Flux Runners

by William Joseph Roberts

  “One.”

  “I’m owning this, dammit!” Wes scowled, “I am the pirate! Arrg!”

  The ship rocked with the dull metallic thwunk of hard dock. A green light illuminated on the small control panel of the airlock. Cold silence muted the echoed mechanisms of hard dock as the light hum of charging capacitors resonated within the confined space.

  Pressurized air hissed as it was released, and the airlock doors slid open. Two unsuspecting crewmen stood in the doorway. Their bland gray flight suits a perfect match for the muted gray of their ship’s interior. Perplexed confusion painted both of their faces.

  “Was zur Holle ist das?”

  “Throw the hooks and board her, lads!” Wes shouldered his way ahead of Trae and Fergus. His pistol pulsed with the sound of instant electrical discharge. The crewman on the left convulsed violently to the tick, tick, tick of tased electrocution. Ozone and burnt hair permeated the atmosphere of the confined space. As if with practiced ease Wes’s arm floated right, pistol cocked sideways. The second crewman doubled over in a knot of spastic muscle contractions. Wes roared in a fit of unadulterated geek rage. He lunged forward, leaping with all of his might over the twitching figures and onto the Martian ship.

  “Well hell,” Fergus said.

  “I know, right?” Trae turned and looked over to Fergus. “He just took all the fun out of it for us. Screw it!” Trae aimed at the crewman on the right.

  “Let’s test them anyways.” Fergus aimed at the one on the left. Binaural tones undulated as multicolored LED lights flickered from the under-barrel attachment of Fergus’s weapon. Both crewmen wretched and writhed in fetal-like balls.

  “Oh god that stinks,” Fergus said through a heaving gag.

  “What the hell is that?” Trae sniffed at the air, then dry heaved.

  The scent of digested sauerkraut laced the small compartment with the sick sweetness of raw sewage that viciously enveloped the occupants.

  “Oh my, God, that’s nasty.” Fergus chuckled between gasps of breath.

  “But they worked,” Trae said proudly.

  “Guys! Enough! Get moving and sweep the ship,” Doug ordered. “I’ll catch up to the Geek and get him to the bridge.”

  “I think that worked pretty damn well, overall.” Trae held out the weapon at arm’s length and admired the craftsmanship.

  “Yup, I’d say so.” Fergus laughed as he shouldered his shotgun. The pair cautiously tip-toed their way over and around the mess, onto the Martian ship.

  Doug pressed the intercom button on the wall panel. “Willy, Andy, Kara, Clean up at the airlock, please. You can thank Trae and his tinkering this time. Tie these two up and toss them into a holding cell while you’re at it. Switching to my personal radio.” He released the intercom button then cautiously stepped over the unconscious crewmen and onto the Martian ship.

  Panel labels and small strips of trim in red accentuated the dull grayness of everything else in the corridor of the Martian frigate. Deck plates, wall panels, and exposed conduits were painted the same drab gray of the Martian crewman’s flight suits. He turned left and jogged down the corridor toward the forward section of the ship. At the end of a long hall, the dullness made an immediate right. Doug rounded the corner where a glimpse of red silk, feathered hat, and taser pistol pointed in his direction grabbed his attention. He dropped to the deck just as the sound of electrical capacitors discharging filled his ears.

  “Down Geek!”

  “Sorry, Cap.” Wes tucked the pistol into his waist sash and knelt beside a closed hatchway. He turned his attention back to a dislodged control panel that dangled by a multitude of wires.

  “They locked down the bridge, didn’t they?” Doug checked the starboard corridor for defenders.

  “Yup, but not for long,” Wes said. “Give me a few more seconds and we’ll be in.” Wes firmly grasped a single wire from the wire bundle and yanked it loose from the back of the control panel. He stripped away the insulation from the metal conductor with his teeth, then producing a pair of wires with metal clips from his pocket he connected the clips to the bare wires. Wes probed the exposed circuit board with the opposite end of the wires, glancing every so often at the screen that still displayed, Sichern, in bold red letters.

  “We’ve got a problem Cap,” Rachel chimed in over the radio. “Someone is transmitting a distress signal. I’m doing my best to jam the signal, but they are modulating the frequency.”

  “Copy that, Cheezy, we’re on it. Can you hurry it up a little, Wes? We can’t let them call for help.”

  “Will you back off already,” Wes said. “It’s bad enough as it is without you breathing down my neck.” A tiny blue spark leapt from the circuit board as he poked it once again with the probe. “Oh, well hello. That might just be the spot.” A bright blue electrical arc leapt from the wire to the circuit board. The control panel beeped, and Doug could see the display change to, Entsichern. “Ha, I think I’ve got it.” He flipped over the panel and pressed the green button displayed under the lettering. The door slid open with a whir of electrical motors. “Hazzah!” Wes shouted as he stumbled to his feet.

  Doug instinctively raised his pistol at the open doorway and cautiously stepped forward. He swung his sights left, then to the right as he entered the bridge. “Wes, get in here and secure the controls.” Doug cleared a storage compartment to the left of the hatchway, then continued clockwise around the bridge.

  “On it!” Wes rushed over to the helm station. “Oh shit. We have a slight problem, Cap,” he said over his shoulder as he looked over the controls.

  “Get your ass on the ground now!” Doug shouted.

  “What the hell? It’s not my fault! Everything is in German,” Wes said, putting his hands in the air.

  “Not you Geek.”

  Wes turned but remained seated. Doug stood at the rear port side of the bridge; pistol aimed at an open storage closet. Wes keyed his radio. “Cheezy, do you know any German?”

  “Um...bitte ein Bit, Dummkoph, Bratwurst. Why?”

  “Because everything is in German,” Wes said.

  “Well, yeah, what else would you expect? They are primarily Germans, ya know,” she said sarcastically. “I don’t know what to tell you, bud. I guess you’re just kinda screwed, now aren’t ya’, Mister Wizard?”

  “Wes, get over here and give me a hand with these two,” Doug ordered.

  Two crewmen in gray flight suits emerge from the closet with their hands in the air. Doug keyed his radio, “Cheezy, see if anyone in our crew knows any German.” He motioned with the gun at the two crewmen to get onto the ground.

  Wes rushed over as the pair laid flat on the deck, their hands on the back of their heads.

  “Tie them up,” Doug ordered.

  “With what?”

  “I don’t care, find something. Use your pirate sash if you gotta,” Doug said.

  “But my pants will fall down.”

  “I don’t care if your pants fall down. Just do it. You either tie them up or they kill us while we aren’t looking, understand? Now tie them up. We don’t have time to find something else.”

  “Fine,” Wes grumbled. He fumbled with a knot in the silk material for a moment then stood straddling one of the crewmen and bound the man’s wrists behind his back.

  “Cap..oh shit. Hey, Cap!”

  “What the hell now.” Doug keyed the radio again. “Go ahead Cheezy.”

  “We have a problem. Two patrol ships are inbound and hailing us.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Wes said as he quickly bound the second crewman’s hands. He raced back to the helm.

  “Cap,” Trae shouted bellowed over the ship’s comm system.

  “Oh my god,” Wes said with a gasp. “The base and definition of those speakers are amazing.” He looked about the bridge with a wide smile of pleased astonishment on his face.

  “Snap out of it,” Doug said, snapping his fingers at Wes. He sat in the Command chair and stared at the confusion of controls
on the command chair’s display screens. He keyed his own radio. “Go ahead Trae.”

  “Engine room and lower decks are secured. We found two more crewmen down here hiding at the back of the main engineering space.”

  “At least something is going right,” Doug said. “We have two more crewmen up here. You want to come get them and lock them away with the others?”

  “Copy that, Cap. We’ll be there in a sec to collect them,” Trae replied.

  Doug keyed the mic again. “Cheezy, did you find out if anyone over there speaks German?”

  “If they do, no one has fessed up to it yet, but I’ve got an idea.”

  “Anything is better than nothing at this point,” Doug said.

  “Hey, Wes.”

  Wes keyed his radio. “I’m all ears, Cheezy. What ya got?”

  “Tell me what you see. What sort of flight control system do they have, ya know? Describe it all to me,” Rachel said.

  “There’s the manual flight control yoke, throttles, and what looks like engine output data.”

  “Okay, well, what about thruster outputs? Do you see anything that might look like thruster controls?”

  “It might be this global display thingy on the left. Maybe,” Wes said hesitantly. “It shows the ship in 3-D on the inside of a sphere in wireframe. But there’s this weird red squiggle just ahead of the ship and two red triangles off to one side. It sort of looks like their distance is being shown. There are numbers under each triangle that is slowly counting down like they are getting closer.”

  “Does anything look similar to the controls for the scrambler drive on the Betty?”

  “Well...hold on.” Wes tapped a finger to his nose as he glanced across the wide array of digital screen controls. “There is a big red button under a cover here on right side of the console.”

  “That’s it,” Rachel cheered.

  Doug keyed in, “are you sure, Cheezy?”

  “Where’s the meat cap,” Fergus interrupted as he and Trae entered the bridge.

  “Geez man!” Wes jumped in his seat and turned toward the shouting. “Can you be any louder? Your wife is trying to help me figure out these, stupid controls.”

  “Yes I can,” Fergus shouted. “Hey, honey!”

  “That was my freaking ear, man,” Trae fussed. He cleared his ear with a wiggle and pop of his pinky finger.

  “You gotta key the radio to talk to her, you ass,” Wes said with an emphasized middle finger in Fergus’s direction.

  Fergus keyed his radio. “Hey hot stuff, can I come back over and plunder your booty?”

  “Not right now, dear,” Rachel replied playfully. “I have a headache and I’m kinda busy saving your asses, again.”

  “Damn,” Fergus disappointedly said with a snap of his fingers. He keyed the mic again. Raincheck?”

  “Sure Ferg, um, remind me later,” Rachel said dismissively. “Um … Hey Cap. These guys are getting way too close for my liking. We really need to get out of here, quick. And I mean like, Speedy Gonzales quick.”

  Doug pointed toward the trussed-up Martians laying on the port side of the bridge. “Secure all of them in one of the quarters or something for now,” he said to Trae and Fergus. “Hurry up and get ready for a jump.”

  “Will do Cap,” Trae replied.

  “Cheezy, disengage the Betty and get out of here. Rendezvous at Luna Station, four.”

  “On it Cap.”

  Wes fumbled with his radio. “Cheezy are you sure about the big red button?”

  “Um...Yeah pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure? That’s it? No warm fuzzies or anything?”

  “Yup.”

  The ship shuddered.

  “The Betty has detached and is clear, Cap,” Wes said. “Should I hit the button?”

  “We don’t have many other choices. I say go for it. Hit the button Geek,” Doug ordered.

  “Shit, okay then. Hold on.” Wes tapped at the display console. The image of Earth’s moon appeared on the helm screen. “Course set, I think,” Wes said nervously.

  “Good, punch it,” Doug ordered.

  “Aye aye, Cap.” Wes shoved the throttle levers forward, then flipped open the cover and slammed his hand down on the big red button. Red warning lights flashed in time with the blaring roar of a klaxon.

  “What in the hell is that?” Doug shouted over the alarms.

  “What the hell did you do Geek? You guys are putting off all sorts of weird emissions and lots of radiation,” Rachel said over the comms.

  “I don’t know,” Wes said as he looked over the readouts. “The readings are weird. Main power is maxed out and doing this weird pulse, thingy.”

  “Captain! Anomaly dead ahead!”

  “What the hell.” Doug keyed his radio, “hang on tight, everyone!”

  “Something is forming directly ahead of us, Cap,” Wes said over the sound of the alarms. “Holy hell! Is that a freaking wormhole?”

  “Did you just say wormhole?” Doug looked over the captain’s readouts. “How the hell is that even possible?”

  “I have no clue, Cap,” Wes said. “The helm isn’t responding. We’re being pulled in. Crossing the threshold in three.”

  “Cap…,” the radios squelched.

  “Two,” Wes said.

  The radios exploded with static and variable EM noise. “We’re being pulled …” Rachel began but was cut off by static intertwined with high pitched electronic squeals.

  “One ...”

  cHAPTER 9

  Martian Frigate, Hans Landa

  Asteroid belt

  May 23rd, 2176 / Morning (Betty time)

  T he viewscreen suddenly blinked to black and flashed back to life with a slow electronic hum. A new warning alarm joined the cacophony of the still blaring klaxon.

  “Now what?” Doug shouted over the noise.

  “I don’t know!” Wes tapped at the controls. “Oh shit, hold on!” He grasped the control yoke and pulled back hard while slightly rolling the ship to the right. The scene of a vast asteroid field faded to life on the viewscreen. One very large and uncomfortably close rock slid downward across the screen and disappeared from view. “Okay, we’re in the clear, Cap.” He wiped his brow. “That was freaking close!”

  “Alright,” Doug said, letting out a restrained breath. “Get us up-spin of the ecliptic just to make sure we’re clear of any other rocks. Did we take any damage?”

  “If I’m reading this right,” Wes said, “it looks like the main engines are offline, but otherwise I don’t see anything. Oh hey,” he said, jabbing a finger at the control panel. The warning alarms subsided, and the ships emergency lighting returned to normal.

  Doug keyed his radio. “Trae, Fergus, you guys still with us? Cheezy, are you out there?”

  “Yup, we’re still here,” Trae replied.

  “Hey,” Fergus said, chiming in over the comms. “Did you know that these guys shipped out with beer in the fridge? I kinda like the way these guys think.” He chuckled over the comms.

  “We’re here Cap,” Rachel said. “Just pulling back alongside you. What in the hell just happened?”

  “Wes said something about a wormhole,” Doug said.

  “I thought wormholes were supposed to tear ships apart? Or at least that’s how they always show them in the movies,” Rachel said.

  Wes keyed his radio. “Theoretically we should be stretched out to an infinitely fine string, but that’s nothing but pure theory. No one has ever documented an actual wormhole that I know of.”

  “Hu,” Doug laughed. “Then we got damn lucky, I guess. Any sign of those patrol ships?”

  “I’m still not even honestly sure what I’m looking at here, Cap,” Wes said, motioning at the console. “The controls are all in German to start with and their layouts aren’t exactly Earth standard.”

  “No sign of them on my end, Cap,” Rachel said. “It’s really weird. Like they just disappeared.”

  Doug stared at the viewscreen, momentarily drif
ting off in thought. “Can either of you get me a fix on our position?”

  “Already working on it, Cap,” Rachel chimed in. “So far nothing makes sense. I’m not sure if the nav computer got scrambled or what. I’m not picking up any of the communications relays or navigation beacons that should be in range. It’s like everything just vanished. Maybe we blew a relay or something in the sensor suite? Just hang tight though, I’m on it. But …,” she mildly hummed, “I am picking up a strange signal. Looks like it’s an extremely high band, modulated frequency. Shit, we don’t have a reference point. Um… The signal is coming from forty-two degrees nose right and ten degrees nose high.”

  Doug tilted his head quizzically, changing his relative view in relation to the viewscreen. “Hey, Wes, is there something wrong with the view screen? The color seems a bit off. Everything has a reddish tinge to it.

  “Hold on,” Wes fiddled with the console controls. “That looks like a camera icon.” He tapped the icon that exploded to a series of new icons arranged around a silhouette of the ship. The image on the viewscreen panned slowly to the left. “Oh, what the hell? We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

  “That’s something new,” Doug added, mouth agape. “Are you seeing this Cheezy?”

  “Of course not,” Rachel replied. “The damn view screen is on the fritz again.” A loud crash followed by the sound of something heavy and metallic clattering to the deck echoed over the comm system.

  “Rachel,” Wes said. “What was that?”

  “What was what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel said. “Give me one sec and let me get to a porthole.”

  “Look to Port, Cheezy,” Doug said.

  “Holy mother of the Great old ones. What kind of Alice in Wonderland bullshit is this? That looks like a red giant!”

  “I think I figured out the ship’s comm system Cap,” Wes said.

  “Good, patch us through to the Betty.”

  “Alright, go. Your live, Cap.”

  “That’s what it would appear to be, Cheezy,” Doug said in a calm and concerned voice. “Wes, Rachel, patch me in ship-wide on both ships, if you two would please.”