Rise of the Altered Moon: Altered Moon Series: Book One (The Altered Moon Series 1)

by AZ Kelvin

  “As well it should,” Nelson replied. “Two equally powerful forces battling over a single molecule—eventually something must give. And give it does. A tremendous release of dark energy will blast out in every direction. I have never had the nerve to try it out. What was it like?” He looked around the group and waited for answers.

  “Like nothing I’d want to go through again,” said Cat.

  “It was almost too much,” said Boss.

  “It was too much,” Gina countered.

  Nelson looked at CJ, who returned his look and said, “Can we put the two into one charge, load it onto a missile?”

  Nelson pulled at his bottom lip, raised his eyebrows. “Hmm, a very clever young man you are, Crucible”

  “Aww, no, no, please call me CJ,” he pleaded. “I haven’t had this many people call me Crucible since grade school.”

  “A good name, Crucible,” Nelson said. “A forger of destiny, yes?”

  “CJ, please,” he repeated.

  “As you wish, CJ, as you wish,” Nelson conceded. “I understand that there was a sizable dark energy release around Octonus recently…”

  “Do you know absolutely everything?” Boss asked.

  “Mostly,” he answered. “I do, however, wonder why the Blood Stars would send so many ships after you. Pull the tiger’s tail, did we?”

  “A bit,” Boss answered. He looked over at CJ with a ‘can I?’ look.

  CJ waved a hand, indicating that Boss could tell Nelson of what they found on Arzia Octonus, as far as he was concerned. Boss started to relay the story when Nelson held up his hand.

  “One moment,” he said to Boss. Nelson poked at the door lock icon on the table and pulled out a small round device, placed it on the table, and poked a blue spot on its side. The device emitted a soft high-pitched squeal that ended after a second.

  “Now you may speak freely. There are many loyal Arzians here and we wouldn’t want to offend anyone,” Nelson said.

  Boss told Nelson the tale of their encounter at Arzia Octonus and a bulk of what else had happened to them since the destruction of the Istraulis as well. Nelson listened intently and asked questions occasionally, especially when GABI was mentioned. The crew all answered what questions pertained to them.

  When he heard of the Arzian artifacts, he nodded his head and simply said, “I would be careful of who you tell of this, yes? Very valuable, what you have there. Enough to buy you all Arzian citizenship, with much left over.”

  Boss finished up with the second encounter with the Blood Stars and the jump to the Garddon star system.

  “Well, well, quite an adventure indeed, my friends,” Nelson said at the end of Boss’ narration. “Many answers and yet many new questions, but they must wait. Now, I must attend to other matters, unfortunately. You are all free to discover as much of Cantankerous Base as you’d like. I encourage you to be curious of the repairs and upgrades…Katherine is one floor down, she can fill you in.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, Nelson, for all that you’ve done for Katy and for us,” CJ said as he shook Nelson’s hand.

  “Yes, thanks for breakfast, Nelson,” Cat added.

  “You are all most welcome,” he said warmly.

  The group meandered across the room and started out the door. “Bernard, if you don’t mind, a moment, please,” Nelson said.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said and turned to Gina. “Meet you downstairs?”

  “Yup,” she answered. “Thanks Nelson.”

  “Yes, good day, Gina,” Nelson gave a brief wave

  The door slid closed. “Bernard, I have to ask, why did you give up command of the Altered Moon? If it is because of mobility issues, we can fit you with cybernetic implants or refit the ship to accommodate you.”

  “No, Nelson, no,” Boss answered. “I hated being in charge to be honest with you, but I couldn’t find a way out without exposing GABI and me. I felt trapped for so long and having CJ there at a critical moment gave me my way out. He seemed to be the right person and I wanted it…to be the right time. I’d rather not have been shot in the back in the process, but in truth after eight years, being free of GABI’s presence was a great relief. Now, I don’t feel confined to the ship or to GABI anymore.”

  “I can only imagine, my friend. It was only supposed to be for a year.”

  “The ship, are you…?” Boss hesitated.

  “Going to take it back?” Nelson finished. “No…no, the paths have been chosen and I am content now that ours have joined once again. So what do you want now? What does Boss Keltzer see in his future?”

  “I have all that I want, Nelson,” Boss said. “I have Gina. I’m the science officer aboard a ship like no other, and I have a captain I can trust.”

  “So you believe in young Mr. Evermore, then?” Nelson asked.

  “Yes, I do. He could’ve taken a life pod and tried to save himself, but he didn’t.” Boss thought of that day on the bridge. “He saved all our lives, Nelson, GABI included…and the ship. Besides, he’s better at it than me. I never would have ordered GABI to do that jump and we’d all be dead now.”

  “Then I am greatly in his debt for having saved so much that is precious to me,” Nelson said.

  “Me too, my friend, me too.”

  *~*~*

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The next few weeks at Cantankerous Base passed quickly for CJ and the crew. The repairs moved steadily along while the crew fell into place with the base staff in their areas of training or interest. CJ and Katy stayed side by side nearly every second of the day. Katy developed fast friendships with Gina and Zhu, while CJ just about took over complete control on the refit of the Altered Moon. They fell back into the habits they had developed when working together on the Istraulis. They worked naturally together, their reasoning methods and thought patterns were so closely aligned that they often had the same idea at the same time.

  GABI’s hover drone was a big hit with her crewmates as she walked around the base with them while she attempted to match her ‘holo-stride’ to their walking speed. She talked endlessly with Boss and Nelson about the stirrings of the Kang invasion of Human space and what, if anything could be done about it. GABI and Nelson worked with the science staff on a new type of neural processor capable of plotting a quantum jump not only within the gravity well of a star, but out of the galaxy itself.

  Gina took a shift as cargo-slash-shuttle pilot just to be able to put her butt in a pilot seat on a regular basis. It was a good way to keep busy and to check out what she called “one creepy and weird-ass planet.” Gina learned a lot from the other pilots around the base about Arzian space, little-known ports of call and places where a pilot could hide a ship from the patrols if necessary. She couldn’t help but feel bad for the people of the Arzian Alliance. They were caught between the Marlacuer Empire on one side and the Kang armada on the other.

  Cat found an interest outside of the medical profession on Cantankerous Base and his name was Warren Caltrop. Cal, as he was known by his friends, was one of the engineers who worked on the Altered Moon to redesign the medical bay. The two of them hit it off right away. Cat found out that Cal, as his friends called him, was a field medic and armory officer on a troop frigate before being injured in a campaign against the Marlacuer. A group of scars on the left side of his face, a missing ear, and a cybernetic eye told of the explosion that nearly took his life. In defiance of the deformity he had the nubbin that remained of his ear pierced and looped with a ring of gold to go with his shiny silver robot eye.

  Regretfully, CJ realized that their time on Cantankerous Base had started to run short. As much as he wanted to stay here with Katy, he knew someone had to make MT&T stand accountable for decades of Human sacrifices. He had to warn someone, somehow, of the threat they had discovered. The red wall of bureaucracy that surrounded the untouchable Marlacuer royal family made a direct plea to the Imperial court sadly out of reach. Surely there’s someone in the military who will listen, he thought. Who t
hey are and how to get to them is the question. He mustered the courage to tell Katy of his concerns and prepared for an immediate reaction.

  “Yeah, I know,” was all she said.

  CJ was taken by surprise at Katy’s offhand acceptance of his intended departure.

  “I’m coming with you.” She smiled as she told him, “The Altered Moon is too complicated of a ship to leave in the hands of such a rookie engineer as you.”

  “Rookie…?” he said in mock outrage.

  “Besides, you can’t be the engineer if you’re up on the bridge playing starship captain. Can you…Captain Evermore?” she teased him, as she came up close and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Listen, hotshot, we nearly got blown out of the sky getting here,” he said. “I can’t risk…”

  “The risk would be higher staying here,” she cut him off. “The Kang may be coming this way and I don’t want to be around if they are. As nice as it is here and as much as I appreciate all Nelson’s done for me, I can’t face that again.”

  CJ wanted to be stubborn about her going, but she was right, so he happily relented then teased her. “Well, I guess if the others want you to come along, it’ll be all right with me.”

  “Oh, you’re a punk. You’re a smart guy, though, to do things my way.” Katy stepped away and laughed.

  “Oh, who’s being the punk, now?” CJ laughed back at her.

  “Have you met Cat’s new boyfriend?” she asked, as she slid to a different subject.

  “Boyfriend…Cal, you mean?” CJ let her move on. “Yes I’ve met Cal. He and I installed the new targeting array last week. Quite a character.”

  “You know…” she said seriously, “what you guys found on Octonus would mean a lot to his people.” Katy seemed to be waiting for his reaction.

  “How is it you know exactly what I’m thinking all the time?” He was still surprised how often it happened. “I’ve been meaning to talk to the others. Most of the people here are Arzian. I won’t be the guy who ran off with their cultural treasures, not after they’ve done so much for us.”

  Katy’s eyes brimmed with tears…and something else. Could it be love? CJ wondered.

  CJ saw the tears and took her hands. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” she said. “Never better.”

  He leaned down and kissed her. “Come on. We need to find the others.” CJ honestly didn’t know how Boss, Gina, and Cat would react to what he had to tell them. He poked the icon for Boss’ comms unit. “Breaker, breaker, got your ears on?” he said knowing that would spur Boss’s fascination with ancient Earth ‘anything.’

  “Flappers up, five by five, come back,” Boss answered.

  “Hey there, Big B, what’s your twenty?” CJ asked where he was. “Request circle jerk with the crew at secure locale.”

  “Roger, roger, meet ORDD3 in twenty mikes,” Boss replied.

  “Copy that, ORDD3 in twenty mikes,” CJ confirmed.

  Katy looked amused and moved through the door CJ had opened for her. By the time they made their way down to Dry Dock Three, everyone else was in the observation room.

  “I’m going to check in on the ship,” Katy said, as she continued down the corridor. “This needs to be just you guys.”

  CJ smiled and nodded. He knew she was right. He turned and went through the door into the room to join the others.

  “Hey, Captain, where’s Katy?” Cat asked him.

  “She’s checking on the Moon,” he said. “I thought maybe we should talk. I’ve been feeling the hound’s breath on my neck, so to speak. The Moon’s ready for her preliminary test flight. It won’t be long before we’re clear to leave. I need…I need to say something and…I don’t know how, really…so here it is. I think we should leave the goods from Octonus with the Arzian people, here at the base.”

  CJ looked over at the others, who registered not one bit of surprise.

  Boss, Gina, and Cat exchanged looks and Boss said, “I told you he’d make the right decision.” He looked at CJ and nodded his head. “The right man for the job. We’re with you, Captain. How do you want to handle it?”

  “Not quite sure. I hadn’t thought that far out, yet,” CJ admitted and was a little surprised how easy they took it.

  “Might I suggest going through Nelson and a small group of trusted people?” Boss said. “A lot of the staff here are Arzian, but some are not and that’s a mighty temptation.”

  “Can you set that up for right now?” CJ asked, “We can bring the stuff out in cargo bins and no one will be the wiser.”

  The thought of what they were about to do seemed daunting. To just give up a fortune is not an easy thing for anyone to do, but the people here had repaired the ship, patched up their hurt, and saved loved ones. They’d asked for no payment in return. You don’t screw people like that over, CJ thought. You just don’t. The moment of weakness passed and CJ and his crew moved into action.

  CJ contacted Nelson and told him it was time to call a meeting. He asked Nelson to covertly gather a small group of the Arzians who lived and worked at the base. The group consisted of scientists, engineers, doctors, and one former Arzian Council member. All of the Arzians who found their way to the base had some issue or another with the persistently closed-minded martial law imposed by the Alliance, but they were all still fiercely loyal to the Arzian people.

  CJ, Gina, and Cat stowed the priceless statues and the Grand Seal of the Union of Allied Worlds in the cargo bins and walked them out of the ship as though they were hauling garbage. Katy waved nonchalantly from across the hangar bay as they moved to the door. They returned her greeting and CJ gave her a holler to make it seem like any other day. The group took the lift up and rolled the greatest cultural discovery since the rise of the Marlacuer Empire into the observation room. Nelson and a small group of people had joined Boss there in the time it took them to return. CJ recognized Warren Caltrop as one of them.

  The door slid closed and Nelson engaged the counter-surveillance devices. CJ came before the assembled group and studied them for a second, not knowing how to begin.

  “We’ve found something hidden on Arzia Octonus…” CJ continued with the events that unfolded the day they came into orbit around the planet, the attack by the Blood Stars and how they found the hidden chamber. He opened the cargo bins, brought forth and uncovered the statues and then the Seal at the very last. A murmur of excitement built as he laid the items out on the table. The entire group inhaled sharply as CJ uncovered the Seal and it was amazing that no one passed out from lack of oxygen. A second of dead silence was followed by a torrent of sudden and chaotic conversations.

  “Silence! Quiet please. Quiet down now,” bellowed a slender-framed elderly woman. She put her hand to her mouth and then to her forehead; she uttered blessings as she looked down at the Grand Seal. She patted her lips several times as she looked up sharply at CJ. “One should always introduce themselves before addressing an audience. I am Ellen Tierney. You are Captain Evermore.” Ellen made it seem more like a statement than a question.

  “Yes, I apologize, ma’am, CJ Evermore.” CJ extended his hand in greeting.

  Ellen accepted his hand and held his eye as she said cautiously, “It is a magnanimous thing you do here, Captain. You seek nothing in return for this gift?”

  “Ellen, for myself, I’ve already had returned to me more than I’ve ever hoped to have again,” he replied, “but the decision was unanimous among the crew to leave these here. We all feel it’s the right thing. It seems that Nelson here has a knack for surrounding himself with good people.”

  “We thank you all,” Ellen said, as she looked at them one at a time. “The recovery of these symbols of freedom and independence has become a faded dream over the many years. We will keep them safe until the time is right for them to shine once again against the darkness of oppression.”

  “Ah, Ellen, your eloquence serves you well, still yet,” Nelson said.

  “Words can carry the weight of destiny, Nelson
,” she responded.

  “Yes, yes, my dear, indeed they can” he said in return. “I suggest these lovely items be once again obscured from common knowledge.”

  The Arzians who attended the meeting thanked each one of the crew personally as the artifacts were reverently covered and packed back into the cargo bins. Everyone present swore a blood oath never to reveal what had just taken place or what was found on Octonus. The small group seemed to transform back into a bunch of normal, everyday work crews going about their business as they all went off in different directions. After a minute it was hard to tell which of the people had just left. Except one. Warren Caltrop approached CJ and the crew.

  “Capt’n Evermore, might I have a minute of your time, sir?” he called out, as he came up.

  “Yes, Cal. What can I do for you?”

  “I understand you may be looking for a tactical officer?”

  Cat glanced at CJ, but didn’t say anything one way or another.

  “That may be, yes,” CJ said. “Interested? Don’t know if we’ll ever get back this way.”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” he said. “I was born on a ship, lived my life on a ship, and I’ve felt the stars callin’ me back. After what you all’ve done, I’d be honored to be part of your crew.”

  “Very well, Mr. Caltrop, you will be on the bridge of the Altered Moon oh-seven hundred sharp for skill assessment and officer qualification interview,” CJ stated quickly and clearly.

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Do you know what The Star Spangled Banner is, Mr. Caltrop?” CJ asked sternly.

  “The…ah…no, sir!”

  “Because you’re going to have to fart it on command, if you want to serve aboard my ship, mister,” CJ said, forcing himself to keep a straight face.

  “Aye, sir!” Cal came to attention and endured CJ’s scrutiny.

  “Oh-seven hundred, Mr. Caltrop. Dismissed,” CJ finally said.

  “Aye, sir! Thank you, Captain!” Cal turned on his heel and with the barest of winks at Cat he walked off down the corridor.