Star Blazers/Battle of the Planets (Crossover)

The Test

A tale by Frederick P. Kopetz and Yuki Wildstar in Eight Chapters

Chapter One

A Test Run….

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I. MUSINGS

DEEP SPACE-APPROACHING THE HORSEHEAD NEBULA

Space Battleship Argo

Captain’s Quarters

May 29, 2220

0622 Hours

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Admiral Derek Wildstar, one of the Earth Defense Forces’ greatest officers, was a man of forty-two who looked several years younger than his true age.

A few of his friends teased him for getting “middle-aged”, but middle-aged this man was not as he sat up early in the morning typing in his log before going on watch.

Wildstar ran his hands through his dark hair and yawned a little as he began to type.

He typed:

Four days out in space.

Four Days Out In Space, and my ship is being overrun with third-year cadets.  A few High-School Level Junior Space Cadet Corps midshipmen, but mostly Academy and ROTC midshipmen and women who think they know everything but don’t know anything.

My training cadre consists of the following sane officers:

Captain Stephen Sandor-Mechanical Group Leader-First Officer. Thank God for Steve. He is actually keeping me sane.

Commander Tetsu Kitano-Navigation Group Leader-Second Officer. Also helping keep us sane. And doing a good job. This former cadet will make a fine Captain someday.

Lieutenant Commander Sasha Wakefield-Living Group Leader-Third Officer. She is doing a great job at the radar and at running the Living Group. She is also very good at talking to these cadets.

Commander Deke Wakefield-Black Tiger Group Leader. The guy finally has it; he is Chief of the Black Tigers this trip out. He has three good squadron leaders; Jere “Brew” Marrable, Gabrielle Marrable, and Jonathan Hartnell-Wildstar. Yes, our adopted son. A member of the Black Tigers.  And good enough to be a squadron leader.

Captain Nova Wildstar, MD. My new Doctor Sane as Chief Surgeon of this ship. Only she’s far smarter, far cuter, and looks far better with geta on than he ever did. Eccentric in her own way, but I could not run this ship without my Nova.

And those five men and three women are the backbone of this crew this voyage.

Everyone else on this ship is either:

a) A cadet

b) An idiot.

God help me this Cruise. God Help me….

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After typing his log entry, Wildstar took his chair-lift down to the First Bridge.

“Ca…Captain on deck!” shouted one of the cadets, a young man sitting at Gunnery known as Hamilton.

“What vas that?” snapped Helga Ganger, who sat at the Tactical Radar. Ganger was a Gamilon from the Exchange Program whereas a few EDF crewmembers served for a time on Gamilon vessels while some Gamilons served on EDF ships. Ganger was about twenty-two, tall, and dark-haired. She sat at her post in a Gamilon officer’s uniform with an EDF Anchor pin worn on it.

“It’s the Captain!” said Cal Roland, the young man who was at Communications. “I’ve got a signal comin’ in, but I can’t get gain on it!’

Sasha Wakefield, at the Cosmo-Radar, turned, saluted the Captain and said, “With your permission, sir, let me help him.”

“Go ahead,” said Derek, who thought, My God! My twelve-year old daughter Ariel could do a better job than that! And Wildstar was not kidding. One day, on a brief visit to the ship, after being shown what to do on a near-empty Bridge last year, Ariel, trim in her boots and minidress, had actually run to the Comm console and had taken an incoming signal. Ariel picked up things quickly, like her cousin and friend Star Wakefield. Ariel was interested in becoming an EDF cadet, but her interest was not in shipboard ops, but was, instead, in Medical Ops like her mother.

Sasha helped the dweebish Roland tune in his signal.

A moment later, a face appeared on the screen.

It was the eager, tough young face of a young man with dark hair and piercing eyes who looked a bit like a younger Admiral Wildstar.

He had on a strange outfit; a helmet, in white, trimmed with blue and red, and a white and red uniform with a red, stylized birds’ head on the chest.

He saluted and said, “Sir, this is Senior Lieutenant Mark Kenjiro Anderson of G-Force, reporting for the first time. I was ordered to report to you, sir.”

“And you did so rightly, Commander,” snapped Derek.

“Commander, sir?” said Roland. “He’s a Lieutenant!”

“He’s the Commander of his team and skipper of his ship!” snapped Derek. “Read the status reports a bit more closely when you get a signal, Roland!”

“Aye, sir,” said the cadet.

“Sorry, Anderson,” said Derek.

“Sir, you can call me Commander, or Mark,” said Mark.

“Fine, Commander,” snapped Derek. “How is the data on the Phoenix?”

“We had a good takeoff from Earth and have survived our first two space warps well, sir. We were ordered to report to you for briefing and familiarization, being that this is the first operational test of the Phoenix.”

 “I hope she is running well,” said Stephen Sandor from his post. “Those reverse-engineered magna-power engines are my new baby,” he said. “How goes it with your foster father?”

“The Chief is fine,” said Mark. “He is working on finishing our new secret base. It will be a movable underwater facility.”

“Not bad,” said Admiral Wildstar. “Mark, bring your team aboard the Argo in an hour. We need to check those cerebonics out.”

Mark’s face dropped at the command, but he said, “Yessir. You can count on G-Force.”

“G-Force; What’s that?” said Hamilton.

“A new, quasi-secret unit run by the Terran ISO Group, with oversight from the EDF and the Alliance,” said Derek. “You will meet the team and be briefed with the rest of the crew at 0800, Mister.”

“Yessir,” he said.

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II. CONFLICTS

DEEP SPACE-APPROACHING THE HORSEHEAD NEBULA

Space Battleship Argo

Sickbay

May 29, 2220

0710 Hours

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After checking out the First Bridge, Engineering, and the lower flight bay, Admiral Wildstar popped into Sickbay.

There, he heard a small but strident meow.

Walking into the office, he found a woman with honey-blond hair, about his age, but looking a little younger, kneeling on an office chair, laughing as a curious little orange kitten stalked the edges of her white lab coat, which was trimmed in red.

She wore glasses, and had on a civilian pink blouse, black skirt, and black high-heeled sandals.

Derek smiled at his ship’s doctor, and said, “Good morning, Doctor Wildstar.  What’s Mimi up to?”

The doctor, who was, of course, his spouse, Nova Wildstar, MD, laughed again and said, “She thinks my coat and my toes are cat toys! Hence, she’s stalking me like crazy!” Then, Nova addressed Mimi II, the young kitten descended from Fluffy who had replaced the original Mimi, who had passed on two years ago. “Stop looking at me like that, Mimi! You know you’re being bad!”

Mimi looked at Nova, went “Mrrrow?” pitiably, and then, she jumped into her mistress’ lap, making her squeal. “Watch the claws…Mommy has no stockings on!” Nova said as Mimi stretched in her lap and then began to knead and purr.

Derek walked up to Nova and gave her a kiss. “Making us any more Nobel Prizes in your lab?”

“No,” Nova said. Then, she said, “I have been recalibrating the life sign sensors, with some help from Sandor…so that we can pick up cerebonic implant telemetry. Those…kids…”

“Yes,” Derek said, seriously. “We’re supposed to be monitoring them on their first exercise when we reach Barnard 33, aka the Horsehead Nebula, in two days….”

“The Horsehead Nebula,” Nova said quietly. “Young stars in the process of formation, lots of gasses…magnetic fields. It’s just as much of a mess as the Rainbow Cluster near the Great Magellenic Cloud. We’d better be on our guard there. God knows what could be lurking in that nebula…”

“Someone would have to be suicidal to hide in there,” Derek said as Nova kicked off her heels and ran barefoot over to a small fridge in her office.

Nova opened the fridge. “Name your poison, Derek? Juice? Soda? Too early in the day for something stronger than that…”

“Have some of your tomato juice?”

“Oh, always,” Nova said. She got a pitcher and poured herself and Derek two glasses of tomato juice. “The Tabasco is over there if you want any,” she said.

“No, I’ll take it straight.”

“Wise choice,” Nova said.

They sat down and sipped at the tomato juice as Derek asked, “Do you have a file on that special missions unit? What are they called, again? Sorry. I need a memory refresher after I talked to their Commander. He has a burr up his ass!”

“G-Force,” Nova said as she resumed her kneeling position in her chair. “There’s five of them; all with those implants, those odd Birdstyle costumes, those weapons. They all have special vehicles that combine into one ship; the Phoenix.  Kids, really. You’ll meet them when we make a rendezvous with them. They are supposed to be boarding the Argo today for a bit for a baseline physical from me…”

“And an interrogation from me,” said Derek.

“Oh?” said Nova with her eyebrows up.

“Like I said, that kid, Mark….he has an attitude!”

“My files read he’s a fifteen-year old genius,” said Nova. “Most fifteen-year olds act like that. Many twenty-one year olds act the same way. I remember this young man I knew. Angry at the world, wanted to try and get revenge for what he thought was the death of his brother, had three burrs up his ass; could never keep his hair combed.” Nova then smiled at Derek and tossed him a comb. “And even under his Admiral’s cap, he still can’t!”

“Nova, you know all too well what makes me tick,” Derek sighed. “And when was the last time you used a brush?”

“Good one,” she said. Then, the phone rang. “Sickbay office,” Nova said.

“Doctor, G-Force has reported aboard,” said Head Nurse Dawn Hardy in a nervous tone of voice. “Ma’am, I have this…punk up here…first one to report. Says he wants to get the physical crap over with…fast!”

“So he can do what?” Nova said.

“He said, and I quote, ‘go chase some broads around. Your ship is fulla broads who look better than Princess!’ And I end the quote. He also tried to goose me.”

“Does he have on a brown uniform by any chance?” Nova sighed.

“Aye, ma’am…I…”

“I can handle him. Send him to Exam Room Two. And for heavens’ sakes, make him undress. I don’t want him smelling like the bottom of a transmission oil sump this time.”

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Nova appeared in Exam Room Two a few minutes later with Derek sort of trailing behind. Derek leaned against the doorway as Nova looked at Jason Asakura, G-2, the “Condor” of the G-Force team.

The angry, surly-looking fifteen-year old Japanese-Sicilian Lieutenant sat there in only his boxer shorts, snarling at Dawn Hardy.

“Why the vile face?” said Nova.

“Because you suck, along with every other Doctor spawned from the doorway of any Medical School on the face of the fuckin’ Earth!” Then, he spat on the deck.

“Now, see here,” said Nova as she glared at him hard through her glasses. “We can do this check of your cerebonics one of two ways. We can do it with you cooperating or with you in restraints. Your choice, kid.”

“How’s about we do a third choice?” said Jason.

“What?” Nova snapped.

“I skip the exam and put you on the fuckin’ deck with a concussion, bitch!” said Jason as he smiled, wiped his mouth, got up.

And, then, he pushed aside Dawn with a shove and came for Nova with murder in his eyes.

Nova stepped back and cocked up her fists as Jason smiled and cracked his knuckles.

A moment later, Nova felt herself being gently, but firmly being elbowed aside…

…by her own husband, as he glared at Jason and said, “Before you get at my Chief Surgeon, and my wife, by the way, you have to get past me first, punk!” Derek snapped.

“Oh, an old dude? Bring it on, Admiral, this should be good!” Jason hissed.

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TO BE CONTINUED…..