Hallowed stars in space! What has Dipperson Kiddwell done?
Excerpt
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.00 – FALLING DOWN
Prior to ice boiling off an exploding comet at Thunderbolt, the favorite joke making the rounds of the Galactic Service’s experimental Juniors Division had to do with the CO of the Galactic Marine Corps. Well, not George Gritslinger exactly. More like the general’s notorious intolerance for moonnoodles.
Jasmine Tanaka told her version to Fed pals April Hernandez and Tootie Walker. The three Junior GSers happened to be outside Camp Rainier’s Girls Barracks one moonless night observing a shower of falling stars.
***
General Gritslinger and a battlebot are on survival exercises at the Emerald Jungle. As night falls, while the general takes bearings on Steptoe Mountain, the robot constructs a hut of branches and ferns. Later, the two crawl inside. Gritslinger goes to sleep; the battlebot goes on standby.
An hour before the crack of dawn, Gritslinger wakes up like an atomic clock, shudders, and lashes toward the battery-conserving ‘bot.
“Look up! Whatta ya see!”
The robot energizes, sweeps upward with sensors, and monotones, “Atmospheric condensation; 5,300 stars down to magnitude 6.7; the planet Emerald VI; star formation in the Orion Nebula; gegenschein; and the Milky Way core at 26,000 lightyears.
“What do you see, General Gritslinger?”
“Idiot! The hut you built fell down!”
***
After the Thunderbolt comet exploded, it was no joke to say more than mere huts were falling down. The very Galactic Service built 500 years earlier by legendary Albert “Attaboy Al” Higgens seemed to be falling down too—and with it, Milky Way human civilization.
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.01 – DIMPLES IN SPACE
“Zero-Three, launch!” Davy Crawford radioed from the starcruiser Peleliu.
Complying, Darnell Pendleton stamped his right boot’s waffled sole onto a power pad, heard Skeeter 03’s sublight engine scream, and catapulted forward. After which he and the dart bearing his name dipped beneath an asteroid, S-turned between two more, then dove down through a fourth’s crater.
At the trainer’s ion-spurt out the crater’s opposite side, low-yield cannons affixed to a hexagonal target opened fire. Immediately particle bursts began puff-puffing outside Darnell’s canopy. Inside, his instrument panel barely blinked “TARGET ACQUIRED, TARGET ACQUIRED” when Cougar Squad’s third in command squeezed his flightstick’s trigger. Spoosh! A rocket hanging off his starboard wing ignited, corkscrewed an evasive pattern, and detonated at bulls-eye in a spray of neutrons.
Skeeter 03 was already arcing up and out of the plane of the Thunderbolt Asteroid Belt toward leisurely return to the end of Cougar Squad’s queue when redheaded Styreena Cupples inched Skeeter 02 forward to a position parallel to the Peleliu’s rocket array then halted.
On board the dread starcruiser, meantime, Jim Boscoe at Sensors Stations copied Darnell’s data into a file for forwarding to Camp Rainier.
“Pendleton cut it fine on that first asteroid, Davy, but for a sixteen year old, not bad.”
Besides Jim Boscoe at sensors and Davy Crawford at command, the crew’s other esteemed members included the twins Lewis & Cole Meriwether at Propulsion and Battle Control, respectively, and Annie Oakmont at Comlink-Cartography.
Smiling faintly at Boscoe’s assessment, Crawford returned attention to the teenagers restlessly revving their engines outside. As thirteen ion exhaust ports saffron’d and subsided, saffron’d and subsided along the queue’s length, Crawford’s brow furrowed.
“Zero-Two, launch!”
Skeeter 02 shot obediently off, dipped its pointy nose, executed an S-turn, endured anti-spacecraft fire, locked onto a bulls-eye, and lit a rocket. Styreena’s rocket speared through a hole burnt in the target by Darnell’s then hurtled across the asteroid’s undulating floor. It would ultimately detonate an exploding flour sack of rock, sand, and dust off a terraced rise.
“Dead on target,” Lewis Meriwether whistled.
His twin chimed, “That’s shooting.”
Had Cougar Squad’s leader been paying attention to the goings-on outside his own trainer’s saturated glass right then, he would’ve agreed. Dipperson Kiddwell also would’ve nudged Skeeter 01 to the launch point then steadied for his own training run. Dipperson, though, in demonstration of the Absence Paradox, wasn’t there. Well, if one was willing to abandon Space-Time mechanics for the moment. Specifically, in Absence Paradox terms, Dipperson’s not being at GS Headquarters right now, or at GSHQ’s Gadget Corps for that matter meant he must be somewhere else. In this instance locked in a debate over the most favorable position to station Princess Tawny Tabreez’s official photocard.
“No, Princess Tawny, right here, I think, by the comlink where you’re closer to me.”
At which point the Absence Paradox evaporated, genuine Space-Time resumed, and Davy Crawford aboard the Peleliu boomed, “Zero-One, launch!”
As evidence of normal Space-Time’s return with all its attending physical laws, Dipperson lurched in surprise, dropped from one hand Tawny’s image in the artificial gravity, and accidentally squeezed with the other hand his flightstick’s trigger. Instantly one fluted piece of ordnance ignited, spurted away, and blazed off on a hellbent search for a target.
At the instant it veered to port between two neighborhood asteroids, Davy Crawford’s spine stiffened.
“I said launch, not fire.”
“Confirmed,” Boscoe aye-ayed. “Launch, not fire.”
Having groped up by now the photocard from the floor, and noting digital damage in the form of Tawny’s puckering-and-unpuckering lips, Dipperson noted two more things: (1) an instrument light signifying a rocket launch; (2) Davy Crawford’s aggravated voice over Skeeter 01’s comlink.
“Cougar Squad Leader! Put your remaining rockets on safety!”
“On safety, rrroger. Sorry, Sirs.”
By the time the boy had zipped away Tawny’s likeness into the flightsuit pocket next to his heart, her highness’s diamond tiara, flowing blond hair, and buttermilk complexion had degraded to flares and scintillations. Across the tiny space divide between ships, meanwhile, the Peleliu’s former training operation had degraded into a search-and-destroy operation. Weighing the operation’s options began at Sensors Station.
“Rocket trajectory computed, Davy. It’s headed toward Little Neptune.”
Boscoe meant the gas giant fifteen million kilometers in the direction of the solar system’s B-class star, Thunderbolt. According to readings Dipperson’s rocket had accelerated to superlight speed, meaning none of the Skeeters could catch it.
“We cin,” Annie Oakmont noted in confident Aussie accent. “Plottin’ an intercept course.”
Whereupon the Meriwethers went to business too.
“Superlight engines at full power.”
“Niehaus blasters likewise.”
As lighting dimmed to battle crimson, Davy Crawford’s electronics logged the rocket’s sudden shift in behavior from search pattern to lock-on. Envisioning a rumbling ore barge at the other end of that lock-on, he cautioned, “Better broadcast a yellow alert to local traffic too, Annie.”
“Aye. Transmittin’ it now.”
Prior to the Peleliu’s vaulting off for an intercept, Crawford radioed, “Cougar Squad, there’s live ordnance to track down, so I’m canceling the exercise. Lock all your rockets to safety. You’re going home.”
Styreena, her comlink on mute, bridled in her harness, “We just got here.”
“Form up on Skeeter Zero-One then return to the Edgar.”
The GS Edgar, heftiest of the Galactic Service’s freighters, was lounging all this time out of sight above the asteroids’ plane. Earlier the high-speed cargo hauler had superlighted the Juniors out to Thunderbolt from the GS’s headquarters, Earth’s Camp Rainier. Presently its swarm of trainers jockeyed forward and sideways, up and down into an echelon formation centered on Skeeter 01’s exhaust port.
As Skeeter 01 alone held position, Annie Oakmont radioed a notification. Given a certain Galactic Marine’s congenital short fuse, the notification held a certain death knell quality.
“Loggin’ that misfired rocket of yers in Gen’ral Gritslinger’s r’port, Operator Kiddwell.”
“Aye, Ma’am,” Dipperson swallowed. “Understood.”
Annie’s ensuing message was directed at the Edgar.
“Pr’pare ta r’trieve yer Skeeters, Commodore Denbo, and r’turn ta Earth.”
“Rrroger, Peleliu. Opening shuttle bay,” the Edgar’s skipper radioed back.
The shuttle bay’s rupturing action gave Dipperson an opportunity to ponder his gaffe.
“Hope my rocket doesn’t hit anything important.”
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.02 – THE BEAST WITHIN
As the Peleliu climbed out of the plane of asteroids, Cougar Squad’s Skeeters did likewise then flicked toward the Edgar’s city of running lights. Elsewhere across immediate space, meanwhile, Dipperson’s rocket streaked toward the Thunderbolt Relay Satellite in orbit round a Little Neptune moon, missed its photon collector by centimeters, and blistered past. After which it nicked Little Neptune’s big blue storm then hurtled onward in the direction of the star Thunderbolt itself.
Formerly, an instant after firing off Dipperson’s wing, the rocket had energized its sensors then swept out an ever-widening cone of space for hostiles. The Peleliu, thirteen Skeeters, 12,500 asteroids, and the relay satellite had come back FRIENDLY, FRIENDLY. A commonplace neighborhood comet had come back TARGET, TARGET. Fanatically veering toward it, the high-speeder began executing a series of tiny course corrections. Each infinitesimal reorientation was aimed at compensating for the iceball’s minutely accelerating freefall toward distant Thunderbolt.
As the comet continued to slip toward a months-off rendezvous with the star, Dipperson’s rocket blazed up, exploded at dead center, and canceled that rendezvous in a conniption fit of ice chunks, ice crystals, cosmic dust, and super-heated vapor. The Edgar, orienting its bulbous nose toward home at that moment, obliviously ignited its twenty-five superlight engines, bathed a nearby asteroid in garish light, and vaulted Earthward with its precious cargo of Juniors.
On the Peleliu, meanwhile, Lewis Meriwether was vectoring the starcruiser along a trajectory corresponding to the rocket’s.
“Too bad about that last shot, Cole. Those kids are good.”
His twin, selecting blaster emissions suitable for destroying a training rocket, reflected on Styreena’s bulls-eye through Darnell’s bulls-eye. “As good as us at that age.”
“Still, I wouldn’t wanna be Dipperson Kiddwell when General Gritslinger hears about this.”
“No, no,” Cole Meriwether chuckled, “I wouldn’t wanna be Dipperson Kiddwell either.”
Seconds earlier upon the rocket’s interception of the comet, Sensors Station had registered the explosion. Now stations all across the bridge displayed its aftermath: a sprawling fan of luminous vapor with pinprick stars shining through. As the Peleliu hurtled through halls of space toward the withering orb and its growing tail, Boscoe swept the debris, analyzed the data, then swept and analyzed again.
“Kiddwell’s rocket hit a comet, Davy.”
Annie Oakmont glanced at her viewplate. “Look at it, would’ja! A bewdy!”
Then before any other crewmember could add his own sentiment, Thunderbolt against all astrophysical theory to the contrary flared. Boscoe’s sensors swirled with data.
“Hold it. What just happened?”
Boscoe found out by switching his station’s primary display from comet to sun. Three panel taps later, he told Cole Meriwether to energize the ship’s safety shield.
“Fast.”
As the Fed at Battle Control complied, Crawford spun toward Sensors Station. “Report, Jim.”
“Thunderbolt. Gamma-ray burst. A huge one, Davy. Some kind of twitch in Space-Time set it off.”
“Twitch?”
Before Boscoe could explain, his sensors flash-flashed a second odd reading.
“Thunderbolt again?”
“Negative, the comet,” Boscoe scowled. Switching back to it, he struggled with the readings. “Its age isn’t right. Particulates in its core register barely ten years old. Speaking of its core—”
Annie Oakmont by now was tantalized.
“Go on, shrewdie. Whatta ’bout it?”
“—something stealthy’s going on. Readings crystallizing now,” Boscoe’s hard and focused eyes veritably saucered, “to one—huge—Pockmarked Polar Bear!”
The twins practically jackknifed out of their chairs.
“Pockmarked!”
“Polar Bear!”
As Boscoe sought confirmation by crosschecking this Pockmarked Polar Bear reading with a file dredging up from the ship’s library banks, Oakmont protested, “Can’t be! Davy, we buried that bloody mutator inside a solid ball-o’-ice five kilometers wide!”
“Then later lost track of it in the solar system’s Oort Cloud, Annie,” the galaxy’s fourth-ranking law enforcer uneasily acknowledged, “barely ten years ago.”
As Sensors Station’s Pockmarked Polar Bear aligned scabby blemish to scabby blemish with the library’s then blink-blinked as identical, Boscoe’s washboard stomach constricted. “Well, now we’ve found it again! It is the GALOOT!”
After which Space-Time constricted too.
“Activating the Galactic Crisis Beacon!”
“Dialing our safety shield down to 700 nanometers!”
“Diverting emergency terawatts to hull reinforcement!”
“Ninety d’gree turn ta port!”
As the monstrous thawing bear ROARED OUT a hosing of antineutrinos, as the top five layers of the Peleliu’s shield extinguished to the blow, the starcruiser pitched sideways in space. Inside crewmembers hurled from their stations, and instruments geysered to sparks.
Boscoe, alone holding position by hanging on, fanned away the smoke spewing from his gauges. At which point one vital scrap of apocalyptic data caught his eye.
“Thunderbolt! Cole, switch energy—!”
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.03 — RIPPLES OF GRAVITY
Humankind’s stellar millstone, the Milky Way, grinds slowly, slowly round the hub of its gargantuan black hole. Not so the galaxy’s turn of events. As a consequence satellite reports of the monstrous unleashing at Thunderbolt, and the inestimable loss of legends there, pulsed outward across the quadrant’s far-flung outposts in grave waves of perturbance.
“What monster?” tribes of humanity demanded. “Which victims?”
At the answer naked panic seized the citizens of Nekkar, while scarcely a soul felt secure at Saiph. Even roundabout the sure shoulders of Pegasus’ solar systems, where levelheaded horse sense normally prevailed, thoroughbred citizens quaked hock-and-knee at the ill tidings galloping into Markab, Enif, and Biham.
The unsettling ripples, following by hours on the heels of the Edgar’s return to Earth, soon engulfed the very facility nurturing its new Juniors Division, Camp Rainier.
The grave waves initially whelmed over the Junior GS’s third in command, Darnell Pendleton. A half hour later second-in-command Styreena Cupples caught him at Camp Rainier’s Central Vectoring feverishly assembling Quad-Shields round a priceless piece of Fed antiquity, the GS Twinkle. Darnell should’ve been prepping the tiny ship for its eventual display alongside the Albert Higgens Monument at the quadrant’s parliamentary seat.
To gauge the Twinkle’s inestimable value, all a teen Fed had to do was read the stenciling on the flyweight’s teardrop fuselage:
ALBERT “ATTABOY AL” HIGGENS
QUADRANT CHIEF
“THAT’S THE STUFF!”
Styreena, though, suddenly had something else in need of gauging.
“Quad-Shields? Is Mount Rainier blowing up or something?”
As trucks bearing a company of grim Galactic Marines in battle gear howled past Pad 70 toward a hastily descending troop transport at Pad 75, Darnell nervously glanced over a shoulder at the volcanic peak.
“Given a sufficient antineutrino blast, not out of the realm of possibility, I’d say.”
“Antineutrinos?”
“Never mind,” Darnell re-concentrated on the Quad. “I take it the Chief canceled your job shadowing with Dr. Aune today at Galactic University.”
“Correct.”
“Then, lemme guess, you were ordered to fetch me, Dipperson, and the rest of Cougar Squad for a rendezvous with the Chief over there at Pad 52.”
“After we’ve changed into our mission gear, correct again. You always know what’s going on before anyone else.”
“I am, after all, the GS Juniors’ Liaison to Sensor Hub. Sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse,” Darnell exhaled obscurely. Before Styreena could address the murky remark, Darnell snapped an antimatter battery in place, backed her off, and punched an ACTIVE button. “Antimatter power engaged. Quad-Shield deployed.”
As proof a dome of energy sufficient to shield the freighter Edgar rainbowed over the Twinkle then subsided to a pulsating state. When a crew of MP robots rumbled up in a motorized anti-spacecraft battery then lumbered out to begin setup, Styreena asked what the Helix was going on.
“Runaway calamity . . . galactic crackup,” Darnell muttered indecipherably.
“Huh?”
Styreena a minute earlier had driven up in a 4X4 taxiwagon. Darnell suddenly tugged her by the sleeve in its direction.
“I’d rather Chief Curry told you. First, let’s just gather Cougar Squad from outside the Mountain Athletic Center.”
“Right. Where Dipperson’s leading the squad in martial arts training.”
“Try mowing its lawn.”
“The MAC’s lawn?”
“General Gritslinger’s orders. Blame it on Dipperson’s goof at Thunderbolt.”
At the remark Styreena yanked Darnell to a standstill.
“Wait-one-zeptosecond. ‘Cause Dipperson accidentally rocketed a comet?” Stubbornly stiffening with respect, she quoted, “‘The comet has yet to congeal that will stand between me and success.’—Albert ‘Attaboy Al’ Higgens.”
The recitation being but a sampling of innumerable and treasured “Albert Higgensisms,” if anyone in the galaxy could cite one at the drop of a proton for Pluto’s sakes, it was Styreena.
“Except,” Darnell undermined the quotation’s aptness, “that wasn’t just any comet Dipperson rocketed, Styreena. Chief Curry! Here on base at Pad 52! He’ll explain everything!”
Several winks of Space-Time later, two youthful butts were filling the bucket seats of the taxiwagon’s cab, Styreena behind the wheel. As the people carrier sparked alive to igniting hydrogen, as the landed troop transport now whined off Pad 75 toward GALOOT defense posture at Saturn with its truck-loads of grim Galactic Marines aboard, Cougar Squad’s second in command mulled an uneasy inkling. Something of cosmic consequence was wrong in the Universe, and Cougar Squad’s third in command wasn’t talking. As a Gadget Corps service truck abruptly screamed into sight in the distance then nearly tipped over madly swerving Pad 70’s direction, Styreena twisted toward him.
“Chief Curry will explain everything? What’s going on, Plum?”
“I’d rather not say, Cupcake.”
“Tell me anyway, Operator. That’s an order.”
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.04 — GALOOTISH PROSPECTS
While Styreena pulled rank under mighty Mount Rainier’s disapproving brow, General Gritslinger a few kilometers west at Camp Rainier’s Heptagon pulled out his hair at the galaxy’s inestimable loss: Davy Crawford? His Band of Legends? The general might just as well have been punched in the jaw with a fistful of neutron star.
Pacing a rut inside the Heptagon’s nerve center, Sensor Hub, the Galactic Marines’ commandant wanted to know what the Milky Way’s No. 1 Law Enforcer planned to do about the GALOOT’s escape. Actually, since the mutator had been loosed at Thunderbolt, it was more proper to ask what Chief Fudd Curry planned to do about the Pockmarked Polar Bear’s escape.
The two planetpushers had joined the Captain of Sensor Hub, Galactic Marine Major Tammy Kelly, at an ultra terminal. The cranky general, his back-and-forth paces halting, needed the petite female to clarify a piece of data.
“The GALOOT’s mantle of ice melted after the rocket’s impact, that’s what the Thunderbolt Relay Satellite told you, Major?”
Kelly, holder of a master’s degree in data ciphering from Pullman Tactical College, confirmed, “Thunderbolt’s satellite, Davy’s Crisis Beacon—yes, Sir. The comet melted, the GALOOT got free—”
“—and this galaxy’s greatest living legends,” Gritslinger gnashed, “were erased from the Space-Time Continuum thanks to teenagers!” Suddenly cognizant by Kelly’s startled reaction of having strayed from popular opinion, Gritslinger glanced at Curry and backtracked. “Greatest living legends next to you, of course, Sir.”
Peeved, but not at the miscalibration in public acclaim, Curry corrected a different miscalibration.
“George, Tammy, get this straight: Davy Crawford and his Band of Legends are not erased. They’re missing in action, and that’s official.”
“MIA, of course,” Gritslinger acknowledged.
“Yes, Sir,” Kelly likewise aye-ayed.
Then gesturing overhead to two stars of a Milky Way floating map, Gritslinger proposed, “In that case I’ll order General Schmetmixer at Alpha-C to dispatch a ship to Thunderbolt for a search—assuming, under the GALOOT circumstances, he’s got a ship to spare.”
At the comment Kelly dialed up the Galactic Marines’ GALOOT Protocols, unnecessary for ten whole years till now. She particularly spotlighted the Protocols’ Response Zones. “You’re referring to General Schmetmixer’s 22nd Expeditionary Force at Spatial Station 463.”
“Correct. Rushed out there and standing by in defensive posture, should the GALOOT trip an automatic Galactic Marine response by attacking civilians next time. A week from today the entire quadrant was scheduled for military exercises to test our alertness. Guess we’re getting that test now and more!”
The comment sparked Chief Curry to thinking.
“What’s the status on my All Worlds Warning, Kelly?”
The major checked by bringing up the pertinent data.
“Twelve million Galactic Marines and 35,000 solar system constabularies across the quadrant, as we speak, on high alert, Sir,” Kelly’s voice trailed off, “for what that’s worth.” At the spines of her two superiors stiffening, she explained, “I shouldn’t, Sirs, but I can’t help envisioning 500 years of GALOOT immunity to ballyhooed blockbustry: virus beams at Rigel, ultra-scrubbing disintegration foams at Alphard. Nothing’s worked.”
“One thing’s worked,” Curry withstood her negativity. “Davy Crawford’s method.”
Gritslinger remarked, “The Pockmarked Polar Bear’s icy neutralization at the Frothy Nebula.”
“Rrroger.”
Presently Curry ordered Kelly to switch her display to a review of the sole instance in 500 years of the GALOOT’s defeat.
Upon playback the threesome watched in frank admiration as a satellite recording showed the Peleliu ducking through the nebula’s Crystal Corridor and quickly extinguishing from sight in a veil of ice crystals. Then faster than screaming “Great Globulars!” an immense berserk polar bear, all pocky with scars, superlighted in and extinguished from sight too. Subsequently by a series of fellow satellite recordings the following happened: The Peleliu burst out the Crystal Corridor’s opposite side—its hull, however, now encased with deep wet ice. Not for long, though, due to electromagnetic inflation of the ship’s safety shield. As icy shards sprayed away to seven ballooning layers, the Pockmarked Polar Bear barrel-rolled out of the Crystal Corridor right behind. It barrel-rolled due to its own icy lacquering, which wasn’t its only change. The berserk bear’s snarl had chilled to an omnivorous and slightly ironic grin. Additionally its deranged eyes, their batting lids battling innate sleepiness, were glazed—and not from a frosting of ice flakes either. According to Davy’s savvy expectation a hibernation instinct had kicked in.
Having provoked the Pockmarked Polar Bear’s sleep instinct, the Peleliu’s crew now wasted nary a picosecond before enveloping the furry snoozer inside the ship’s macro-stringage net. Thereafter complementary satellite shots showed the Peleliu towing a swelling iceball back-and-forth through the Crystal Corridor till, at last, the glossy orb (translucent, comet-sized now, and dwarfing the laboring starcruiser) burst the stringage net’s stretched-thin web in an evanescence of ions. The data stream’s concluding image depicted a five-kilometer-wide artificial comet bowling solitarily off into blackness toward distant and molten Thunderbolt.
Savoring the image of a nuisance tumbling off toward infinity, Gritslinger mused, “Davy Crawford’s strategy hinged on triggering the polar bear’s hibernation instinct. Brilliant thinking.”
Brilliant, yes. Hinged on, not exactly.
Chief Curry burst General Gritslinger’s Frothy Nebula reverie by qualifying, “It hinged on something else, George: the Pockmarked Polar Bear still being a polar bear, and not some other GALOOT morbid manifestation.”
“Right, if the GALOOT’s left Thunderbolt,” Gritslinger conceded, “its mutation into a different creature is certain.”
“Whatta ’bout that, Kelly?” Curry delved. “Where’s the GALOOT now?”
To find out, the major switched the Ultra Terminal’s settings to live views of the goings-on at Thunderbolt. Immediately its viewplates burst with stabilizing-and-destabilizing images of Little Neptune, its moons, and the distant asteroid belt.
“The data stream from Thunderbolt’s a bit erratic, Chief—”
“Erratic?” Curry protested. “That’s a brand new satellite out there.”
“Yes, Sir, local interference from the battle, we think. In any case according to this, right after the Davy Crawford incident the GALOOT superlighted out of Thunderbolt.”
“Superlighted!” Gritslinger growled. “Those Cranston bioengineers thought of everything. Its destination?”
“Factoring in the sensor erratica,” Kelly tapped buttons, “and the GALOOT’s purported capacity to operate at stealth in 82% of its mutations,” she tapped some more, “our best guess is, um,…Canopus, General.”
“Canopus! Forget any hope of it hibernating there, Fudd. At least I’ve never heard of a caterpillar hibernating.”
“The GALOOT’s Abominable Caterpillar mutation,” Curry caught the general’s drift.
So did Major Kelly. In the face.
“Good cosmic grief!”
As both men stepped closer to scrutinize the data, as Major Kelly suppressed her alarm, Gritslinger assessed, “So the refreezing-it-into-a-comet plan is out. What now?”
“Plan II: a crackerjack party of Feds to hunt and engage the brute at Canopus,” the Chief parried barely a heartbeat later.
It was the sort of instant reply to fortify a rattled major’s doubts, not a stubborn general’s. Gritslinger’s vision showed as much by skeptically sifting Sensor Hub’s civil servants and smattering of Marines for monster hunters. The close inspection turned up panicky mathematicians updating the GALOOT Tactical Analysis, anxious chemical warfare theorists tinkering with ingredients for reckless new pesticides, and jumpy data analysts sweating over sensor minutia for the least hint of one solitary GALOOT weakness.
Good people all, but not one hunter.
“Hunt and engage, OK. One problem: None of your 650 mission-capable Operators are stationed here at GSHQ presently. Just civilian employees,” he gestured to three as examples running emergency scenarios on a trio of Pullman Combat Simulators.
As the simulations one by one concluded with identically discouraging results (Feds, Marines, and robots all suffering annihilation by one invincible GALOOT permutation after another), Curry parried, “Naturally, since 99% of them at the GALOOT’s break to freedom promptly assumed, like your Marine Expeditionary Forces, their Martial Law Districts in deep space.”
“Which leaves one percent, those crackerjacks you spoke of. Who are they?”
“West Celestial Command and their Pacific & Warner Survival School trainers.”
“What? The dozen Feds on three weeks of deep-cover maneuvers at the Emerald Jungle?” Gritslinger grappled. “As disciplined as Fed Operators are at radio silence and sensor evasion, it’ll take three weeks and more just locating those twelve in all that vegetation.”
Kelly, who’d masked her own surprise by pulling up schematics of Emerald’s waystations, quoted, “‘Feds who don’t want to be found can’t be found!’ According to ‘Attaboy Al’ Higgens anyway, Sir.”
“Unless,” Curry qualified, “it’s by another Fed, Major. Then finding them might take ninety minutes tops.”
“Meaning?”
“Nobody wants to slug it out with a monster, George, but, by Rukbat, somebody better find out how! I intend to lead the WCC and its trainers against the GALOOT.”
A half second after Gritslinger and Kelly’s gaping mouths closed, the general involuntarily echoed Major Kelly’s earlier sentiment. In particular he hoped aloud that his GS counterpart had formulated Plan II round blockbustry more potent than the Galactic Marines’ 9th Expeditionary Force at Polaris eleven years earlier.
Gritslinger recounted, “On our side: thirty-four pocket battleships and 55,000 Galactic Marines.”
“On the other,” Kelly weighed in, “a mutator with a blowtorch for a face.”
“A butt-kicking for the ages. It’s been 500 years since bioengineers unleashed that creature on the galaxy, and we’re still not sure how to defeat its blast of pure antineutrinos.”
Curry assuaged these latest misgivings.
“Let’s not totally give up on ballyhooed blockbustry quite yet, folks.”
“Gadget Corps?” Gritslinger guessed.
“Rrroger. GADCO’s Punch & Counterpunch division in particular, under GADCO codirectors Byron Blassbender and Boron, have been secretly working for several years on an explosion generator powerful enough to knock out a small moon: the Plasma Burster. Forty minutes ago I ordered Boron to supervise Plasma Burster retrofitting of thirteen interceptors at Central Vectoring. Right now I need you, George, to check Boron’s progress.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Gritslinger asked what the GS’s Quadrant Chief would be doing in the meantime.
“First prepping for my departure then briefing Cougar Squad at Pad 52 on its responsibilities in this GALOOT engagement.”
“Princess Tawny’s teen Feds?” the surprised general gaped. “It’s because of that hormone-driven unit, Fudd, that the quadrant’s in a GALOOT jam in the first place!”
“A chance for redemption, George. Plus, can’t be helped. While I superlight the GS Vivianne out to fetch the Emerald Jungle Feds, I need Cougar Squad in those retrofitted interceptors to superlight out to Canopus to confirm or not the GALOOT’s stealthy presence there. After which my troupe will catch up with the teen troupe, swap ships, and engage the GALOOT.”
As Gritslinger jowls gnashed at the galaxy’s GALOOTish prospects with teens crucially involved, Schmetmixer’s far-off 22nd Expeditionary Force of Gibson attack carriers, LaSalle disintegrator missiles, Smithy implosion bombs, and Walsh protomatter grenades stood ready to respond to any call for help within a five lightyear radius.
Since innumerable versions of all those weapons had been employed against the GALOOT throughout bygone Space-Time already (The results? KAPOW! KABOOM! And a perfectly intact GALOOT!), Major Kelly’s small shoulders began to involuntarily quake.
“Lucky stars preserve us.”
MISSION GALOOTICUS 0.05 — AN IMPORTANT COMET
“Chief Curry’s ordered us back to barracks to change into mission gear, Dipperson. Immediately,” a winded Darnell earnestly reported between wary glances at his boiling girlfriend. Then before boiling boiled over, he hastily added, “Then afterwards we’ve been ordered to rendezvous with the Chief on the double at Pad 52.”
Half a blink of Space-Time earlier Darnell had endured maniacal swerving through landing pads, a curb jump, hydroplaning across a grassy surface, and a sideways sleigh ride to near tipover outside the Mountain Athletic Center’s front doors. Then nearby as Tootie Walker and Jasmine Tanaka were demonstrating “scoop throws” and “rice-bag reversals” for their squadmates on the MAC’s front lawn, Darnell had dove out the vehicle’s passenger seat, sprinted stride-for-stride with a ruthless redhead up a rise belonging to five acres of landscaping, and interposed his body between the redhead’s and Dipperson’s. Call it preventive measures against female fisticuffs breaking out.
His right hand fastened onto the handlebar of a reel mower all this time, Dipperson routinely acknowledged the orders. Then wearily wiping sweat beads from his brow with a sleeve of his Camp Rainier sweatshirt, he asked, “What’s this all about?”
“That rocket you cut loose at Thunderbolt, Squad Leader,” Styreena emotionally croaked.
“Accidentally cut loose, Styreena,” Darnell mercifully qualified. “Seems it hit a comet.”
Dipperson caught a clue to the incident’s significance the instant Styreena lunged out and grabbed two fistfuls of his sweaty shirt.
“An important comet!”
Not till the breakneck ride to their barracks, however, with Dipperson caught in the cab’s middle position, did he learn the worst of it.
“That comet? The comet trapping the GALOOT? That’s the comet my rocket evaporated?”
As Styreena’s clenched fists yanked on the steering wheel, as the taxiwagon in turn threw half of its rear passengers into the other half’s laps, Darnell divulged, “It’s worse than that.”
“Worse, Darnell? What’s worse than the GALOOT being freed?”
At the question Styreena’s neck twitched.
Fixated on the Girls and Boys Barracks rising through her windshield, she rasped, “Davy Crawford, Annie Oakmont, Jim Boscoe, and Lewis & Cole Meriwether—that’s what’s worse!”
“The Official Champions of the Juniors Division of the Galactic Service,” Dipperson acknowledged. A picosecond later two hurtling perpendicular planes (thawed monster, Peleliu crew manifest) collided. “You mean—? And Annie Oakmont too? I didn’t think anything could kill those guys!”
Nor had Styreena. Well, not till one ordinary high-yield rocket proved that heretofore Cosmological Constant a Big Fat Lie. Wrenching moist eyes from a transparent pane, she demanded, “Hallowed stars in space, Dipperson, what’ve you done?”
Read more about GALOOT and Vernon Paul Burns HERE.
Copyright 2008 Vernon Paul Burns. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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