by Patricia Stewart | Sep 8, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Agent Dalton looked down at the dead alien, a swirling ribbon of smoke drifting upward from the hole his phaser had blasted into its chest. Once again, he was certain, an autopsy would validate that he had killed another shape shifting Haudvir, and not a human being. It was risky killing the alien outright, but his proven success rate had granted him exempt status; the authorization to use deadly force without repercussions, provided the autopsy confirmed the deceased was an alien. Dalton had executed fifty suspects so far, and all of them proved to be Haudvir. This one would be fifty-one.
* * *
“Agent Dalton,” bellowed Senator Balordo, “are you refusing to tell the Anti-Infiltration Committee how you are able to differentiate these aliens from humans? This is a matter of Global security. We need to ferret out these alien scumbags before they destroy the very foundations of our Empire.”
“I understand the consequences, Senator,” replied Dalton, “but my method is not something that I can transfer to another agent. Therefore, I prefer to keep it a secret, so the Haudvir cannot develop countermeasures.”
“Need I remind you Agent Dalton that these are top secret hearings? The Haudvir will not discover what is said inside this chamber.”
“With all due respect, Senator, one of you could be a Haudvir. And since the medical establishment does not have a non-lethal technique to identify a Haudvir, I cannot take the chance. Unless, of course, you are all willing to undergo an autopsy?” A chorus of indignant outbursts erupted from the panel members, but Dalton ignored them with a half smile. “I thought so,” he said as he unofficially excused himself from the hearing, and defiantly walked out the double doors at the rear of the Senate Chamber.
Once in the main hall, two lieutenants in the Secret Service intercepted him. They carried no visible weapons, but Dalton knew they were armed, and meant business. The larger of the two extended an upheld palm and planted it firmly in the center of Dalton”s chest. “Not so fast, Agent Dalton. The Emperor insists on a personal audience.” The shorter man led the way to a waiting armored hovercraft, with the larger one bringing up the rear. After a twenty minute ride, and a ten minute brusque walk, Dalton found himself in the Emperor”s Private Library, with the Emperor himself sitting behind a large mahogany desk.
Against all protocol, Dalton decided on a preemptive strike. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he stated, “I’m afraid that I cannot divulge my methods even to you, especially in the presence of your guards. Either one of them could be a Haudvir shape shifter.”
“I can assure you, Agent Dalton, that my guards have been well vetted. But, if it releases your tongue, they are dismissed.” Neither guard made an audible protest, and despite misgivings, they obeyed the Emperor’s wishes. After they left, the Emperor stood and approached Dalton, stopping only inches away. “I am not an impotent Senator, Mister Dalton. I get what I want, when I want it. And I want it now. You will tell me how you can identify the Haudvir, and I will decide what to do with that information. Ahhh, I see that your eyes well with fear. Good. Now, tell me what I want to know.”
The Emperor suddenly dropped to his knees, a ceramic knife bisecting his heart. He fell over backward; his eyes still open as he hit the floor. Agent Dalton brought a handkerchief toward his face and sneezed. “I suppose I can tell you now, I’m allergic to Haudvir.”
by Patricia Stewart | Aug 15, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The dilapidated sign above the front door read, “Doctor Hawking’s Tackle and Bait Shop”.
“I don’t know, Anthony,” stated Lamar Gregory of the University of Georgia’s Temporal Physics Department. “Do you really think that’s ‘The’ Stephen Hawking?”
Anthony Toole scratched his head as he studied the Tpadd’s readouts. “According to this, we are at the correct place and time. But personally, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Ever since the library’s records were corrupted by the Metis virus, everything is screwed up. That’s why the government gave us the two trillion dollar grant, so we could travel back in time and get hard copies of the monumental technical papers, and rebuild the database from the ground up, similar to what the Greeks did for the Ancient Library of Alexandria.”
Despite their misgivings, they decided to walk in and introduce themselves. However, when they entered the store, they were practically bowled over by the stench. Fighting the urge to hightail it back to the twenty-third century, they pinched their noses and soldiered on. “Excuse me, sir, are you Doctor Hawking?”
“That’s me,” replied the portly man with a broad smile, minus his left front tooth. “Doctor Hawk King, at your service. What kin I do for you gentlemen?”
Toole consulted his Tpadd and began reading, “We’d like to get copies of your papers on black hole thermodynamics, dark energy, condensed matter physics…”
“Whoa, son. If you’re one of them ‘green people’ collecting paper to save the planet, then say no more. I keep a whole pile in the back for wrappin’ fish. Wait here and I’ll fetch you a box.” King walked into the back room and came out carrying an oil stained cardboard box. The lid, which had the word “papers” written in crayon across the top, was tied tight with crisscrossing twine. He handed the box to Gregory, who nearly collapsed from the weight. King watched Gregory tote the box outside, presumably to throw it into the back of his pickup truck.
That was easy thought Toole, remembering how tough it had been to get Patricia Stewart to hand over copies of her celebrated papers on early space exploration. “No way,” she had said, “unless you also take my collection of flash-fiction stories. They’re way better than those dumb old papers.” Toole read a few, and had his doubts. But after three hours of arguing, he ended up taking both.
“Well, thanks for all your help Doctor Hawking,” said Toole, as his fingers queried the Tpadd for their next destination. “Damn, piece of crap,” he lamented as he repeatedly pounded the reset button. “Excuse me, Doctor Hawking,” he said as they both walked outside, “but my Tpadd appears to be malfunctioning. Is there any chance you know where we might find William Robert Duke, the Nobel Laureate in quantum fluid dynamics?”
King thought about the question a moment, trying to figure out what a Nobel whatchamacallit was. Most likely a high-falutin city word for “moonshine”. Aaaaah, he suddenly realized, these fellas weren’t green people, they’re just lookin’ for hooch. Good ‘ol boys, in other words. “Sure do,” he finally said. “You’ll find him up the road a piece. See that smoke risin’ over yonder. Just head toward that.”
The strangers climbed into their fancy floatin’ car, and silently glided away. Uh oh, thought King. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Don’t sneak up on him, boys, or you’ll be pickin’ buckshot out of your hide. And don’t call him William Robert, he goes by Billy-Bob.”
by Patricia Stewart | Aug 2, 2011 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The veins on the security chief’s cleanly shaven skull visibly throbbed in rhythm with his pounding heart. “Captain,” he protested, “our top priority should be to defend the station’s vital sections, not the habitat ring. If the aliens get into engineering, and gain control of life support, we’ll have no choice but to surrender.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Chief,” replied the captain, “they don’t appear to be interested in anything other than killing the crew and their families. And if we can’t figure out how to stop them in the next few hours, there won’t be anybody left alive to surrender. Now, report on what you’ve learned since the alpha shift briefing.”
Apparently, no amount of logic would change the captain’s mind, so he decided to move on. “According to the video feeds, the aliens are about the size of large dogs. We estimate that there are twenty of them on board. They carry “hand” weapons, but prefer to kill using a stinger-like projection on their heads. They are as fast as the devil. They can cover a hundred meters in a few seconds, and change direction quicker than you can aim your 3P. I don’t even know if a phaser shot will be effective, because we haven’t hit one yet. We need to capture or kill one of them, so we can figure out where they’re vulnerable, assuming they even have a weakness.”
“Do you have a plan to accomplish that, Chief?”
“Aye, sir. But, admittedly, not a very good one. I’m going to use myself as bait, and when the little bugger comes in to sting me, I’m going to shove a six inch hunting knife up its ass.” He reached behind his back and unsheathed an antique twenty-first century serrated steel hunting knife.
“That sounds like a suicide mission, Chief, not a plan,” remarked the captain.
“If we don’t get some intel, sir, we’re all dead. Just make sure I don’t die in vain.” Without waiting to be dismissed, the chief turned and headed toward the auxiliary access corridor.
“Hold fast, Mister,” ordered the captain as he jogged after his security chief. He caught up to him as he opened the four inch thick clear-steel decompression door. “You’re not going out there.”
The chief turned to face the captain, holding the knife in a threatening manner. “My mind’s made up, sir. Now, wait here until I bring you an alien.” He shoved the captain against the far bulkhead and closed the transparent door. The captain watched as the chief walked down the 50 meter long corridor, hiding the knife behind his back. As he neared the far end, the hatch blew off its hinges. Before the chief could react, an alien plowed into him head first, burying its stinger into his abdomen. The impact knocked the knife out of the chief’s hand, and it ricocheted down the corridor, stopping at the base of the decompression door. The alien retracted its blood soaked stinger and streaked toward the captain at unbelievable speed. Luckily, for the captain, it slammed into the unseen door and rebounded to the deck, twitching erratically. The captain opened the door, grabbed the chief’s knife, and buried it into the alien’s torso. A cold, bone chilling blue-green fluid squirted upward onto the captain’s face. “What the…” He turned to Command and Control and yelled, “Quickly, lower the station’s temperature to -20C. These bastards are cold blooded. They’ll slow down to a crawl if we make it cold enough.”
Twenty minutes later, with fog billowing from his nostrils, he simply said, “Okay men, let’s go hunting.”
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 18, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
It was the year 254,051. It was odd, actually, that nobody seemed to care anymore why they started counting form zero 254,051 years ago, or why a “year” was 365 “days” long, or why each day had ten “hours,” or why each hour had 100 “minutes.” Presumably, it had something to do with the periods of revolution and rotation of the original homeworld of humanity, but nobody could remember where that was. It was generally suspected that it was in the spiral arms somewhere, in what was referred to as the “Sirius Sector,” because that’s where archeologists find the oldest artifacts. But dozens of other sectors made similar claims. Unfortunately, no habitable planet could be found that revolved around its luminary in exactly 365 days. This suggested that the original homeworld may have been destroyed, either by war, or because their sun went nova. Ultimately, in the large scheme of things, it really didn’t matter. Mankind had expanded to fill all corners of the Milky Way. Where they actually originated, didn’t matter.
What did matter to scientists, however, was why there were no non-human civilizations in the galaxy. Over 90 billion stars had been explored, containing over 10 billion habitable planets, of which about half harbored at least single cell organisms. Eleven percent of those contained indigenous plant life. Eight percent of those worlds developed animal life. But none on the worlds containing animals ever developed a detectable civilization. To be sure, some of the animal species were able to communicate using a language, but these were always hominids, with DNA very similar to humans. It was concluded that they were humans that had become isolated and had de-evolved over the millennium. Apparently, homo optime-sapiens were the only intelligent species in the galaxy, and perhaps the universe. However, with the recent invention of the Hyperwarp Drive, we had a chance to find out.
The Hyperwarp Drive made intergalactic travel possible. Instead of requiring 250 years to reach Andromeda, it could be done in two. So, when the SS Initiative left space dock and streaked toward Andromeda, its five year mission was to…well, to see if anybody was out there with a respectable IQ.
One year into the mission, just short of the half way point, the Initiative shuddered violently and dropped out of hyperwarp. Half of the inertial dampers instantly overloaded in their effort to keep the crew from becoming wall ornaments. On the bridge, the main viewer displayed a mammoth alien vessel, at least a thousand times larger than the Initiative. “They’re hailing us,” announced the communications officer.
“On speakers,” replied the captain.
“We’ve been monitoring your galaxy since you humans began to spread. Your species was permitted to infest the galaxy you call the Milky Way. However, you may not travel beyond one million light years from your central black hole. Access beyond that is prohibited. Therefore, you are to turn your ship around, or be destroyed.”
“Sounds like they mean business,” noted the first officer.
“I don’t care,” replied the captain. “I need to meet these aliens. Maybe I can reason with them. Prepare a shuttle.” A few minutes later, the captain left the shuttle bay and headed toward the alien spaceship. Half way there, the shuttle simply exploded. No one saw a weapon fired.
“Ensign, turn the ship around, and plot a course for Alpha-base,” ordered the first officer.
“At least we learned something,” injected the science officer. “There are other intelligent species out here.”
“Well, that was our mission, after all,” stated the first officer. “So, I guess we’re done here. Engage.”
by Patricia Stewart | Jul 1, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The captain struggled to stand up. His dislocated left arm hung uselessly at his side. In the dim red light of emergency power, he could see his bridge crew climbing back to their assigned stations. “Does anybody know what the hell just happened?”
“We entered an uncharted wormhole,” answered the crewman monitoring the Opts Station. “Main power is off line. Possible hull breaches on decks 41 through 45. Emergency bulkhead doors have automatically deployed.”
“Any damage to the passengers sections?” asked the Captain, suddenly focused on his 6,214 passengers.
“The damage to primary structure appears to be limited to the crew sections. However, there must be injuries above deck 38. The ship experienced more than 20 gees when we returned to normal space.”
“Okay, Mister Hichens, you’re in charge of search and rescue. Take all non-essential crewmembers. Move the seriously injured to sickbay. For the rest, set up triages in cargo bays 1, 2, and 3. Mister Jessop, your top priority is life support. I want a briefing by all department heads in two hours. Now get going.”
* * *
“Hold still,” protested the nurse as she tried in vain to put the captain’s reset arm into a sling.
“Report,” barked the Captain to his department heads, as he pointed the nurse toward the exit.
“Limited power has been restored,” said the chief engineer. “We have enough power for two hyperspace jumps, maybe three. However, long range sensors and subspace communications cannot be repaired until we get to a space dock. In essence, we have some mobility, but we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. Until we get a fix on our position, a jump would be foolhardy.”
“Options?”
“I have the ships navigators in the passenger observatory,” replied Jessop. “They are trying to locate Cepheid Variables. If we can identify the spectrum and frequency of three of them, we can get our bearings. But to be honest, it’s a long shot, Captain. The equipment installed on cruise ships wasn’t designed for the kind of precision we need. Rescue isn’t likely either. Who knows where the wormhole dumped us.”
“Does anybody else have an idea?”
“Excuse me, Captain,” offered the timid Cruise Director, “but I think I may have something?”
“I’m listening, Mrs. Cartright.”
“I was reviewing the passenger manifest, sir, and I noticed that we have over 100 Extra-Terrestrials on board. One of them is an Eridani, sir. A Way Finder.”
“Whoa, a Way Finder,” replied the captain with a smile. “I’ve never met one of them before. Have him escorted to the bridge, immediately.”
* * *
The short Eridani stood in the center of the Bridge with his hands spread wide above his head. He chanted and mumbled for several minutes, as the ship’s translator and navigator worked furiously at a computer terminal. Then he lowered his arms, bowed toward the captain, and left the bridge.
“Give us a second, Captain. The Eridani use a log cylindrical coordinate system, and we use a spherical coordinate system. We’re doing the conversion now.” A few minutes later, he announced, “Got the direction, but does anyone know how far a ‘merdeft’ is?”
“A light-year or a parsec?” suggest the first officer.
“I think ‘defteros’ means ‘second’,” suggested the translator.
“I’ll look up Eridani’s AU, and do the parallax calculation,” said the navigator. Twenty minutes later he announced, “Ready, Captain.”
The captain mulled over the risks, but finally committed. “Let’s hope the Eridani are using standard galactic time. Make the jump, Mister Elliot.”
A few minutes later, the bridge crew cheered as the image of Saturn appeared on the main viewscreen.
