THE LEGEND OF GRAND MECHAPOLIS

STAR BLAZERS/GALAXY EXPRESS 999

Founding of the Dual Monarchy and Galaxy Express System

By: Frederick P. Kopetz

Chapter One: An Engineering Briefing

I.  ANOTHER CLOUDY DAY

Planet Earth

Mitsubishi-Baldwin Locomotive Works

Great Island Branch: Tosa, Japan

December 2, 2232

1301 Hours: Local Time

Doctor Fujiro Kansai was an engineer with the expanded Mitsubishi-Baldwin combine, which had plants in Japan, the United States, and Germany.

Now, the young man had a hard hat on over his messy brown hair and glasses and he was touring the plant with a Pellian electrical engineer named Harlan M’Gill. The bearded Pellian said, “We’re carrying out this design for a prototype, even though it’s a bit eccentric. This locomotive under construction looks like an ordinary old-fashioned steam locomotive; but she’s the prototype of the planned Galaxy Railways Project as Galaxy Express 217.”

“Yes, she’s a Pacific type; 4-6-2. Why is she based on an old American design?”

“The new Baldwin consortium we opened did a random choice, and they decided upon an old Reading Company G-3 class steamer. Now, the boiler was constructed in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, at our new plant there, along with the cast engine bed and the driving wheels and tires. It was shipped here to have its brains installed. The boiler and smokebox are standard, high-pressure, 300 PSI; powered by a fusion cell rather than by a coal fire, of course. The steam operating mode will be strictly for planetary operation; and it will also make steam to blow the whistle when in interstellar travel in the Hawking magnetic roadbed and tunnel she’ll follow in space.”

“The intelligence and navigation modules will take up the rest of the boiler shell, right?” said Kansai.

M’Gill nodded. “Aye, laddie. The AI modules are based upon your IQ-16 design, adapted to operations of the Hawking Singularity Plant slaved to the wheels and thrusters. We’ll can’t really test her in warp mode on her initial test for the Terra-Pellias Route, which should take maybe twelve minutes for the space train to go back and forth. The station is ready to be built in the Tokyo Megalopolis. We are invited to the groundbreaking ceremony in two days along with Doctor Shura.”

“The Big Boss is showing up?” whistled Kansai. “Damn, this is important. Who is she, really, and where did she come from?”

“Rumor has it she’s another Pellian from the far reaches of the Commonwealth. Her Majesty Herself is supposed to have found her and spoke with her and recruited her for the project.”

“Drafted by the even more mysterious High Queen, who has this “just plain folks” persona but who holds more secrets than an old Rubik’s Cube, I’m told,” said Kansai. “I’ve met her exactly once, and she’s nice and quiet; even made us tea herself, but something about that look in her eyes scares the living crap out of me.”

“She’s a space chick now, that’s why,” said M’Gill. “You know how the war ended. She’s supposed to be as powerful as Trelaina, but has learned to hide it very well.”

“Enough about her. She creeps me out even worse than Layla Destiny! How exactly do the base Hawking Equations for this planned Galaxy Railway project work?” said Kansai.

“The most basic equations look simple but actually cover about three hyperspaces. Have you seen them?”

Kansai nodded. “I’m an engineer, not a physicist! I don’t understand where these hypothetical values come from; I just know they work in the lab. Did Doctor Shura come up with them?”

“Yes and no,” said M’Gill. “What I’ve heard is that the equations are eighty percent of the work of Doctor Layla Destiny Shura. The other twenty percent, which verge on psychic engineering or, even as some say it, magic, are supposed to be the brainchild of her Sublime Majesty Nova Wildstar D’Tera III herself. Supposedly, those are the base equations that make this whole improbable exercise work, and it is said only Layla and Nova know exactly how the heck actually they work.”

“Did they get a patent for the scheme?” said Doctor Kansai.

M’Gill nodded and said, “Aye, again. You’re batting one hundred percent at the cricket wicket, lassie. Patented on both Terra and Pellias.”

“Who’s going to be guarding this construction? The Royal Pellian Forces, or the Earth Fed forces?”

“Both, at first. An idea has been floated to build a separate military organization once this network gets fully built, which should take between eighty to a hundred years; maybe longer,” said McGill.

A messenger ran up and yelled for Doctor Kansai. “I’ve been looking for you! You’re wanted in the teleconference room in an hour. It’s important. You’re supposed to report to the Boss.”

“Not Doctor Shura?” sighed Kansai.

“You’ll be told when you get there,” said the messenger.

“This doesn’t sound promising,” said Kansai.

McGill nodded.

A few minutes later, Doctor Kansai, having disposed of his hard hat, sat in an office waiting as Doctor Crystal Bellingham, a pretty African-American woman from Philadelphia, reported in on a split screen from the Eddystone plant.

“So, who’s on the line, Crystal?” said Kansai.

“Beats me if I know, dear,” she said in her calm, cool voice with a slight Alabama accent. “I do know the link we’re waiting for is from Vienna, Austria.”

“Oh, shit on a shingle,” murmured Kansai. “Unless Doctor Shura is in Vienna, that means…”

“The call is coming from the new Schoenbrunn Palace facility,” said Doctor Bellingham. “Ever since the new Treaty of Princeton, that’s now the High Queen’s seat here on Terra with the reorganization of the Government as the Terran-Pellian Federation or Commonwealth. The results of the war of the previous year had caused Terra to be moved across space thirty thousand lightyears to the Mecanner System just out beyond the Milky Way’s edge; and the planet had been placed in such a way that Terra and Pellias were now twin planets. Anyone on Earth could testify to this just by looking up at the sky and seeing the blue and white globe of Pellias in the sky a bit beyond the Moon, which had also been moved along with the Earth.

And now, Bellingham and Kansai knew they were about to talk with one of the two individuals responsible for this turn of events. The other woman, the resurrected Trelaina of Telezart, didn’t bother much with comm systems these days. She and her spouse, Mark Venture, had just recently settled on Pellias, where they intended to remain for an indefinite time.

“Stand by for encrypted link,” came a robotic voice at Bellingham and Kansai’s ends as a screen appeared with the blue and red flag of the new Pellian-Terran Federation Dual Monarchy, with the Byzantine-looking Double Eagle seal on a white field in the center of the flag. 

The first few bars of the old Terran march “Avenida De Las Camelias” sounded across the link. The march was an ancient Argentinian march adopted as the Anthem of the new government by the new Parliament as a gesture of friendship to South America, where a lot of food riots had been going on recently. It also had a very ceremonial, sprightly, old-European sound to it, and the first Prime Minister of the Terran side of the new Federation liked it.

After a moment, the anthem and the flag faded, and Doctors Bellingham and Kansai watched as the image of the High Queen faded into the picture.

Admiral Nova Wildstar MD, JD stretched her long legs before the conference began. She had on a dove-grey business suit with a skirt, white pumps, and a white silk blouse with a raspberry-colored tie and beret.

Both Bellingham and Kansai bowed slightly to the new Head of State, who bowed back and said in her soft but authoritative Midwestern US accent, “How is work going on Galaxy Express Two One Seven, the prototype?”

“The boiler and framework and drivers are in Japan now, Majesty,” said Bellingham in her equally calm voice.

“Doctor Kansai, how long until she can be rolled out and tested?” Nova asked.

“Probably about five months, ma’am,” said Kansai. “We’ve just begun installing the electronics and thrusters in the locomotive. The Defensive systems are still being put together in Kure.”

“If I read the latest blueprints correctly, 217 will be getting a quad pulse laser setup hidden behind the running board skirts, and a single turreted Cometine-design plasma turret hidden in what was the steam dome on the original Reading Company locomotive?” Nova asked.

“Yes. The systems are to be run by the co-pilot, who will also have charge over the engines, defense and atmospheric fields, and in keeping up steam and making sure the fusion fire is running correctly,” said Kansai.

“We put the controls for those systems on what would have been the fireman’s side of the cab on the original locomotive, where the old coal stoker system controls were located,” Doctor Bellingham said. “The pilot’s station is at the old engineer’s side of the cab, containing the piloting and navigation controls, cosmo-radar, and of course the autopilot and life support systems controls. However, we expect that under actual conditions, the autopilot will control the locomotive. Or ship. Or…whatever you want to call this thing.”

“It’s a locomotive, not a thing,” Nova said. “It won’t be a thing, either, when you switch on that IQ-16 AI circuit. Be very careful. When you flick that switch, you will be bringing a person to life.”

“A person?” said Kansai, “Ma’am, with all respect…”

“You mean you don’t see an AI as a living being, Doctor?” Nova snapped. “I could advise you differently. A Ninth-Class unit turned on in 2196 became my friend when he met me in 2198. He has some quirks; some strange ones, but he’s a friend. He saved my life several times over, and…”

“I thought you were against machine people, ma’am…” stammered Kansai.

“Those monsters that we were recently fighting were brainwashed cyborgs under the command of a Dark Lord and his successor the Dark Queen. Yet, they were human beings, and they were alive; just…well…like Prometheus grabbing at the fire of immortality that he was not meant to grab at; at least by scientific means. I don’t know what your spiritual beliefs are, but there is a world above this one and even around it. I speak from personal experience. I was dead for a while. I was there. And, as a doctor, I know it was not some drug-induced hallucination or strange problem with my brain chemistry. This body that you see me sitting in was dead for almost three days and had been autopsied and embalmed. But I was sent back, and I am alive and haven’t had any health issues except for a minor cold last week. Anyway, thank you for the report, and on that note, I will be going. Take care.”

Nova cut off the comm signal at her end and sighed heavily while getting a comb out of her desk and almost angrily combing her hair.

A tap came at the door, and a familiar female voice said, “May we come in?”

“Yes, please do,” Nova said.

Two more women walked into the room. One of them was taller than the other.

The first woman was a tall woman with blue hair who wore a suit that resembled a tank-top swimsuit, with a translucent blue cape and black, almost knee-high boots. This was Layla Destiny, the alien woman who would be the planned head of the Galaxy Railways System; if the experiment worked, that is. Her planet was on in the Pellian side of the domain. She had only met Nova in the past few weeks.

The other woman was a little shorter; she had striking blond waist-length hair and wore a black fur-trimmed dress, black boots, and a black Russian-style fur hat; it almost looked like an Astrakhan hat to Nova, as a matter of fact. This woman had been known to Nova for some years now, ever since about 2202. She was named Maetel, and she was the daughter of their greatest enemy, Queen Larmetal Promethium II, the cruel despot who ruled the Mechanoid Empire.

“Majesty,” said Layla Destiny as she and Maetel bowed slightly to Nova. “What information do you have for us with respect to progress on the project?”

Nova then repeated the report that Bellingham and Kansai had given her, minus the metaphysical discussion at the end that Nova had digressed into when Kansai had argued that AI units had no life or consciousness of their own.

“I’m pleased to hear of your progress,” said Destiny.

Maetel looked thoughtfully at Nova and said, “I, sad to say, have a link with my mother. She is not dead; she lives inside one of her machines. I agree with your logic regarding why we need to construct a Galactic Rail Network. I have foreseen that a day is coming when my mother will bring a new war to us…perhaps decades…perhaps centuries from now. We will need to have a reliable transport network for logistics purposes to make an effective resistance against her. She has incredible, megalomaniacal plans in her head…”

“Yes…like her one-time Master, Lord Ekogaru…before he saw the Light, of course,” Nova said. “How is your sister Emeraldas doing?”

“Well…the last time we spoke, that is,” said Maetel. “I don’t know when I will see her again…I…”

“I last saw her a few years ago, when I had command of the Yamato for a while, back when we still called her the Argo,” Nova said. “That mission almost cost me my life then. Your sister files her own missions in the Sea of Stars, under her own flag. No one can predict where she will appear, or when she will depart.”

“She took up that life not long after our mother cast her away from Larmetal, for conspiring against her,” Maetel said. “Would that she could have told you then…”

“She hinted at it when we spoke; she advised me not to trust your mother,” Nova said. “My memories of that time are hazy. I was in and out of a comatose state, possibly in and out of sanity itself.” At that, Nova took a deep breath. “Well, we shall speak again in a month, and I wish you both a good day.”

Layla and Maetel left, and Nova typed in a number on her comm unit.

The phone rang and connected to the number she was dialing up above, on Pellias.

“Lord Admiral Wildstar here. How many I assist you?”

“This is your other side calling,” Nova said in a tired voice. “I had some rough meetings today. Derek, my head hurts. Where are you?”

“On the Yamato, in the dockyards here on Pellias,” Derek responded.

“Can you get up into the ship?”

“No one would have an issue with it once I pass security,” Derek said as he yelled the last few words so that he could be heard over the sound of a heavy chain lift moving parts on the Yamato’s weather deck.

“Good. Wait for me in our quarters up in the bridge tower. Please pour me a White Zinfandel. I’m going to need it.”

“Thanks,” Derek said.

A moment later, Nova stood, shut her eyes, concentrated on Derek’s essence, and then the familiar feel of the Yamato…and then, she used her ability and flashed out of Vienna…

…only to reappear, as she expected, in the Captain’s Cabin of the Yamato.

Once there, she threw off her beret on the small table waiting there, took a deep breath, and sat down, awaiting her husband.

TO BE CONTINUED…