THE LEGEND OF GRAND MECHAPOLIS
STAR BLAZERS/GALAXY EXPRESS 999
Founding of the Dual Monarchy and Galaxy Express System
By: Frederick P. Kopetz
Chapter Five: The Black Sheep: Enter Klaus Kiman & Akira Yamamoto
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my wife, Gail Kopetz/Fluffy, Tom Szcepkowski, and Jamie Tucker for helping to brainstorm some of the characters and concepts in this chapter. Thanks also to foxylady cpz for critiques of an earlier draft of this chapter.
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The Galactic Edge
Star Cruiser Unification
Friday, May 24, 2233
0900 Hours: Local Time
Aboard a battered gold-and-black star cruiser known as the Unification 2,000 lightyears beyond the Milky Way’s Edge, two men met on the ship’s bridge.
One of them was a dark-skinned man with short-cropped hair and a scarred face worn over jet-black, polished battle armor. He was a tall man, with dark, scornful eyes, who bowed slightly to the second man he was speaking to. “My Count, just as it was in prior times, the Unification and her crew are again at your disposal.”
“Very, very good, my dear Baron Parkus,” said the other man in a near-whisper in a lisping voice. He was only slightly shorter, but he was very thin, with long, platinum blond hair, and a very pretty-looking face; a face that looked strangely feminine even though the man was indeed male. He wore the white and silver clothing and boots of an old-style Iscandarian noble, with details that were almost feminine. “It appears that we are closer to our goal than we thought. I’m waiting for some of the operatives who escaped the Pellians that day a few weeks ago to meet with us and debrief; even though I do have a fair idea of what happened. Yes, we killed Ruling Queen Astrena; the Prime Minister of that half-breed lunatic High Queen who goes by the names, Nova, Nova, or Dawn, depending upon the context and what she thinks she’s up to; oh, her and her nutty disguises and little undercover games! That was one of our goals, Parkus; helping to decapitate her Government that came from nowhere; her damned Terran/Pellian Commonwealth. What a lunatic! She and her sneaky long-haired husband Wildstar or Kodai; what a pair!”
“But we wanted Desslok and the Terran half-breed pretender dead,” said Parkus. “Isn’t that what She wanted, my dear Count Alatar?”
“I tried to advise you that we needed more operatives on Pellias,” said Alatar as he raised his thin hand and floated a drink over to it with his energies. “We needed more psychics to defeat the half-breed’s damn husband and her damn rag-tag bunch of R’jkharraz psionics of several races and all the Gamilon upstarts and sneaks that her friend Desslok sent her. And I could have told you Desslok would be a much harder egg to crack than you thought. He has a will and a purpose made of diamond. I knew that from the two times I met with him years ago. As for the half-breed…if I had been given a little more time those years ago on Beemira when I had her in my power for four hours, that and a little more of the Arkhalis drug we shot her up with in that cell after I turned off her robot watchdog, I could have figured out everything. But we couldn’t make her talk.”
“I tried to tell you that then, Alatar,” said Parkus. “I picked up then that she was part Pellian and she had a will made of titanium and she had subconscious mental defenses then she didn’t even know about. Even at twenty-two, she was a threat in being. I wanted to kill her then, remember?”
“Yes, but then the Beemiran Old Man showed up and said he wanted her alive to kill at a later time. I think the robot picked up on that; she didn’t…she probably thought the whole experience with the serum and the mind-probe was a very bad dream. I tapped her mind the other night when she was sleeping…”
“YOU got into her head?” said Parkus.
“It took some doing, but we know we can break into the mind of a Pellian or an Iscandarian like us more easily if we get them during sleep. The little minx has kept a surprising amount of mental integrity for a woman who has been through everything she faced and been killed once and resurrected; no, make that twice. I’m not sure what happened with the Cosmo-DNA; I think she was dead then, too. Amazing I couldn’t get out of her mind then on Beemera that they were going to Iscandar and back.” Alatar clapped his hands hard. “If we had gotten the Terrans then, we would only have Desslok to deal with, and Starsha. Then, our goal of retaking Iscandar and re-establishing the old Iscandarian Empire would have worked, and I would now be…a God!” said Alatar.
“But Starsha banished you two hundred years ago,” said Parkus.
“She banished you, too,” said Alatar. “Good thing we met up. We almost had them when we mutated that virus and sent Kiral to them carrying it as a vector to try and negotiate our return to Iscandar. Lord Kiral…what an idiot…and the first casualty of the Iscandarian Aging Virus we created; specifically, to wipe out the damned pacifists so that we could jump in and take over Iscandar. We could have pulled it off…if only the man we then knew as Lord Desslok Albelt Desslar hadn’t jumped in with his Fleet and defeated us just before he took the Throne on Gamilon.”
“We could assassinate Queen Sasha,” said Parkus. “Then we could get that Princess Starsha; the one that the half-breed bitch gave birth to.”
“Sasha is much harder to kill than you think,” said Alatar. “But she’s not my primary focus. I have foreseen that this Princess Starsha will take the throne before long. And, she is Starsha!”
“Queen Starsha is dead, Count,” said Parkus.
“No, she’s not,” said Alatar. “Have you forgotten the history of her line? She has some special Divine favor and has managed to pull off the trick of reincarnation. Only the half-breed, her husband, Desslok, and her damned kinswoman Queen Sasha know so far what the fruit of the half-breed’s womb was. And, remember, She told us that the half-breed may be the most dangerous woman in the cosmos as far as Her plans are concerned. But there will come a day, when we rebuild the Empire, when we will make Promethium beg us to kill her as we take over her resources. This will be more fun than drinking a whole skin of nectar, Parkus!” said Alatar as he began to laugh. Soon, Parkus was laughing, too.
The crew of the Unification shook their heads but then went back to their duties. These men and women of Iscandar, survivors of the virus, and crew of the last remaining warship of the ancient Iscandarian Empire, were used to the antics of their leader and first officer for the past hundred and fifty years. On that note, the wave-motion gun equipped form of the Iscandarian heavy cruiser Unification cruised on serenely through the Sea of Stars.
II. WAKING UP
Earth: The Tokyo Megalopolis
The Wildstar Residence in
Saturday, May 25, 2233
0602 Hours: Local Tokyo Megalopolis Earth Time
------------------------------------------------------------------
“Personal Comm Device Aliscea voice mode activated. Please give vocal password to access files.”
I reply by whispering “Rosebud”. Now, here I go, transcribing. Feels so weird. We were in our place in Philadelphia, PA, USA a few weeks ago, and we met my dead Aunt Yvona (or her clone?) in Allentown, PA, USA after we made our first test of the Galaxy Express 217 space train. Then, we were back here in our place in Tokyo, then in my palace in Vienna (where I freaked out the ladies-in-waiting and staff by roller-skating up and down the corridors of my palace) then up on Earth’s new twin planet Pellias, and then back here again.
Who am I? I have a good idea, but the old Talking Heads song says, “Lived in a Brownstone, Lived in a Ghetto, Lived all over this town...”
I like 20th and late 21st century music. I’m very strange. I’m a young woman, or maybe not. I look twenty-one, and feel like I’m fifty-four, which I really am.
I need my own strong, strong coffee. Brain is fogged.
Okay, my name. In case you haven’t guessed, it’s the Sublime High Queen Nova Wildstar the Third of the Terran-Pellian Commonwealth. The money has recently gone back to Dollars, and I was given samples of the new money the other day. I’m on the silver dollar and the one-dollar note. It’s a little embarrassing to see yourself on the Goddamn money, but such is life!
It’s a little past 0600. The sun just came up. I’m trying
not to wake him up, the poor dear is so exhausted from flying that patrol last
night.
Oh, dagnab it. He’s up anyway. He’s brushing his teeth. I think. Must be why he’s making those weird gargling noises.
At least it’s May, and it’s warm out, even this early in the morning. The breeze feels nice; so I opened the window a bit.
I am in a nice, thin nightie, nothing else except tiny panties. He likes it.
Boy, does he like it. But I know he likes me in it even more.
I stand on tiptoe in front of a screen in a bedroom in our house.
Even though it’s our house, we’re not one hundred percent alone.
Our daughter Ariel, our son-in-law Jordy, and their daughter Samantha are away for a few days: Ariel is attending a nursing seminar at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and we’re letting them stay in our house there in Philadelphia.
Ariel told me she might pick up an application
for Penn Medical School while she’s out there. If she is, I wish her luck and
will support our dear young nurse daughter if she decides to go to Med School.
I’m stretching and yawning, leaning against a gold brocade screen I just put up in one of the other bedrooms in our large seven-bedroom house here in the nice neighborhood in the “old-money” district of Azabu-Juban near the seashore at Sands Point Road. The EDF was very generous giving us this house years ago. I found out the other day how much our property is worth now and I almost fainted!
Oh, my GOD, Derek just stuck his head in here from the bathroom.
First, he was singing in the shower.
He’s off pitch this early in the morning. Hearing him sing was like hearing an animal being tormented in a trap!
I love hearing him sing. But not at six in the morning, for Cryin’ Out Loud!
I hear him again.
Okay. This is worse.
“Say, Nova, think I can get a recording contract on my own with that singing?”
I roll up my eyes. There goes my Derek, talking around his toothbrush again! You think I’d get used to this quirk of his, having been married to him for over thirty years, back when I really WAS young and didn’t just look young because I had been resurrected from the dead a few months ago!
I like his pajama bottoms. He looks dishy in them as he sticks his head in the room even though he needs to shave.
Rrrrooowl!
Derek’s pecs and abs are a work of art. I should know. He’s
my very favorite and only nude model at times when I draw him, just like Yours
Truly here is his favorite (and only!) nude model when he draws me.
The rest of him right now…
“DEREK, YOU NEED TO SHAVE!” I yell. “And for crying out LOUD, please brush your hair!!”
“I’ll do that in a minute,” he replies. “Nova, I love you!”
“Love you too, Derek, but I’ll love you more when you…look a little neater!”
“Okay,” he says. He blows me a kiss and then goes back in the bathroom.
I’m showered up, so I decide to put on an old pink jumper of mine that I like and that I know he likes. I’ve had this for a few years, and I still look good in it.
(noises heard on the device while Nova opens a drawer, and pulls out clothes to put on. Recorder picks up Mrs. Wildstar singing.)
Okay, device in my hand again. Why am I still documenting this? Not sure. A feeling I have.
After I dress, I go downstairs barefoot, carrying my boots, and look at an issue of a tabloid website.
Okay, this is stupid.
Some website is stating that Derek is having an affair with Trelaina.
I say, out loud, “What the friggin’ flying fizzbitt? He’d never do that! That’s so stupid!” I know he’s faithful. I know the idea of sleeping around has never entered his head. I just…know.
It’s our psychic bond. That’s how I know.
I’m also a doctor as well as a pilot. The poor dear has been messed up so often in combat, God bless his impulsive little head, that I could open a medical practice just treating him as my sole patient.
Okay, he’s grinning. He can hear me. He’s got a few real names, too and some silly names. Derek. Michael. Susumu. Space Cowboy. Chowderhead. Sometimes I call him that when I know no one is listening, even though he is also one of the most famous faces on the planet, too.
Groupies have asked for his autograph lately here, downtown; “You look just like him!” they squeal.
I can’t tell him he IS him, since it would cause a scene.
I sing to myself, “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around” and I get up on my bare little toes to dance around the room. I’ve always loved to dance, to move my body around gracefully; my college sports, after all, were gymnastics, swimming, and cheerleading.
Then, a moment later, I put on Talking Heads and start dancing around the living room anyway, kicking my legs up, et cetera…having a great time!
Why not? Our kids are grown, even Starsha and Theodore, the latest two.
Funny how people used to think I was part Iscandarian on the Yamato’s first cruise, uhh…thirty-one years ago.
Because I am. Really. Not kidding. Not joking! I am part Iscandarian, part Pellian (the Pellians are an ancient warrior offshoot of the Iscandarians) and even one-sixteenth Gamilon! Enough.
Derek sticks his head in the bedroom now. Great!
He has a shave, and he’s putting on EDF blues and a short dress jacket.
He looks a LOT better now.
What are we going to do?
Go downstairs and discuss some of what we’ll be doing today. We might be flying. We’ll see.
The day is full pf possibilities.
---------------------------------------------------
Downstairs, Nova sat thoughtfully at the table in their
breakfast nook as she and Derek sipped at coffee.
“I liked the waffles and bacon you made up for breakfast, Nova. You’ve still got that touch in the kitchen,” Derek said.
“Thank you,” Nova said with a smile.
She put her chin on her hands and said, “I think we’re going to get closer to solving two mysteries today. Just a feeling in my head.”
“What’s the mysteries?” Derek said.
“Clues about the assassins of Astrena…and I think we might find out where my mother is and if she’s alive.”
At that moment, the phone rang in their kitchen.
Nova ran over and got it, putting in on speaker. “Yes?” she said. It was Admiral Mark Venture, who was smiling as he came up on the screen on their phone in the breakfast nook.
“Hey, Nova. I was talking with Sandor earlier. He said he’s been picking up some strange signals from space today, and he’d like to meet with us at his lab at Headquarters at 1300. Are you up for it?”
“Are you on Earth?” Derek said.
“Just came back with Trelaina and the baby last night. There are some things I need to clear up here before we put my house on Earth up for sale since we’re staying on Pellias.”
“Okay, we’ll see you at 1300,” Derek said as he looked at Nova and she nodded. “Both of us. We also have to talk to some pilots we’ve been working with.”
“I hear a story that you’ve been flying with Boyington’s Black Sheep squadron,” Venture said. “I hear those people are a bunch of characters.”
“Yeah, and a Gamilon Internal Security agent flies with them. He’s digging for clues for us, too,” Derek said.
“What’s his name?” Mark asked.
“Lieutenant Klaus Kiman,” Nova said. “He’s a little distant and mysterious, and Derek’s butted heads with him a few times, but he’s a very good pilot. He has a fiancée he lives with; a young pilot named Akira Yamamoto.”
“The Martian colony chick?” said Mark.
“Yeah, that’s her,” said Derek. “She’s really…different…”
III. A SMELLY WAKE-UP CALL
Planet Terra
Maison Hiroo Apartment Building
Tokyo Megalopolis: Hiroo District
May 25, 2233
0605 Hours: Local Earthtime.
“Go to sleep,” muttered Akira Yamamoto as she cuddled against her fiancée Klaus Kiman’s semi-bare chest. Akira and Klaus have been together as a couple for eight months now, and engaged for four months.
“Who, me?”
“No, something…oh, it’s that curry again. And that Goddamned music! Listen!”
Klaus sighed, and listened.
There was banging on a ceiling somewhere in the complex, the arrangement was weird and Akira and Klaus knew that another pilot’s bedroom, belonging to a pilot named Jiro Nomura, was right under their apartment.
They heard Lieutenant Nomura, who flew with them in Black Sheep Squadron screaming, “Listen, you frakkin’ stupid morons there! What are you damn well doing cooking curry at 0600? Is that all you frakkin’ eat? CURRY???”
“Nomura-kun, please go back to sleep?” said a plaintive female voice from their bedroom. Nomura had a roommate, a “friend with benefits” from the squadron named Fujiko Nozaki. With regard to Jiro and Fujiko, there were times when they heard more than just that from their bedroom. Considering that Nomura and Nozaki undoubtedly heard them doing it in their bedroom, Klaus and Akira felt their slightly weird friends were even-Steven with them.
“Moroboshi-san, shove your curry up your BUTT!!” Nomura screamed.
Rego Moroboshi, their obnoxious neighbor, retaliated by beginning to play loud, weird Gypsy music on his stereo.
“Poor dude doesn’t know what time it is,” Klaus said.
“It’s 0600 and he thinks it’s 0900,” said Akira as she kissed Klaus and got up,
throwing off her pajama top and putting on dark blue slacks and a black sweater
after a quick duck into the shower. When she came out, she was trimming her
white hair, and wearing, as usual, a necklace that had belonged to her brother.
Klaus Kiman, pilot and Gamilon Secret Agent, stood there in his pajama top.
Akira also thinks he looks “dishy” as her friend Nova puts it.
For a very, very bright woman, a pilot, a doctor, and a Head of State, Akira thought as she smiled at her fiancée’s blond hair and wonderful body in his open Pajama top, That Nova, sounds a little like a Blond Valley Girl at times, whether she’s talking Japanese or Terranglish! Dishy. Okay, that’s a cute word. And I have to agree. Klaus is dishy!
Akira grinned at her fiancée’ as he finished brushing his teeth and drank water from a plastic cup.
His blue Gamilon skin tone looked gorgeous in the morning, along with his mop of blond hair. Of course, in 2233, Terra and Gamilon had been allies for so many years now that very few people yell, “Hey, GAMMIE!” in the street anymore when they see Klaus.
“I can’t stand that frakkin’ music Moroboshi plays,” Klaus said after he took his shower and put on his Gamilon uniform.
“Me neither,” Akira says as she yawns. “Is that Moroboshi guy a lunatic?”
Then, Klaus and Akira hear a recording going on downstairs;
a sultry-sounding female alto voice singing an old Dusty Springfield soul song,
“Son of a Preacher Man” in her cover version of that song. 
It
sounded like Fujiko was playing it.
The album by the part-time artist, Nova in Philly, was the Wildstars’ tribute to the album Dusty in Memphis. The new album came out in early April, and went right to Number One on the Adult Contempo charts. Fujiko had been shocked when Nova had shown up at their apartment one day and offered an autographed copy to anyone who wanted the album.
It just had come off the charts, and Klaus and Akira share their little private joke that the singer recorded the album when she wasn’t flying or doing other stuff as part of her interesting life at the residence she and her husband share in Philadelphia, PA, USA when they are in the States. The Wildstars recruited them to work together to find links to whoever it was that sent assassins in March to kill the Pellian Ruling Queen (the Prime Minister of Earth’s new twin planet up in the sky above). The Ruling Queen was named Astrena, and Emperor Desslok of Gamilon took a particular interest in finding the assassins.
After all, any man would want to find the murderers of his wife. Nova also took a big interest in the matter, for it happened on a planet where she was the High Queen, or Empress, of the Pellian/Terran Confederacy under her real name. Desslok had known the Wildstars for many years, so he was not surprised when they volunteered work to find clues about who the killers were and who sent them.
Akira looks at herself in the mirror as Klaus licked his lips at her.
Klaus agreed that the young, really and truly young,
Martian-descended pilot looks cute and sultry, from the top of her white-haired
head to the tips of her toes.
Akira was drinking a cup of instant coffee as she tried to block out the weird Gypsy music, which was turned up even louder than ever, since Moroboshi evidently didn’t like Nova’s little tribute to the long-dead Dusty Springfield.
Klaus thought her mop of short whitish hair looked “dishy” himself.
“Do we have flight practice today?” Akira says.
“Black Sheep Squadron has an off day today. Lieutenant Commander Boyington is doing maintenance on the upgraded Cosmo Tiger III’s,” Klaus replied. “They finally put Pellian versions of our mini-Gestcham drive in those birds so that we can all keep up if we have to warp somewhere, just like I can with my own upgraded Czvarke.”
“Yeah…they should work just as well as the Mark II models they put in our Zeroes months ago,” Akira said, referring to the Type 53 Cosmo-interceptor planes that she, Derek, and Nova flew, even though Nova’s was a Recon Interceptor Type 53 Zero, a slightly exotic bird she could use to pick up infrared signatures and life signs from a distance. “Remember when we all warped to Ralkhandar as a test flight, the four of us, almost two weeks ago?”
“That flight was a bit of a cluster-fuck,” said Klaus. “Didn’t you nearly land in a palm tree in a jungle where those cat people live?”
“No, that was Nova when she let that weird plane that she flies get away from her for a moment. Wildstar bitched her out like HELL when we got back to base for damn near screwing her ship up.”
“That is his right; he’s the element leader, a Lord Admiral disguised as a Senior Lieutenant, after all. He looks good for fifty-five going on twenty, too,” said Klaus. “Of course, you know Desslok briefed me on all the details of the weirdness of that war with Lord Ekogaru, cyborg madman, and his bitch pet Queen Promethium the Second, that traitor. I understand she used to be on our side?”
“That was a while ago, but Derek and Nova found out when they were out in space on the Yamato that she was a stinkin’ traitor and a spy for Ekogaru before the Dark Lord Ekogaru got all guilty and shit and gave us information before he killed himself,” Akira said. “I need more coffee. At least Moroboshi stopped with the crappy music and Nova turned her album off. Just smells like curry in here now.”
“Curry,” said Klaus. “I don’t think I’m ever going to like curry.”
“Me neither,” said Akira as she cuddled up to Klaus.
Klaus kissed her, and she kissed him back, a long, searching kiss that would have surely led to a lot more if the vidphone hadn’t begun to ring at that moment.
“DAMNIT TO FRIGGIN’ HELL!” yelled Akira as she threw something at the wall above the phone before she ran over barefoot to answer it. “Hello?” she said in an irritable tone of voice as she flipped the video cam off.
She put it on speaker so Klaus could hear it too.
It was a giggly voice that almost sounded female. The reception was scratchy as hell, as if the caller was calling long distance from some other star system. There was a giggle, and then the annoying voice asked, “Miss Yamamoto, is your refrigerator running?”
“WHO GIVES A SHIT IF IT IS OR NOT?” Akira screamed back.
“What is the point of this useless conversation?” demanded Klaus.
“Well, if your refrigerator is running, better go catch it! It might run down the street! WA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAA!”
Click. The stupid caller cut off at that.
“Did you trace that?” said Klaus.
“Yes, the auto-trace is on…” Akira replied. “It’ll take me a few minutes to access it…I…”
Then, the phone rang again. Akira picked it up again, in an even worse mood.
“WHO THE FUCK IS THIS NOW?” she yelled, her reddish eyes almost burning red.
“Just me, your partner!” It was Nova. “I just got the most annoying phone call. Some girl wanted to know if I had Prince Albert in a can and I had a hunch you two were involved!”
“Sorry I cursed you out, Nova,” said Akira.
“It’s okay. Did you get a weird phone call, too?”
“Yeah. Someone who asked if our refrigerator was running. Call sounded weird…scratchy. I’m doing a trace on it.”
“Same here, Akira,” Nova said.
Kiman than spoke up. “We’ll have to meet up after we analyze these messages at our end.”
“Wildstar knows; I’ve had him on speaker, too,” Nova said.
“We’ll get together at your place at 1100, Kiman,” said Wildstar. “Make sure you guys are decent. Please.”
“We’re decent now,” snapped Kiman.
“Okay, sorry,” said Derek.
The phone call was then disconnected from Wildstar’s end.
AN HOUR LATER…
Akira, fully dressed in a Black Tiger flight suit, answered the door.
She opened the door and saw Nova and Derek standing there.
Derek was in his EDF blues with a blue short dress jacket on. He was carrying his dress cap, and he looked as grim as hell.
Nova had on a white peacoat with purple collar lining and bright red ascot, with the four pips of an Admiral on her epaulets; she wore this over her pink romper and boots. On the place on her coat where the anchor emblem was on Derek’s jacket, there was a silver eight-pointed star. She was also carrying a dress cap in one hand and a small capsule in the other.
“Why are you two all…dolled up?”
“We’re have to go to Headquarters later,” said Grand Admiral Wildstar in a slightly deeper and older voice that Yamamoto and Kiman had only heard once, on the day he had recruited them in the presence of Emperor Desslok. He wasn’t really just a pilot here; he was Grand Admiral Wildstar in full dudgeon, and he looked angry enough to burn a hole through the wall with his eyes.
The change that had come over Nova was just as startling. Akira in particular noticed that she was usually calm, gentle, and almost laid-back…occasionally a little silly. There was none of that laid-back attitude in Nova’s stiff-backed, almost regal stance or eyes now. She was in a full persona neither Klaus nor Akira recognized in person; since she was now no longer just Nova Wildstar, but High Queen Nova Wildstar the Third of the Terran/Pellian Commonwealth. “The secret games are over, at least for now,” Nova said very sternly. “I did an analysis of our data; and we need to check your data, but I’m pretty sure that the phone call came from a different star system. And if so, we need to go to Earth Defense Headquarters to a friend’s lab to analyze this; we were supposed to go there anyway. Today.”
“We have to go today?” said Akira.
“We’ll meet you here at 1200 Hours. You will be in dress uniform, both of you,” Derek snapped. “Let’s get busy. I’m running out of patience; so’s Peppermint over there.”
“Peppermint?” Akira said after she gave Klaus a strange look.
“His pet name for me,” Nova said. “It goes way back to the first Iscandar Mission, before you were even born, I think, Akira. I know Klaus is really older. I’ll explain later. We have no time for this crap,” she said in a strangely cold voice that startled them a little. Is that your computer over there?”
“Yes, it is,” said Klaus. “I have a connection to the Gamilon Embassy, too,” he said in a low voice.
“We don’t need to tell Barrel or Desslok yet,” Derek said as Nova sat down and opened up the capsule reader and plopped it in.
Then, Akira assisted Nova in getting to their code reader. The app was open in a moment, and Nova keyed in the location header from the voice call.
“I see a huge jump at LINE 060 in that code,” Akira said.
“That’s the point where the call hit our comm satellite network,” Nova said. “It was outside our territorial space, at the Sirius Region Satellite, right there,” she said. “To back trace it further, we’ll need the supercomputing power available at Headquarters.”
“What do you think we’re going to be doing when we figure out where it came from?” said Kiman.
“We’re gonna saddle up and fly out there to find out what in blue damn blazes is going on,” Wildstar said. “This’ll be a real test for that warp equipment in our planes. The rest of the Black Sheep don’t have to know; yet. Although I am considering a full recruitment of the squadron into the Black Tigers Flight Group if we go out soon on the Yamato. Let’s review what we found out flying around the system the past few days.”
“We found alien transmissions out by the ninth planet of this system,” recited Kiman. “We were about to trace them, but then they cut off.”
“And we landed and didn’t find any ships,” added Yamamoto.
“That’s the mission where we lost Takahashi,” Akira said. “And it was my fault!”
“NO it wasn’t!” said Nova fiercely. “If anything, it was my fault, because he was trying to help cover me when that alien bird showed up and jinked right into my blind spot and this guy’s blind spot,” Nova said as she thumbed towards Derek without a trace of anger in her face.
Yamamoto thought back in her mind to that mission; which was eight days ago, now…
Yamamoto was flying her Type 53 Zero near the icy ninth planet of the Terra/Pellias system. She was in tight formation with Klaus as her wingman on her left in his Czvarke, and Lieutenant Hiro Takahashi flying a Type III Cosmo Tiger to her right.
Ahead of them flew Derek and Nova, in their matching Type 53 Zeroes.
“What a mess, damnit!” said Derek over the net. “We followed that signal, landed on that dump of a dwarf planet, and then we found nothing at all.”
“Yes, bupkis,” Nova said quietly over the circuit.
“Bupkis?” said Akira as Kiman remained silent. “What sort of language is that?”
“Old Yiddish. I picked it up in New York when visiting with my dad when I was small. Means “nothing”, Nova said.
“You sound disgusted, over,” said Kiman.
“She is disgusted,” snapped Derek over the net.
“I want to scan again; can we go back?” Nova said.
“Do you mean all of us?” said Akira.
“Just this guy over here,” Nova said as she thumbed to Wildstar, her wingman.
Wildstar snapped in and said, “We shouldn’t be long. We’re supposed to rendezvous with the other Black Sheep guys and Boyington in ten minutes.”
“A lot can happen in ten minutes at Mach Three,” said Klaus. “We’re following you.”
“Okay; keep the hell back, though,” snapped Wildstar.
“Lots of Secret Squirrel crap today?” said Hiro Takahashi in a sour voice.
“Affirmative, Ensign,” Wildstar snapped back.
They flew off ahead a little, and Klaus said to Akira, “So what do you want to do at home tonight? Lunch, dinner, or dessert?”
“All three,” she said in a breathy voice.
“Dinner? Lunch? Dessert?” said Takahashi.
“Private,” snapped Akira.
“Wait until you can shave and have a girlfriend,” said Klaus. “Then you’ll get it!”
Then, as Nova was flying in and was trying to get a fix on the life signs she was picking up, some red laser fire blasted in right over her wing.
“WHATTHEHELL?” she cried. “Derek! Did you spot them?”
“Negative, they just showed up…they hit my blind spot!”
“Same here!” Nova said.
Derek cut off and flew upwards over the ecliptic in a hard roll, followed by Nova.
More laser fire blasted around them as the alien planes; ugly dark blue ships that looked like daggers, tried to line up to fire missiles.
Takahashi was at the scene in a moment, having performed a dangerous short warp that almost blew his plane apart upon re-entry into real space.
Nonetheless, he fired at the enemy planes.
He drew their fire, and before Akira and Klaus could warp in fast enough, he was being peppered by enemy fire, and he blew apart.
The diversion gave Derek a moment to line up missiles. He fired two space-to-space missiles at the enemy fighters, followed by Nova, at his back, who fired two more missiles of her own.
Two of the enemy ships blew apart.
Klaus’ Czvarke maneuvered in next, shooting laser fire at the enemy planes before they could react. He downed two, and Akira, at his wing, downed another one.
The whole thing was over in five minutes. But, the four of them, despite their best efforts, could not, of course, bring Takahashi back from the dead…
There were tears in Yamamoto’s eyes as she remembered the whole ugly scenario, even as Derek and Nova were checking the data from their phone data capsule.
“This confirms it,” Derek said.
“Confirms what?” said Klaus.
“Both these calls came from outside our territorial space. I’m not sure where,” Nova said.
“We’ll be giving this to Sandor today at Headquarters, then,” said Derek. “I need your phone.”
1305 HOURS: EDF HEADQUARTERS.
Admiral Steven Sandor was working hard over a computer screen in his lab in Headquarters.
The Wildstars and Venture were standing around a computer
screen watching as Sandor correlated information that he had picked up with the
info that the Wildstars and Klaus and Akira had picked up from their weird
phone calls earlier that morning. Nova had hung her peacoat over a chair while
they worked.
“I can see a pattern,” he said as he looked at the five of them. “Your strange phone messages and the blips of info we received earlier this morning here at Headquarters all come from the same place; the Defuel System near the Galactic Edge.”
“Defuel,” Derek said, pronouncing it “DE-FOO-EL” which made Akira relieved that the weren’t examining some weird planet named “Defuel’.
“Ekogaru told me the other day that he thinks my mother is being held prisoner there, possibly as a source of genetic material.
Klaus nodded grimly while Akira turned on Wildstar and said, “That maniac TOLD you? But he’s dead.”
“We know that,” said Admiral Wildstar.
“Precisely because I killed him,” Nova sighed. The memories of how Ekogaru had repented and aided them and then of how Promethium forced Nova and Ekogaru to duel with gravity sabers on Planet R’Khell’eva in the Arena and how Ekogaru had impaled himself on Nova’s sword still made the young officer, doctor, and Queen sick when she thought of them, even though the event had been almost two years in the past already.
“But we do see his ghost now and then. He’s trying to make up for all the pain he caused us. I think,” Derek said. “Enough about him. “Sandor, tell us more about Defuel.”
“The only inhabitable planet of the system is the fourth planet,” Sandor said. “It is located three thousand, two hundred and twenty-two lightyears away from our current location, at this void in the Galactic edge.”
“That’s beyond the one thousand lightyear warp limit of our reworked fighters,” said Klaus. “We’ll need a ship to get us out there.”
“We have a ship,” Derek said. “The Yamato.”
“She’s still in refit,” said Sandor. “The problem isn’t the ship; it’s now under your direct royal jurisdiction, my Prince and Queen,” Sandor said as he looked at the Wildstars. “The problem is going to be getting the Earth Defense Council to recruit you a new crew. They’re still really stick-in-the mud over this…”
“And it might cause difficulty with Parliament if I just promulgate an edict without a full emergency, even with my ability,” Nova said. “Unless Derek and I could just go there ourselves?”
“How?” said Klaus.
“We have our ways,” said Nova. “Now that I know where the planet is…”
“I’ve picked up traces of military activity there,” Sandor said. “It would be suicide for just the two of you to teleport there. You’ll need a landing party.”
“We’d gladly volunteer, if you could find a way to get us there,” said Akira. “Klaus?”
“I’d be in,” he said.
“Sandor, get this before the Defense Council as soon as you can,” Derek said. “In the meantime, we’re going to see if we can get a ship.”
“I can get us a carrier immediately,” Nova said. “But it’d be Pellian.”
“Even with the four of you going there it would be suicide,” Mark Venture said.
“Not if we get some help,” Derek said as he picked up the thought Nova had sent to him through their telepathic link.
TO BE CONTINUED…