turret-we may have wounded!”

“Understood. We’ll need you down here in a bit, Doctor! I’m gonna have casualties up my wazoo!”

“When the battle’s over, Maria!” Nova snapped. “I’m kinda…busy!” Nova then yelped when the ship did a flip. “Harness…harness…harness!” she said, locking in her harness as a thought from a movie about the Star Force hit her…her cinematic counterpart

“Nice job, XO,” Derek said.

“Damnit, what’s with these guys?” barked Eager from the helm.

“They want to kill us,” said Alex.

“They’re screwing around with us!” barked Diane from her post.

“Yeah, no shit,” said Eager. “This is gonna be worse than that there last Puffy the Snail episode I wrote!”

“Where Pinky got resurrected for the fifth time?” Nova said as she called out, “They’re in three groups now…port, starboard…forward! Closing in!”

“Tigers, get the starboard group!” said Alex from his post. “NOW!”

“Roger that!” snapped Presha from her plane. “Using warp methods to slip back…WARP!”

Presha gave the order, and her squadron flew towards the enemy, fired a few missiles, and then warped and vanished, reappearing in blue light BEHIND the enemy.

They blasted missiles and laser cannon fire at the unprepared enemy vessels like demons!

The green and grey advanced Cosmo Tiger III’s soon made short work of the starboard element of the enemy fleet.

And they were not done yet!

“Tighten it up, people!” Akira snapped from her Zero after she came out of warp with Klaus and her other wingman, twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant David Hardy: Jefferson and Dawn’s son.

“On you, Leader!” said Klaus.

“What she said, damnit!” joked David in his Georgia accent.

Another flight of planes, three of them, warped around and attacked the port side fleet, blasting at them, firing missiles, et cetera.

The flight leader was a young pilot, Junior Lieutenant Isaac Marrable, a young dark-skinned pilot, who said, “Okay, people, mess those guys up! Mah’ Big Brother and his kid sure as hell want it!”

“Gotcha, skipper!” said a young female in another one of the planes, a Ralkhen pilot named Ensign Rizzo Stolski, a Pellian recently commissioned into the Combined Commonwealth Defense Forces.

“If we blow these guys up, we can have an early lunch!” laughed Ensign Huy Tranh, a Vietnamese pilot.

“Ahh…shit…weird energy readin’ to port!” snapped Marrable. “What the hell is that?”

Then, a moment later, before his eyes, a very old blue and orange Cosmo Tiger II blurred in, warping in.

“Unidentified pilot!” snapped Marrable.

“BREW?” said the pilot on the other end, in a heavy California/Texas accent. “I just saw ya killed two minutes ago! A Paranoia fighter got ya! Am I dead? I can barely move the stick on this sucker…arm’s hit…” he said. “And where the HELL is the Comet City?”

“I’m not Brew, whoever the hell you are in that old crate,” snapped Isaac.

“Sheeeeit, ya sound like him!” said the voice in the burning plane. “And why the hell are your Tigers green? And who the hell are the blue ships you’re fighting?”

“Irrelevant for now! Identify yourself! You’re damaged in a battle area!”

An enemy missile grazed the old blue Tiger II as the pilot said, “Ensign Derek “Deke” Wakefield…Earth Defense Forces, Space Battleship Yamato! My Commander was Captain Draco Gideon. But I saw him die a few minutes ago on the bridge of the Yamato! Where the hell is this? AM I DEAD? Can’t work this arm!”

Then, to Deke’s shock, the stick began to move itself.

“What the hell?” he yelled. “My autopilot is out! How the hell is it doing that?”

Then, a female voice sounded in Deke’s HEAD as it said, Marrable…I’m guiding him back to the Yamato…don’t worry about it. He can’t fly like that. Deke, don’t worry…I’ll meet you in Sickbay!

“You’re dead, too!” Deke yelled. “I have to be dead, that’s it…and this…sure a weird version of Heaven I ended up in, Nova! I saw you die an hour ago!”

This is neither heaven nor hell, Deke, Nova’s voice said soothingly in Wakefield’s head. And I assure you, we are both alive…and I have a rough idea of where you came from….

“Yeah…okay,” said Deke.

He passed out, but his plane flew on. For good reason. The pilot who had taken over was actually behind Yamato’s radar in her medical uniform.

--------------------------------

TWO HOURS LATER…

The battle had ended with two more fusillades of fire from the Yamato’s turrets.

Deke Wakefield, minus his glasses and dog tags, was in his skivvies in a bed on Sickbay on Yamato that looked FAR more streamlined and sophisticated than anything he was used to.

“What is this damn place?” he said out loud. He was bandaged and the sting of an IV needle in his wrist told him he was alive and whole, but the place…

“Majesty, he’s coming around,” said a pretty nurse, with orange skin.

“Thank you, Shala,” Nova’s voice said again as she walked over on her crepe-soled shoes.

“You’re dead,” Deke said as he saw Nova smiling at him, with stethoscope, blue scrubs, white lab coat marked in red in a pattern he had never seen before, and round glasses dangling down her nose. She also had two rings on her fingers, and one of them looked like a wedding band.

“The same could be said for you, Mister Wakefield,” Nova said as she looked at his dog tags.

“Where’s Doc Sane? Who’s in charge of this…Sickbay? And who’s “Her Majesty?” Deke said. “And who ya married to, Nova…?”

“Doctor Sane died sixteen years ago,” Nova said soothingly as she touched a PADD and began to get some readings via Bluetooth VI from the bed. “I’m the Chief Surgeon here, even though I was at my old post again up on the Bridge because my android replacement is rather…incompetent. I have to work on poor Yuki. I’m the High Queen of the Terran-Pellian Commonwealth, so I’m Her Majesty, and I’ve been married to Lord Admiral Derek Wildstar, also on the bridge, for…hmmm…thirty-three years,” Nova said. “The sensors in this bed need calibration, so I’m double-checking your temperature the old way, Deke. Open your mouth,” Nova said as she raised her hand and a thermometer floated across the room to her hand. “Get this in your mouth, Wakefield. Behave, or I’ll put it in your tush,” Nova said with a sweet smile. “I’ll have a lollipop for you soon if you’re good.”

The thermometer went off a moment later. “A little high,” Nova said as she looked at Wakefield’s bandaged arm. “I’m ordering antibiotics for you. You’ll get them through the IV. We had to give you blood while you were out.”

“How did you make that thing…float across the room?”

“Finding out I’m half Pellian and Iscandarian. Long story. Space juju, your old self called it.”

“What did you have to do with Iscandar?” challenged Deke. “I could never stand how they screwed with us…made us go there to get the Cosmo-DNA. How come Starsha couldn’t have sent it earlier?”

“I was still born in Boulder, Colorado, my grandparents were Iscandarian and Pellian, crashed on Earth, my quasi-alien traits skipped a generation. I’m fifty-five going on twenty-two, and I was dead once, too…came back to life. Dead as in they had prepared me to be stuck in a tomb, and my psionics showed up after Derek and I had our first set of twins. Starsha is dead here, too. But she reincarnated.”

“As what and who?”

“Our daughter,” Nova said soothingly. “She’s in school on Iscandar, Gamilon was healed up and is livable, in fact, Derek and I stay there at times…and we’re great friends with Desslok. And one version of you died three years ago bravely defending your great love there, too. Long story. I’m scanning you like mad to see how YOU got here. Steve thinks it’s a malfunction with one of the Tiger III’s warp engines that dragged you here from your universe. We have no way of getting you home, sorry. We had a fictional movie here about the Yamato dying nobly defeating Zordar that sounds a lot like what you described. I cried when I saw the actress portraying myself die on screen. Any other questions?”

“Starsha and I need to have a DAMN good talk! And how’d you get to be a Queen yourself…if I got that right?”

“Long story,” Nova said. “Derek and I will sit down with you later and discuss it when we let you out of here and make sure you’re not radioactive or some such. And don’t ask me for sake’, I don’t keep it down here. Ta-ta!” Nova said as she patted Wakefield’s arm and left.

____________________________________

II. TAKING A GOOD, DEEP BREATH

Space Battleship Yamato

The Vicinity of Planet Rikasha

September 2, 2233

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Yamato cruised peacefully through a ring of asteroids at the far edge of the Galaxy after her last warp.

Planet Rikasha, that blue and brown mottled globe with clouds, like and unlike Terra, loomed ahead as Wakefield stood on Yamato’s first bridge.

He now had on a new Black Tiger uniform, even though he wasn’t checked out to fly anything…yet. Akira, Klaus, and Presha would solve that problem for him on Rikasha.

“Never heard of this place where I came from,” he said to his companion, Nova, who was by his side in her Medical uniform making sure he was all right. “Ya figure out how the hell I got here yet?”

“No. Steve and I are still working on it,” Nova said. “We even contacted Steve Sandor back on Terra, and he’s also working on it.”

The doors to the Bridge whirred open, and Ensign Shala Lshada, Nova’s orange-skinned nurse from this world, said, “I’m glad to see we are almost Home. It is also hard to believe we were once enemies.”

“That was before you were even born,” Derek said. “Back in the days when T’Grish Zaden was the Lord of your world and its Empire.”

“I vaguely remember the days of Lord Cha’rif,” she said. “He was a good man.”

“Yes, the former Baron was a good man…and a good friend,” Nova said, with a smile, remembering Anton Cha’rif.

“We’ve got the landing beacon for New Rikala Landing Central,” Eager said.

“Nothing on radar; we’re clear,” Yuki said as she smiled at Roberto.

“Good work, Chris, Yuki….” Derek said.

“Transmission from the city,” said Reiland.

“Put it on video,” Nova said after glancing at Derek.

The video screen cleared, and a figure appeared; the youngish, long-haired Rikashan Lord, adopted Terran Shiro Matsuya Cha’rif. “I greet you warmly,” he said. “Lord Admiral…Majesty, we have much to discuss once you land.”

“Ya look like an Earther!” yelled Wakefield.

“I am…or I was,” said the new Lord Cha’rif. “I was captured by the Rikashans off a cruise ship at a young age. I was eventually adopted by Baron Anton Cha’rif much as my late friend Jonathan Hartnell-Iiyama was adopted by the Wildstars. I became a noble by adoption, became a Prince after the death of by adoptive father Anton, and the Lord after the death of my adopted brother Ar’ten. Yet, as you can see, I have become fully accultured as a Rikashan now. I await all of you here in New Rikala.”

“Cha’rif Jak,” Nova said with a warm smile as she and Derek saluted in the Rikashan manner.

“Ma’jeste Nova Jak,” smiled Cha’rif as he returned the salute.

______________________________

TO BE CONTINUED….