Voyage

by E M Gale

  ‘Great, and there are way more of them than us. About three to one for the aliens.’

  I smiled encouragingly at the map operator for this map. It seemed to make him even more nervous. He started to sweat.

  “Where is the heliospheric current sheet flat?” Then I smiled again to cover up that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “Uh…” He looked from me to the map and back again. “It’s not on this map, sir.”

  “Should it be?” I asked.

  ‘Oops, I shouldn’t give away that I don’t know that! But whatever it is, it has to be on a map somewhere, right? And there are only two maps, and this is the only one that shows the alien fleet.’

  He pulled out a PDA and looked at his instructions. I glanced at them over his shoulder, but it was all in military English, which I didn’t really understand anyway.

  “Uh… well, yes, sir.” The poor guy looked utterly unhappy.

  “Does it say to show current sheet in the instructions?” I asked quietly. I genuinely wanted to know, but I didn’t want the rest of the bridge to know I had no idea what I’d ordered them to do.

  ‘Why didn’t my future self give me a copy of the instructions?’

  “Yes, sir, it does.” He sounded miserable. “I didn’t notice, as it’s not standard operating procedure, but I’ll do it right away, sir!” His heart was pounding and he was sweating even more now. He fumbled with the controls for the map.

  ‘Honestly, guys, I’m not that scary!’

  I even caught one of the computer operators giving the map operator a sympathetic look, until I caught her eye and she spun back to look at her terminal.

  The map operator pressed a few buttons and an overlay appeared over the top of the map. The heliospheric current sheet appeared as a pink surface cutting through the three-dimensional space. The ships and the planets were in the horizontal plane and the pink surface cut through that plane and continued above and below it. It looked like a rose petal to me, and it was curved not unlike a petal too.

  ‘Intriguing.’

  I crouched down to look at the hologram side on.

  ‘This is why they are thinking two-dimensionally. The ships, the planets and the star are all in the same plane at the moment. But a ship needn’t stay in that plane, right? It could be above or below and just move through space that way, surely?’

  I was looking at the rose petal on the map. I traced my fingers along the projected surface back towards the sun.

  “Now… what is a heliospheric current sheet?” I asked dreamily.

  The operator didn’t answer until I looked at him.

  “It’s, uh, the point where the magnetic wind changes polarity direction, sir.”

  I seemed to be good at making map operators unhappy.

  “What causes it?”

  “Their sun, sir.”

  ‘Hmm, the sun has a magnetic field, I know that. And so does whatever star we’re near. The heliospheric current sheet plots where that field changes direction. It’s a curve, it seems. But why would the flagship be in a specific place because of it?’

  “How does the heliospheric current sheet affect spaceships?” I asked.

  “Uh, it’s not good for them to cross the boundary of the surface, sir.”

  “And why is that?”

  The map operator fidgeted.

  ‘Does that mean he doesn’t know?’

  “Um… something to do with… uh… charging the two halves of the ship oppositely, sir.”

  ‘So he doesn’t know. That sounded like a guess to me.’

  I glared at him.

  ‘So… I guess that the aliens’ ships need to avoid this petal. They have to be on either one side or the other. They must be able to cross it–perhaps it’s just not good to cross it. And if it’s not good to cross it normally, you wouldn’t want to cross it in battle. Hmm…’

  The map operator was panicking. I could smell the adrenaline. I ignored him. Behind the alien fleet, above their planet, the petal came quite close to the planet.

  ‘So… to attack us, the flagship would want to be on the same side of the petal as us, but near to the planet in case it’s needed for defence. And the only place it could do that would be around here.’

  I pointed at an area of space.

  ‘That would be where the flagship is. There somewhere. Probably where the petal is relatively flat, that way there would be less magnetic turbulence if they did have to cross it. But why? Why isn’t the flagship doing what flagships usually do and leading from the front? Why are they hiding it?’

  “The fleet’s ready to go now, General,” said a communications operator. He looked amused at the poor map operator’s panic. I eyed the map a final time.

  “Don’t turn off the heliospheric current sheet representation,” I said to the map operator.

  “Yessir!” he replied. I thought he was relieved I was leaving him. I headed back up to the captain and comms officers.

  “Shall I tell them to go then, General?” asked the comms operator. He looked calm and I got the feeling that he was trying to show off that he was doing everything right. I frowned.

  ‘I’m not supposed to give orders!’

  “Don’t they have orders to go?” I asked.

  “Well, yes, but I thought I’d ask–”

  “What are your orders?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Send these orders out at these times.” He gestured at a PDA which was displaying his orders.

  I frowned at him. “Well, do that then.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned back to his console. “Sending the orders to depart out now.”

  I walked over and stood behind him frowning. I thought he was rather aware that I was there. He wasn’t showing off anymore.

  “All ships, this is an order to depart, over,” he said into the telecom.

  The captain started giving orders out to the crew to move the ship. The comms operator’s job done for the moment, I snagged his orders off him and read them through.

  “You were late on the order to leave,” I remarked as I handed them back.

  “Sorry, sir,” he muttered, looking truly unhappy.

  I left him with his orders and headed up to stand next to the captain and watch the ship moving. The viewscreen showed nothing much but the blackness of space and many stars in the distance. Somewhere out there was an alien fleet that we were supposed to fight. Or rather, I was just supposed to ‘look pretty’ until my future self turned up to do all the fighting. I presumed that she had come up with all the orders and hopefully planned it all out so that people wouldn’t need to ask me questions.

  I leaned over the barrier to peer down at the maps. On the left-hand map our fleet moved out–they were keeping to formation, it seemed. On the right-hand map, the blue dots of our fleet moved towards the red dots of the enemy. I thought the poor map operators were aware of the scrutiny they were under. I suddenly remembered I was supposed to be acting like a general and I stood up straight.

  ‘I don’t think generals peer over railings like teenagers on an escalator.’

  “I presume you’ve finished your last-minute inspection then, sir,” said one of the soldiers on the upper bridge to me. He looked amused. He was holding a clipboard, a PDA and a cup of coffee that he held out to me. I took it with a frown.

  ‘I get coffee? Aren’t we in a warzone here?’

  This soldier seemed far less scared of me and far more personal in manner than any of the others.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. It wasn’t really a very general-like reply.

  “Would you like to review your orders, sir?”

  “Ta,” I said, taking the clipboard. I gulped the coffee and passed him back the cup, which he magicked away somewhere, whilst I flicked through the pages. I didn’t have a clue what any of it meant.

  ‘Did my future self write all this? I assume a good general would plan out each battle completely rather than just winging it. Good job I’m not going to have to fight this
battle. I don’t know the plan.’

  The soldier who had had the coffee returned. He smiled at me.

  ‘Maybe he’s my aide. Do generals get an aide? He had the paperwork and he gave me coffee… so he’s either my aide or an assassin.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Aide, then.’

  “Three-to-one odds, sir,” he remarked very quietly.

  “Ah, I’ve had worse.”

  “True enough, sir.”

  ‘Have I had worse? Well, yes, but I was talking about pirates in narrow corridors, not spaceships in space. I know a bit about corridor and jungle fighting, but that will be hardly very helpful in the openness of space.’

  I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  ‘What the hell is going on here? A damned stupid dream. If I know I’m dreaming, that’s lucid dreaming, isn’t it? Surely I could take control of the dream, then? OK… I want to dream about a hot spa resort somewhere exotic like Thailand, yeah, packed with hunky guys. I want cocktails, smiley waitresses, hot pools, pretty plants, sexy men.’

  I shut my eyes and silently counted to ten then opened my eyes.

  ‘Stupid unconscious mind. If I could choose any dream, why would I choose this?’

  The people on the bridge were going about their jobs efficiently. I heard the comms operator giving out the orders I’d read on his PDA.

  ‘What if this isn’t a dream? OK, if it isn’t, then how the hell did I get here? And why would my future self need me to cover for her?’

  We were approaching the alien fleet. I was starting to panic. I looked around me a few times. No one had come in with a message.

  ‘Where is my future self?’

  ‘So, what happens in these sorts of battles then? We’ve got our fleets thundering towards each other. What the hell do we do then? Pull faces at each other? In a straight fight we’d probably lose, we’re outnumbered. We need some sort of clever strategy to win, and if we have one, I don’t know it.’

  Our fleet stopped. I could see the enemy on the short-range map now.

  “Sir, the flagship’s not there!” said the map operator.

  I nodded, ignoring the babble that erupted.

  ‘They expect the flagship to be at the front where a well-behaved flagship should be, don’t they?’

  “There’s a message coming through on an open frequency. Shall I patch it through, sir?” said a comms operator, a different one to the one giving out my orders.

  “Are they surrendering?”

  She shrugged.

  “They say that they want to talk to you, sir.”

  “Me personally?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You.” I pointed at the one giving out my orders. “Don’t stop giving those orders out!”

  He gulped and nodded. “Yessir!”

  “OK, then,” I said to the comms operator listening to the message. She passed me some sort of headset thing like the one she was wearing that I held up to my mouth.

  “General Clarke,” said a disembodied voice in the bridge.

  ‘OK, it’s coming over some speakers, but it is still a little disorientating. Where am I supposed to look?’

  “Speaking,” I said, hoping that I didn’t have to do anything special to get the headset thing to work.

  “This isn’t your war,” said the voice in a conciliatory manner. It had a strange accent but was speaking English. “Why are you fighting in it? If you and your fleet surrender, we promise you that you’ll be unharmed. Furthermore, all vampires will be unharmed and we’ll see you on your way with the equivalent of one hundred billion Eurobits.”

  ‘Oh, they’re trying to bribe me?’

  “Interesting offer. I’ll take the money with your surrender,” I said.

  ‘Ooops, got a little carried away there. Arguing with the enemy is probably outside the remit of looking pretty.’

  “Very funny. You’re outnumbered here, as you can no doubt see.”

  ‘Yes, we’re outnumbered, but we’re outside your home world. That must mean we’re doing well, right? In the movie the aliens attacked Earth and we eventually fought them back to their planet.’

  “Why cause unnecessary suffering? Surrender. Earth will be treated well,” said the voice.

  ‘What to say? Ah, sod it.’

  I took the headset off.

  “Ignore them,” I said to the comms operator. She looked shocked.

  “Sir,” said the comms operator reading out my orders. “Do you want me to continue executing your orders?”

  “Yes,” I said, frowning.

  ‘Didn’t I tell him to do that?’

  “So you want me to give the order to attack?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  ‘Yeah, this was a great idea, give them the orders beforehand so I don’t need to give the orders out, and then they still ask me before doing any of them. Still, she told me to just tell them to follow their orders.’

  The ships were starting to move out. I could see them doing so on the map and there was a visual of the enemy fleet in front of us through the view screen. The map seemed more useful for showing what was going on. The two map operators moved the ships around on the left-hand map and the two-dimensional shadows moved to obey. The ship I was on started to move. The captain, at least, was following his orders to the letter.

  The first shots were fired. Our fighter pilots were engaging their scouts.

  ‘Shit, I guess the battle’s started now. Let’s just hope that no-one realises I have no idea what I’m doing!’

  The pieces were moving around the map. I looked at that rather than the viewscreen. What was going on outside the ship made little sense to me. I just saw ships moving around, but couldn’t tell our ships from theirs, as in reality they weren’t painted red and blue.

  As I was looking from the map to the viewscreen trying to figure out which ships were which, space rippled and a huge, ugly… asteroid appeared in the middle of the vanguard of the enemy fleet. It looked like a spaceship had landed on an asteroid and then started to gobble up the rock. Weapons and comms towers extended from various parts like cloves in an orange.

  My stomach dropped.

  “It’s the Icarus. They’re hailing us,” said the comms operator, turning around in her seat to look at me.

  ‘What? She said she’d stop him!’

  “Put him on,” I said.

  “Hi, Clarke,” said Rob. He sounded the same as ever, age notwithstanding.

  “Rob, what the hell are you doing? You’re not supposed to be here! Teleport back now!” I yelled into the headset.

  ‘What if it’s the aliens shooting at him that causes the explosion? He is currently under fire and in the middle of their fleet!’

  “I thought you might need some help.” He spoke as if he had just wondered into a bar for a drink with me.

  “Get the hell out of here, you bloody idiot! Your blasted ship probably doesn’t even work!”

  “Sir?” questioned the comms operator. He wanted to know if I wanted to change the orders as a result of Rob’s untimely appearance.

  “Keep giving out those orders!” I said to him.

  “What,” said Rob, “you don’t want the Icarus as a flagship? This ship can take on the Etrusians’ flagship.”

  “Rob, I have a flagship, I’m standing on it and it’s not a bloody untested prototype. Get out of there now! Pull back here, if you can’t teleport out.”

  ‘Oh, don’t get blown up, Rob, please don’t get blown up!’

  “Ah, you know you need my help.” There were sounds of gunfire and static on the line.

  ‘He’s going to die!’

  “Pull back, Rob, that’s an order!”

  “I love you too, Flo. But I’m not military personnel so you can’t order me to do anything.”

  “Rob, pull back now! Please!”

  “Now I’m going to fire some of my new weapons at the bad guys.” There was static on the line. “Where’s this Etrusian flagship
thing then?”

  “Rob, please, get out of there!” I shouted.

  Then I heard a deep explosion over the microphone. I saw the explosion out of the window.

  “No! Oh, God, no!”

  His ship flew apart. Then there was nothing. The line had gone dead. His ship was gone. I was staring at the viewscreen, looking at the empty space where his ship had been.

  ‘How? I thought I could save him. My future self said she could save him. Why is he such an idiot? Why did he even turn up in the first place? Surely I must have told him about his death? I would have done anything to stop him from going to it. So why did he willingly go to his own death?’

  “General Clarke, General Clarke, sir!” shouted one of the comms operators. I wondered how long he had been yelling that for. Everyone was staring at me, some in shock, some with sympathy.

  “Orders, sir,” he said, looking petrified.

  I shook my head and looked down at the map. Rob’s explosion had halved the alien fleet.

  “Press the attack,” I said, hollowly. I walked down to the maps myself and moved the pieces forward to surround the alien ships. The battle continued–well, other than for me, it had never stopped. People had been fighting and dying whilst I was yelling at Rob.

  My aide came up and pushed a message into my hands. It said, ‘Big sister’s back.’

  ‘Well, now’s not the time to give up and wander off and cry, is it? I’m gonna finish this damned war, once and for all!’

  I crumpled up the note and dropped it to the floor. Our ships were doing a good job at rounding up the enemy.

  The enemy fleet pulled back into a retreat. They still outnumbered us, but only just.

  ‘Hmm…’

  Some of our ships followed after them. I pulled their pieces back to the main fleet on the map and they followed the orders.

  “They’re retreating, sir,” said the comms operator who had been relaying my orders to the ships. “Shall I give the order to follow?”

  “No.”

  ‘I get it. This is like the first time I had to kill anyone when I was on that jungle planet. We were following one guy, and there was another hidden off to the side. The guy we were following tried to lead us towards his comrade so we would be attacked from an unexpected direction. If we follow the retreating alien fleet, their flagship will move down from above the planet and attack us from an angle we don’t expect, namely from on top. But not yet. Their general won’t move until we do. I know where he is, and where he’s going to come from. And he thinks I don’t.’