Fact was that life had been pretty good for Beefy over the years. He’d amassed a decent amount of coin working in technology, he had good friends, a loving wife, and, most importantly, great taste in books. His job was cushy, too … until arriving at work that day anyway.
He was just about to go on shift when his boss signaled him for a meeting. After the festivities of the previous evening, Beefy felt concerned.
“Good morning, Mr. Chezbeddit,” he said as cheerfully as he could manage.
Chezbeddit barely glanced up. Instead, he sat with his slightly-over-middle-age grimace, ran his lanky fingers through his graying wisps of hair, and pointed at the chair in front of him.
“Sit down, Adam.” Mr. Chezbeddit never referred to his underlings by their nicknames. “I have some unpleasant news for you.”
“Oh?”
“You’re being let go from the Lopsided Cable Company.”
Beefy’s heart sank.
He didn’t need the money, but he liked the job. A lot. More importantly, he liked the people. Well, except for Mr. Chezbeddit, anyway, but nobody liked him.
“Why?”
“I think you know why.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Beefy said with wide eyes.
“It was embarrassing, Adam,” Mr. Chezbeddit said.
“But …”
“It’s one thing to be stuck in a coincidental situation with one of your subordinates, but it’s quite another to be completely trounced in the process. You’ve tarnished my reputation, young man, and I can’t allow that to go unpunished.”
Beefy sprung to his feet.
“This is ridiculous,” he said as Mr. Chezbeddit jumped up and got into a martial arts stance, clearly expecting an attack. Beefy just frowned at him. “I’m not going to attack you, Mr. Chez … Clark.”
Mr. Chezbeddit jerked noticeably. “Did you just call me Clark?”
“I did,” Beefy said with a sneer. “No point in being formal anymore being that I’m getting the boot, yeah?”
“Well, there’s still general politeness to think about.”
“You’re firing me because of last night and you expect me to be polite? I think not.” He stared at Mr. Chezbeddit. “You do realize that I’m going to go to Human Resources regarding this, right?”
“I’ve already spoken with them and they sided with me.”
“With your version of the story, you mean?”
“Of course, Adam.”
“That’s Beefy, if you please.”
“No, I’d rather …” Beefy took a step towards Mr. Chezbeddit, who held up his hands in response. “Okay, okay, Beefy it is. Look, the bottom line is that a man in my position can’t be expected to tolerate being shown up by a man in, well, your position.”
Beefy relaxed a bit.
“Is it my fault that I was more convincing than you?” he asked.
Mr. Chezbeddit merely winced in response.
The entire ordeal was ridiculous.
Last evening Beefy had dressed up as the beloved Chickennugget from the Ricky Scary Film Cabaret. He’d donned the makeup and the corset, practiced his prance, and even had his chest and back waxed so that he really fit the part. He was doing it for three reasons: 1) It was to help support veterans of the Raffian Fleet, 2) he really enjoyed the Ricky Scary Film Cabaret, and 3) it was the only time of the year when he could wax his chest and wear a corset without his wife getting suspicious.
The problem was that Mr. Chezbeddit had also dressed up as Chickennugget for the event, and he had paled in comparison to the visage that Beefy—for lack of a better term—pulled off.
And that’s why he was now being fired.
“You do realize that firing me will do nothing to stop the fact that I look better in a corset than you do, I hope?”
Mr. Chezbeddit grew dark. “Your desk has already been cleaned out and your personal artifacts have been boxed up.” A knock came at the door. “That will be the security guards to walk you out.”
“You’re a real asshole, Clark,” Beefy said with a shake of his head. “Just hope I never catch you outside of this place or we’ll get a chance to see if your little karate stances are more than just show.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.”
Beefy said a few goodbyes on his way out, even with the guards doing their best to hurry him along.
He’d find another job in no time. Someone with his skills was ever in demand. Hell, he could probably even find a gig in another division here, but he was thinking that maybe it was time for the Lopsided Satellite Company to get a leg up in the world of communications.
After securing his boxes to the back of the Taint Splitter 626, Beefy sped off world.
He would have to explain everything to his wife, of course. She’d be understanding. She always was. Not about the corsets, obviously, which he kept quite secret from her, except around special events, of course.
As he sped back towards Lopsided-4, his home planet, he spotted one of the Lopsided Cable Company’s hubs and felt a small grin forming on his face.
Beefy carefully slowed and pulled next to the box, avoiding the plethora of gigantic cables connected to it. Once he was in close enough, he rotated the bike and attached it to the underside of the monstrous hub.
He’d already been locked out, as expected, but someone with his skill didn’t need to have formal access to tinker.
It took a few minutes of hacking before he was able to fiddle with the core programming. His goal was to drop service for whoever the poor sucker was who was connected to the hub. It would only cause a day’s interruption for them, but Mr. Chezbeddit would take a beating from the Customer Service department since this node was under his command.
Beefy paused while thinking that it would be obvious that he’d been the saboteur, then he smiled again and rigged up the code to point towards Lee Prug instead. Prug was Chezbeddit’s right-hand man, and he was twice the asshole that Chezbeddit was. Framing him would do damage to both of them.
Suddenly, the hub shifted as if something massive had bumped into it.
He scanned the area but couldn’t see anything.
Actually, he thought while squinting, there did seem to be a haze of some sort on the non-connector side of the hub.
“What the hell is that?” he said aloud and then decided that it may be better that he didn’t know. “Time to get the hell out of here.”
He finished up his hacking and gunned the rockets on his Taint Splitter 626.
“Probably just some military secret project,” he said to himself as he zipped through the blackness of space. “Yeah, that has to be it.”
Either way, his little sabotage would prove to frustrate the Lopsided Cable Company’s technicians for at least a few hours. It would also cause an influx of calls from angry customers.
He followed one of the cables and saw that it was connected to The Lord’s Master. He laughed heartily at that. The Raffian Fleet was going to be highly irked at losing connectivity again, especially if that hazy monstrosity that had connected to the hub truly belonged to them.
“Not your problem, Beefy,” he said to himself as he gunned the jets. “You have a good six hours of uninterrupted time to put on your Chickennugget outfit and prance around the house.”
His video screen chimed. It was the missus.
“Uh oh,” he said and then answered it. “Hey, Helen, what’s new?”
“Heard you got canned,” she said in a caring voice.
“Yeah, I …”
“Hopefully you’re planning to stop by one of the nodes on your way home and rig it up so that bastard Chezbeddit gets a good reaming.”
He smiled. “Already done, H.”
“Good,” she said conspiratorially. “Don’t worry, you’ll find something new in no time.”
“I know.”
“Just go home and kick your feet up. A few days off will do you some good.”
“Y
ou’re the best, H, you know that?”
“For better or for worse, remember?”
Beefy had to be the luckiest man alive, he thought as he looked at her caring face.
“I’ll whip up some steaks for us on the grill,” he said. “We’ll celebrate my exit from the Lopsided Cable Company in style.”
“Sounds yummy,” she said with a grin. “Oh, and babe?”
“Yeah?”
“I washed your corset this morning before I came to work. You’ll find it hanging in the back closet.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.”
“Just figuring that you’ve got a good six hours of uninterrupted time before I get home. May as well enjoy it … Beefy.”
THE PLAN
Harr didn’t like the plan. It wasn’t scalable. There were simply too many ships out there.
“So you want to use Electro Magnetic Pulses to take out the power on those ships?” he said incredulously.
He looked out and tried to imagine the planning that would go in to making that happen. It wasn’t possible on a one-to-one basis. There just wasn’t enough time.
“That’s the plan, Kahuna,” Frexle replied.
“Nice one,” Geezer beamed, patting Frexle on the back.
“Thanks. I have a bunch of names lined up, actually.”
“You do realize,” Harr said, stopping his two engineers from getting into a discussion regarding their penchant for nicknames, “that there are easily a hundred ships out there, right?”
Frexle looked at him. “What’s your point?”
“That we’ll have to somehow silently place a ton of EMPs on a ton of ships.”
“Yes?”
“He’s right, Frex,” Geezer said with the equivalent of a robotic harrumph. “It’ll make it too tough. Besides, we still haven’t come to terms with how to fire them all off at the same time.”
Frexle skittered over to one of the consoles and tapped on it. A screen came up showing a matrix of lines. It looked like a three-dimensional polyhedron with glowing connectors.
“Actually,” Frexle said as he pointed at the screen, “I modeled a way to handle that through a synchronization timer, and couldn’t we just transport the units one-by-one?”
“Nice,” said Geezer. “That looks a lot like a Bowdabbit Control Posotrinket.”
Harr squinted. “You just made up that name, didn’t you?”
“Not this time, Bingo,” Geezer replied.
“Seriously? There’s something called a Bowdabbit Control Posotrinket?”
“Yep.”
“Who invented it?” asked Harr.
“I did,” replied Geezer.
“But you just said that you didn’t make up that name on the spot, Geezer.”
“And I didn’t, Prime. I made up that name three years ago.”
Harr was about to reply when Ridly said, “How big will the combined effect of this pulse be?”
“It will cover a lot of area, Lady Pop,” Frexle answered.
“Lady Pop?” Harr said sourly. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Oh wait,” Frexle said to Ridly, obviously ignoring Harr’s question. “I see where you’re going with this. If we make the pulse large enough, we can use fewer units to take out a number of their ships at the same time.”
“And that means,” added Geezer, “less time to connect them all.”
“Actually, no,” Ridly replied tightly. “I’m more worried that making those pulses too big will result in taking out the Reluctant along with those other ships.”
“Oh, right,” mused Frexle. “I hadn’t considered that.”
Geezer typed on the keyboard for a few minutes and let the screen expand. It showed an updated layout of the polyhedron with far fewer nodes. It also displayed the Reluctant at a safe distance from the main pulse.
“We should be fine as long as we’re far enough out when the pulse hits.”
Grog raised his hand and said, “I know that I’m just a simple caveman …”
“Early Evolutionary Humanoid,” corrected Vlak.
“Was going for dramatic effect, Vlak.”
“Ah. Sorry.”
“Anyway,” continued Grog, “wouldn’t it be simpler to board one of their ships and adjust their computers to power down weapons?”
“Not really,” said Harr.
“Actually,” Vlak said, “I think Grog’s right. You’re going to have to board their ships eventually anyway, right? I mean, you’ve got to actually speak with their leaders if you’re going to convince them to knock off the technology.”
“Well …”
“If you power them all down with an EMP pulse, how will you communicate with them?” Vlak more said than asked. “Think about it. The point of us being here is to stop them from using technology. Just powering their ships down is only a temporary solution. They’ll eventually get them back on line and our mission will have been a failure, especially because they’ll be pissed that you knocked out their ships like that.”
“They’re right,” Geezer said. “Damn.”
Harr glanced appraisingly at the two EEHs. The fact that it took them to figure out what the rest of the crew hadn’t seen was a testament to human ingenuity. Frexle, though, should have thought of this, too. Frankly, so should have Harr.
He grunted.
“I agree with Grog and Vlak,” Harr said finally. “We’re going to have to board that ship.” He cracked his neck from side-to-side. “Has anyone hooked into their communications, yet?”
“I’ve been trying,” said Geezer, “but no luck yet.”
“I can help there,” offered Ridly. “If we bypass the relays, we should be able to piggyback on their carrier signal.”
“Nice thinking, Goddess,” Frexle said.
“Goddess?” Ridly said with wide eyes.
“No good?”
“Actually,” Ridly said, blinking, “I’m okay with it, but …”
“It’s a little much, Frex,” Geezer interrupted. “Let’s just stick with the basics, yeah?”
Frexle nodded. “Got it.”
“All right, Ridly,” said Harr, “you go down with them to engineering and help get data flowing. Let me know the moment anyone finds something useful.”
As soon as they left the bridge, Harr turned to Sandoo.
“Commander, could you join me over here please?”
The two walked to the back of the bridge where Harr pretended to be working on one of the consoles.
“Sir?”
“I just want to make sure that you’re prepared in the event that anything goes wrong.”
“Like what, sir?”
“Like me not coming back from a mission.”
“Oh, right. I’m always prepared, sir.”
“Good. You’ll need to keep the crew busy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harr studied Sandoo. It was unlike the android to be so matter-of-fact about things like this, and that concerned Harr.
“You do realize that I’m going to be leaving the ship to meet with whoever those people are, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why aren’t you arguing with me about it?”
“Because you said you found it annoying when I do so, sir.”
That much was true, but it was the job of Sandoo to point out regulations just as much as it was the job of Harr to point out that he was in a position to ignore regulations.
He pushed away from the console.
“You’re growing, Commander.”
Sandoo looked down at his belly.
“No, I meant that as a compliment on your level of maturity.”
“Oh, right. Thank you, sir.”
PLANNING TO KILL
Colonel Clippersmith sat in his high-backed command chair with his fingers touching in the form of a steeple as Captain Shield stood at attention on the other side of his desk.
Shield was one of those honorable soldiers with a perfectly pressed uniform, trademarked steely-blue eyes
, and regulation trimmed hair. He always supported the king’s decisions, no matter how silly or boring they were, and he always cited regulations wherever possible. It was the man’s job, and it left Clippersmith respecting the man as much as he loathed him.
“It’s time, Captain,” Clippersmith said cautiously.
“Time for what, sir?”
“Time to kill the king.”
“Kill the king, sir?” Shield replied as if he’d just been slapped.
“Is that a problem, Captain?”
Shield resumed his attentive stance. “Other than him being the king, you mean?”
“Kings are assassinated all the time, Captain. You, of all people, know this.”
Captain Shield came from a line of Shields. His ancestors were given the role of protecting the king from assassination. It was their sworn duty. It was their sole purpose of existence. It was something that, historically speaking, they weren’t very good at doing.
Clippersmith knew this, obviously, but he had to play the game as the game was meant to be played. It was tradition.
“King Raff has been relatively decent, sir,” Captain Shield stated hopefully.
“He’s been boring and whiny,” argued Clippersmith.
“Sir?”
“All he does is complain. We set up for a campaign, go through all of the training, get our weapons at the ready, set our trajectories, and then King Raff comes in and whines and moans until he finally finds some reason that we can’t go through with it.”
“Is that why we’re not attacking Lopsided-3, sir?”
“It’s why we haven’t attacked anything since Raff became king.”
“Another way to look at it, sir, is that we’ve had the longest spell of peace in the history of our great fleet.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s just …”
“Captain Shield,” Clippersmith said with a wave of his hand, “what is the purpose of having a space fleet if not to attack planets and wage wars?”
Platoon F: Quadology: Missions 6, 7, 8, and 9 (Platoon F eBook Bundle 2) Page 42