My Other Car is a Spaceship
Page 1
My Other Car is a Spaceship
†
Mark Terence Chapman
Other than for review purposes, no portion of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and coincidental. Any resemblance between persons living and dead, establishments, events, or location is entirely coincidental.
Empty Sea Intergalactic Enterprises by arrangement with the author
First Edition Publication August 2014
Please help keep authors writing. Do not copy or reproduce this book.
For more information about the author and his other works, please visit markterencehapman.com, or his blog at tesserene.blogspot.com.
My Other Car is a Spaceship
Copyright © 2005-2014 by Mark Terence Chapman
ASIN: B00MBOGMVI
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
DESCRIPTIONS OF ALIEN RACES
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
DESCRIPTIONS OF ALIEN RACES
Alberians—Home planet: Alberi. Major language: Alb Ek. Tall, scaly, almost fluorescent green aliens, with two rows of razor-sharp teeth (more than 120 of them); fiery yellow eyes; short, weak arms, but talons; dorsal frill that they can expand and contract in grief.
Character names: Jern Ishtawahl, Gort Ashredahl, Sten Mervetahl, Blesh Klosretahl, Jok [last name unknown].
Blensians—Home planet: Blensik. Major language: Blens. Diminutive, lavender, vaguely froglike aliens with auditory membranes instead of ears; one-meter-plus tall; can change the color of their skins in creative patterns; can thrum their throat-sacs to mourn.
Character names: Tethel Jhenatha Pruh, Jendel Bhornetha Crah, Trensen [last name unknown], Fesel Pharetha Shoh, Lenven Ghoratha Bluh,Wenchen Floretha Greh, Giffen Moritha Brih.
Chan’Yi—Home planet: Chan. Major language: Chan’Yi’Cho. 2.5 to 3 meters tall, cobalt-blue, horse-faced, cadaverously thin; color of their flowing gowns identifies their type of profession: scientist, peacekeeper, etc.; first part of the name is the clan name.
Character names: Chalmis’Noud’Ourien (Nude),Zuf’Moun’Coury,Chief of Security Arouk’Brout’Voul (Brute), Commissioner of Fleet Boutan’Mourn’Froul, Dr. Pestas’Souk’Glouf (Sue), Professor Frem’Nous’Vouc, Tane’Joud’Houk, Glon’Slouv’Moul.
Foren—Home planet: Foren. Major language: Forlet. Orange, tentacled aliens with bulbous tangerine eyes who lack the “hypertasking” gene. Color-blind. Eight tentacles instead of arms/legs; tentaclets for fingers/toes; mouth slits.
Character names: Jesthentar, Marsengar, Dr. Felmendar, Tanthocar, Capt. Perenfar, Solanmar, Berjelar, Kelmalar.
Melphim—Home planet Melphea. Major language: Melphero. Tall, strong-backed, blue-gray aliens; compose epic poems to fallen comrades.
Names: Deksen Kro, Blelmen Do, Tremden Vo, Senten Po, Capt. Feshen Tro, Vensin Sho, Menjen Zo, Bekken Clo, Sefsen Glo, Freylem Jo, Jespin [last name unknown], Velzen [last name unknown].
Sestrans—Home planet Sestra. Major language: SesteenKemal. Stocky, brick-red aliens with long, delicate antennae, ruby eyes, and nasal slits.
Character names: MarLekzol, MimKestal, pilot MosVeksal, Security Chief MekFensal, Senior Engineer MilGrensol, Planetary Governor PanWendil, GleyRepnal, VerBendol, SonnEzmal, Berv [last name unknown], TelWentil, PelkSetmal.
Thorians—Home planet Thoran. Major language: Thormye Kest. Slender beings with downy fur in beige and dark brown vertical stripes; fangs.
Character names: Melf Jensin, Fro Slovue, Tra Mastul, Pilot MosVeksal, Sel Groshu, Mez Ovlu, Col Somul, Fen Donue, Arb [last name unknown], Loc Pordu, Pir Seploo, Tep Movoo.
PROLOGUE
The coal-black shark stalked its prey invisibly from the sunward quarter. Intense gamma emissions from the nearby pulsar masked the attacker’s sublight engine.
The Blensian cargo-hauler’s first indication of danger came when the main engine blew. The explosion jolted the ship, knocking many of the crew from their feet—a difficult task, given the stature of the Blensian race. Three died instantly, shredded by the blast. Main power went offline; emergency lights snapped on moments later. Airtight doors slammed shut all over the ship, trapping two others on the wrong side of the bulkheads. Their deaths were slower, but no less horrible.
The captain righted himself in his command chair. “Pilot! Report! What in Jerron’s name just happened?”
“No idea, sir! The main engine is offline. Sensors indicate a massive explo— Wait! External sensors report an energy discharge off our port stern. We were fired upon!”
“What? We are well outside the Massenate Exclusion Zone. Hail the ship!”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Ahoy the ship off our port side! Cease fire! Cease fire! I am Tethel Jhenatha Pruh, Captain of the Levden Sunset. Why have you attacked us? We are an unarmed cargo vessel en route to Foren space. Repeat, we are unarmed. If we have inadvertently trespassed on disputed territory, I apologize. If you allow us to make repairs, we will be on our way as soon as possible. But—please!—do not fire on us further. I repeat—”
A rough, deep voice emanating from the radio cut him off. “Shut up! Do as I say, follow my orders to the letter and you may survive. Understand me?”
Captain Pruh cut off the audio pickup and turned toward his pilot. “What is our status?”
“Not good, sir. Engines and main power are offline. The other ship has four energy weapons charged and locked on our ship. No ID. We cannot fight and we cannot run.”
The captain grimaced and took a deep breath. Blocked transponder ID. That could mean either military or pirates. He reactivated the microphone. “Very well. We will follow your orders. To whom am I speaking?”
“Shut up and listen. All you need to know is this: you are about to be boarded. We will be relieving you of your cargo. Stay out of our way, and you and your crew will be left unharmed. Attempt to interfere in any way and we’ll kill everyone aboard. Understand?”
Pruh swallowed before replying. Pirates, then, not military. “I understand. We will not interfere.”
“Good. Open your cargo doors. We should be done in less than an hour. Then we’ll be on our way.”
“Very well. I will hold you to your word that no one will be harm—” The incoming radio transmission cut off.
The captain toggled the shipwide intercom. “Crew, we are about to be boarded by pirates. They have threatened to kill everyone aboard if we resist. Make repairs, treat the injured, or lock yourselves in your quar
ters; but by no means interfere with the pirates. They have promised to let us go when they are done. We can always pick up more cargo, but to do so we must survive this day. Do as they say and we will all live to see our families again. Captain out.” He cut the connection.
The pilot cleared his throat. “Captain? Injury reports indicate five fatalities in the attack, and two other serious injuries. They may not survive. Not all of us will live to see our families again.”
Captain Pruh winced and barked his response, angry and frustrated not at his pilot but at the no-win situation in which he found himself. “What would you have me do, declare war on the pirates? We cannot defend ourselves with only a few hand weapons. They would simply blow us out of the sky from a distance. I cannot help those who have died. I can only try to save the rest of us.”
“But can we trust them?”
The captain countered, “Do we have a choice? Remind me when we get back to talk to the board of directors again about having defensive weapons installed. I am not going through this again!”
For the next fifty-three minutes, Pruh and his pilot had nothing else to do but watch the external cams as the pirates stole their hard-earned cargo. Still, the crew was alive. That was more important.
The radio hummed to life. “Thank you for your cooperation, Captain. We’ll be on our way now.”
Before the captain could respond, the ship shook as from a gigantic hammer blow. A deep rumbling vibrated up through the crew’s bootsoles.
“Captain! They have fired on us again. They destroyed our sublight engine this time.”
“Ahoy!” The captain shouted into the radio. “What are you doing? We fulfilled our end of the deal—we stayed out of your way. You promised to let us go!”
“I promised we would leave you and your crew unharmed, and you haven’t been harmed. I said nothing about harming your ship.”
“But— That-that is mere semantics! Damaging the ship beyond our ability to repair it will kill us all in a matter of days, if not hours.”
The pirate chuckled, a cold humorless sound. “So sue me. We can’t leave any witnesses, now, can we?”
“Witnesses? But we saw nothing of you!”
“You have visual records of our ship and sensor logs. We can’t have that.”
“But—” The radio went dead as the communications array ceased to exist.
Levden Sunset shuddered from the force of multiple energy blasts. The air ventilators sputtered and died. Without main power for the ship’s energy shields, there was nothing standing between the crew and the pulsar’s gamma rays—nor was there any way to dissipate the enormous thermal energy load absorbed each minute. The only question was whether radiation or heat would kill everyone before they suffocated.
Frightened shouts echoed up and down the main passageway. Captain and pilot stared at one another in horrified silence as the pirate ship pulled away. A final blast destroyed the sensor nexus and all record of the pirate ship.
Then the backup generator blew and the ship went dark.
“Captain, I have bad news to report.”
Kalen Jeffries rolled over in his bed and sat up, using his neural implant to bring the lights in his cabin up to twenty percent while his eyes adjusted.
He yawned and stretched before replying to the radio call on his implant. “What’s the problem, Sanjeev? Did he give you the slip again?”
Kalen smiled at the almost-growl resonating in his head.
“Yes, sir,” Sanjeev Patil replied. “But…he’s dead, sir.”
The captain straightened abruptly, his eyes wide, sleep but a distant memory. “What? What happened?”
“It-it’s difficult to say. He kept trying to lose us in the crowd and we were unable to stay close to him.”
“So what else is new?”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Continue.”
Kalen didn’t need to be told about Tompkins’ stubborn streak, how he viewed eluding the security detail assigned to protect him as a sort of game, a challenge to his freedom. That, and his penchant for picking fights in bars, made a bad one-two combination.
“I don’t know whether he was mugged or picked the wrong guy to piss off in the last bar, but by the time we reached him in the alley, his attacker was gone and Jimmy was dead—stabbed in the chest.”
Damn it! Kalen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, Sanjeev. Bring him back with you.”
“Aye, Captain. I-I’m sorry we let you down.”
“It’s not your fault. I know you did your best. I warned him, more than once, that something like this could happen.” It’s my fault for letting him go down there. I should have known better.
He disconnected the call and stared out the viewport opposite his bed at the planet below.
How the hell am I supposed to protect Earth without a pilot?
“Sir?” Arouk’Brout’Voul entered the captain’s ready room.
Kalen looked up from his desk at the nearly three-meter-tall cobalt-blue Chan’Yi standing before him. His pronounced snout gave him a vaguely equine appearance. The security chief wore the pleated gown of the Chan’Yi, forest-green to denote his profession as a peacekeeper.
“Brute, I need you to institute a search for me. We need a pilot.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was hardly news to anyone aboard Adventurer. In the days since the death of their second and last pilot, everyone had wondered what the captain was going to do about the situation.
“Shall I plot a course for Jorseen?”
Kalen shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. We have to stay on station here for another ten months. If we head back to headquarters, we’ll lose four months on the round-trip. It’s not like we’ll find a Unity pilot just sitting around somewhere closer and we can’t afford to leave Earth defenseless for that long. No, what I had in mind was searching the planet for a pilot.”
Brute frowned in the way of the Chan’Yi. “But, sir, that is an embargoed planet.”
Kalen nodded. “I’m well aware of that, but we don't have a choice. You know what we need.”
Brute stood straighter. “Aye, Captain. You understand that a planet is a big place. It might take a while.”
Kalen smiled. “I’m counting on you to make it smaller.”
Then his smile faded. “I can pilot the ship manually under normal conditions, but if we run into a big pirate ship with an experienced pilot, we’re all dead and the planet’s defenseless.”
He frowned. “We need a real pilot, someone with combat experience that we can train in a hurry. Someone who won’t flinch under fire.”
“Aye, Captain. Right away.”
“Thanks, Brute.”
We have to find someone before it’s too late.
CHAPTER ONE
“Work, damn you!”
Hal gave the mower’s pull cord another yank. Still nothing. He straightened and mopped his face with the shoulder of his oil-stained Harley-Davidson T-shirt.
Why do I bother? What’s the point of spending a fortune to make the grass grow if I have to spend all my free time cutting it? Why don’t I just let it die and save myself the time and money?
He smirked. Simple. What else would I do with my time—play chess at the community center? That was just a bit too passive for Hal.
Hal “Mongoose” Nellis had earned his Captain’s bars during a stint in the second Gulf War. Later, Major Nellis flew some of the most bleeding-edge hardware in existence. He was among the best of the best—until a motorcycle accident crushed his hip and left him with a permanent limp and a desk job. Not one to let a minor disability keep him down, he’d kept himself in “fighting trim,” as he liked to call it. But now, four years later, Colonel Nellis was retired and bored.
After a quarter-century in the military he was on the outside looking in. If the Air Force no longer needed him, he’d find some other way to fill his days. But what?
I guess I should have developed some interests besides
flying and motorcycles. Hal shrugged. It had always seemed like enough before.
He glanced over at the garage, where his pride-and-joy sat just inside: a cherry-red 1948 Indian Chief Flathead, partially dismantled for cleaning. The sight brought a fleeting smile to his lips.
He sighed, bent, and yanked the cord again. No go.
Why didn’t I get an electric-start mower?
He slapped his neck where a mosquito or something had bit him. He went dizzy for a moment.
Seemingly between heartbeats, he went from bright sunlight and summer heat to dim coolness.
His eyes widened in surprise. Where a moment ago he’d faced his house, he now found himself staring at rich, dark wood paneling. He sat in a chair, feet on burgundy carpet, not scruffy half-dead grass.
“What the hell?”
Hal stood and turned. He occupied a large, roughly rectangular room dominated by a long conference table surrounded by chairs. He shook his head to clear it of the nonsensical hallucination before him, but the image persisted. The longer walls appeared subtly curved, as if the room were a section of a gigantic bicycle tire. There were no visible light fixtures; instead, the chamber was bathed in a soft rosy glow emanating from the ceiling itself, a good three-and-a-half meters up. The walls held framed images of nebulas and star clusters.
Sitting before him in one of the chairs was a man. He smiled at Hal.
For a long moment, Hal stared back with calculating eyes. The man was of medium build, with a narrow face and dark brown hair and eyes. The kind of person you might bump into on the street and ten minutes later not remember. Utterly forgettable. He wore a jumpsuit, medium blue and bereft of name or insignia.
No help there.
Hal spoke at last, covering his confusion with bravado. “All right, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way: Who are you? Where the hell am I? How did I get here? And why am I here?”