The Zygote Crystal

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The Zygote Crystal Page 3

by Ashley Thomas


  “Oh I doubt that Sir,” said Prouff, “I mean some of the younger generation airgroups can be a bit weird I realise. I mean some still practice mindfulness believe it or not and others actually ‘grow’, yes GROW, their own vegetables. In soil. I mean that’s yuck for sure, but well short of massacring space travellers.”

  “Are you a total idiot Prouff?” asked Phiasco.

  “I don’t think so Sir,” said Prouff, shifting a little uncomfortably now in his seat as he realised he wasn’t exactly coming up with the answers the Admiral wanted to hear.

  “DOES anyone know who the Mud Lizards ARE?” screeched Admiral Phiasco.

  At this, the Head of EarthLand security, Ruskin Schmartas, chipped in with a calming “We are doing our best to find out Admiral. It seems likely that the Mud Lizards are a hitherto undetected civilisation on Plasmolidium.”

  “Right,” said the Admiral, “Find them and exterminate them. Laser them, Extermatron them, crush them, destroy them, obliterate them.”

  “So,” piped up Prouff, “Any sort of pow-wow is off the agenda then Admiral?”

  The Admiral blinked at Prouff, made a mental note to assign him to cataloguing space debris in the rings of Saturn and then looked at the Head of EarthLand security saying, “Ruskin, we can’t have a bunch of dead explorers being returned to Earth and making us feel threatened.”

  At this, Prouff said, “But they’re dead Sir. They’re not threatening anyone I can assure you.”

  After that, the Head of Earthland Security also made a mental note to replace Prouff with someone slightly less stupid as soon as possible. He began to realise that in appointing Prouff to the Admiral’s staff, he may have gone slightly too far in trying to ensure that the Admiral had no one with any sense around him other than Schmartas himself.

  “We need clear proof of their existence and intentions,” said Phiasco.

  “I am clear Sir,” responded Prouff enthusiastically.

  The Admiral blinked at Commander Prouff as the Head of EarthLand security said “We’ll get proof Admiral, don’t worry.”

  This led to Commander Prouff leaping up from his seat and saying in a very loud voice, “Oh no Sir, PLEASE don’t let EarthLand Security get me! PLEASE Admiral. I know I sent that Star Cruiser to put down a revolt on one of our own deep space stations, when the revolt was actually on a play planet the other side of the galaxy. But anyone can make a mistake. We didn’t kill that many of our own personnel. PLEASE DON’T LET THEM GET ME FOR THAT!!” he screeched as he dropped to his knees beside the meeting table sobbing uncontrollably.

  “What space station?” said the Admiral incredulously.

  Following an almost indiscernible gesture from Ruskin, three security personnel rapidly silenced Prouff and discretely removed him from the meeting room. As he disappeared, Ruskin said, “Don’t worry Admiral. We will find these lizards and grind them into whatever mud they came from.”

  “Send in RARSP,” said Phiasco. “They’ve been waiting for just such a situation to prove how effective they are at killing things since we formed them. But make sure you put one of our own Generals in overall command.”

  The Head of EarthLand Security nodded in agreement.

  RARSP, the Rapid Alien Response Space Patrol, comprised a hitherto unused bunch of trained killers put together specifically for the purpose of dealing with unexpected alien incursions.

  “Let’s finally see how good they are at kicking some alien butt. With respect to RARSP’s long term future as a unit, the proof will finally be in the pudding,’’ added Phiasco.

  When Phiasco had finished speaking, Ruskin made an aircast through to his most senior and competent combat leader, Vice-President General Xplozhen. As he did, he thought idly to himself, ‘actually, Prouff was going to be in a lot worse than a pudding after that little performance.’

  Chapter 2 - Battle over Plasmolidium

  Earth’s armada sets sail

  Within 3 days of Ruskin Schmartas’s call to General Xplozhen, an instant response armada set sail for Trappist-1. The armada had one goal - seek out the Mud Lizards, engage them and wipe them out. The orders from Earth’s Supreme Council were ruthless and clear.

  The armada comprised the bulk of RARSP (the Rapid Alien Response Space Patrol) and was made up of two Conflict Class Cruisers, a Space Patrol Carrier as well as Xplozhen’s flagship, the Lucifer. The Conflict Class Cruisers had crews of around 300 and were armed with major pulse weapons as well as 24 Galaxy Class Space Skirmishers. The Space Patrol Carrier berthed 2000 RARSP troopers. All of them were armed with Extermatrons, alongside a range of light and heavier armoured vehicles for ground and low air operations.

  General Xplozhen had heard of RARSP but as they had never actually seen action since being formed, there was little he knew of their actual capability and prowess. He was slightly nervous of this but as one of Earth’s most experienced military campaigners, decorated copiously during the Sequestran war, he was confident he could oversee a successful mission.

  On board Lucifer, Xplozhen was about to hold a briefing with his new Executive Group. This included from RARSP, Captains Ekard, Noslen and Krik plus the Commander of the RARSP troopers, Lieutenant-Colonel Krushum. The final member of the Executive Group was Lieutenant Butterberg, Xplozhen’s Chief Executive Officer.

  Xplozhen did know that RARSP was a special force put together some years earlier at the behest of the then President of Earth, Ronald Trump Jr. the 7th. At the time the decision to form RARSP was seen as just one of ‘Old Ron’s’, as he was affectionately known by his cronies, crackpot ideas. It arose after the Sequestrans had been defeated on the Moon in 2056. Ron reasoned that where there was one alien species that wanted to kill us, there would be others, and that Earth needed a rapid response group that could be quickly mobilised in the event of any similar threat. The Head of EarthLand Security at the time, thought Ron was bonkers but liked to keep him happy. She took the formation of RARSP as an opportunity to put the worst performers of the Sequestran war into a unit that would effectively become an unused ‘white elephant’.

  General Xplozhen knew none of this background to RARSP when given overall command of the expedition to Plasmolidium. He therefore had no idea just exactly how useless his senior team actually were. Ruskin Schmartas, the current Secretary of EarthLand security, had only found out about the senior staff at RARSP himself shortly after the meeting to discuss the response to the Mud Lizard outrage at Admiral Phiasco’s headquarters. After that meeting Ruskin had been briefed by his senior aide, Echo Jones. As he listened to Echo his eyes had grown wider and wider as more and more alarming details were revealed.

  “I am afraid Mr Secretary there is very little to commend any of the RARSP senior officers apart possibly from Lieutenant-Colonel Krushum. She does at least have all the traits one might expect to see in a ruthless homicidal killer. This presumably makes her more on the ‘ideal side than not’ for the leader of the troops likely to be dealing ‘hand to hand’ with the Mud Lizards.”

  Ruskin nodded to his aide and said, “So what exactly should worry me about the others Echo?”

  “Well, I’m not sure where to begin,” said Echo before continuing, “Krik is addicted to the class alpha drug Orphium and has been ever since he was at cadet school. He is totally unpredictable and shot several of his own men by mistake on the Moon whilst on a high. Obviously, we hushed that up as best we could and blamed the Sequestrans. He is after all unfortunately related to the former Vice-President, so we had little choice there.”

  “Hmmmm,” murmered Ruskin, “And what about Noslen?”

  “Well Noslen thinks he's a direct descendant of the Greek God Poseidon. He's been like that ever since he blew himself and a platoon of his troopers up with a pulse grenade he armed, and then accidentally dropped into one of his men’s backpacks. He was the only survivor. Recovered, obviously, but is incredibly short tempered and when in full Poseidon mode he has been known to shoot soldiers he finds drinking water or indeed a
ny liquid, claiming they're thieves. Again, there's not too much we can do about him because he's related to the European Royal Family. If we expose one as a nutter their whole dynasty could collapse.”

  “I see,” said Ruskin, “And Ekart?”

  “He's ‘The’ Ekart Sir,” said Echo.

  “Huh?” responded Ruskin.

  “He's the guy with the aircasts,” said Echo.

  “Aircasts?” queried Ruskin.

  “Your aircasts Sir. The ones where you outline your plans to destroy the Sino-Soviet bloc once you become President of Earth. After ousting the current President of course by discrediting her,” said Echo.

  “OH….., ‘that’ Ekart. And why exactly is ‘that’ Ekart still alive?” demanded Ruskin.

  “Well, basically, we don’t know where all the aircast copies are stored yet Sir. Once we do, Ekart will retire himself,” said Echo.

  “Well get on with the job of finding the aircasts then,” said Ruskin testily.

  “We are Sir, we are. What about the armada Sir. What should we tell Xplozhen?”

  “Tell him nothing. I know Xplozhen well and he was a good choice for the job. He’ll work out what a bunch of duds they are and do something about it knowing him. And if he doesn’t, well I don’t care if it’s a disaster. Phiasco will pay the price if it turns out to be a fiasco,” smiled Ruskin. “That was a joke Echo. A sort of play on words.”

  “Yes Sir. I’ll get more people onto finding those aircasts.”

  Onboard Lucifer

  Onboard Lucifer Xplozhen started his meeting with his Executive Group with the words, “People, this is a serious and grave situation that we are facing. We are traveling to a planet to confront a foe we know very little about, other than they like to carve messages into peoples’ foreheads. Our orders are clear. We are to seek and destroy.”

  Butterberg, the General’s Chief Executive Officer and trusted sub-ordinate said, “It is indeed a difficult situation General, with so many unknowns.”

  “We do know that they resemble lizards sir,” said Krik.

  “Ok, yes, I guess we do know that?” said Xplozhen as he fixed his stare on the glazed eyes of Captain Krik, who he’d never met before.

  “Yes sir. There were air recordings made by Explorer of the first contact between McBeckHam’s crew and the aliens,” continued Krik.

  “Well why the blazes didn't anyone tell me?” yelled Xplozhen. “Is there anything else I don't know?”

  Krik was about to reply but leaned his chair backward far too precipitously on its back two legs, lost balance and fell over backwards, hitting the floor with a loud crash. Two attendant ordinary cadets rushed to his aid and lifted his chair and him back up into a stable sitting position. Krik looked blearily across the table at his fellow Executive Group members and said, “Hey dudes, that was cool. Are we done here?”

  Xplozhen blinked at the Captain of one of his two cruisers and was about to ask him what on Earth he meant when Noslen interjected with, “We know they have remarkably long tongues.”

  “And they have some sort of missile and flight technology, because they blew up the hovermodule that they first encountered,” added Ekard.

  “Yes,” said Xplozhen, “Alright, alright. Clearly we know a few things but we don’t know their strength in numbers nor the scale or power of their weaponry. We don’t even know if they are confined to the immediate area around their own planet or whether they have the capability to travel long distances in space. Though of course, given the threat they made in their forehead message, it seems likely that extended space travel is possible for them. I need your views on how we tackle them people, assuming we make no contact before we reach their cursed planet.”

  Krik was the first to speak or rather slur in response, “I aye aye,.... thin..inkuhh we sherrrd try not ….”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, you’re stoned again Krik,” exclaimed Noslen. “Someone really needs to do something about you before you kill some more of your own troops.”

  Ekard then turned to the General and said, “I’d suggest Sir that we play the same trick they did on the Explorer crew. Let's just make them think that we want to parlay and then murder them.”

  As Xplozhen exclaimed “Stoned?!” incredulously, Krushum weighed in with,

  “This is an approach I support fully. We need to use whatever methods are necessary to enable us to blast these animals back to the primordial soup they came from.”

  “I agree,” chipped in Noslen, “We need to ‘pulse’ them to pieces!”

  “Ladies and Gentleman,” shouted General Xplozhen as he banged the table with one fist in an effort to bring his Executive Group to order. “Whilst I appreciate the zealous nature of your responses and the desire to see justice done, I think we need a plan that has slightly more to it than ‘death and destruction’ meted out through a variety of weapons.”

  Ekard, Noslen and Schwartzendiesel looked at each other and as of one said “Really? Why?”

  Krik by now had slid off his chair and was lying on the floor unable to say anything. Without any warning Noslen got up and slapped the General who had just poured himself a glass of water screaming at him, “Stop pinching my water.”

  At this point General Xplozhen, as he held his hand to the side of his face that had been slapped, lived up to his name, standing up and exploding with rage. Purple in the face he shouted for his personal guard to remove ‘these idiots’ and confine them to quarters. He then got his trusted Chief Executive Officer Butterberg to undertake the ‘deep’ checking on the members of his senior team that he probably should have done before leaving Earth. Butterberg quickly found, in highly confidential files, information about all of the senior staff in RARSP that served to confirm the impressions of them gained from the Executive Group meeting.

  “How did we not know this Butterberg?” asked Xplozhen.

  “Well Sir the information was deeply buried under many layers of security, by Secretary Ruskin's office no less. It's a monumental cover up going back years. RARSP was never really intended to be deployed. It was just put in place to keep a President happy and then used as a dumping ground for senior officers that were useless but couldn't, for whatever reason, be sacked.”

  “So,” said Xplozhen, “Ruskin would have known all this but said nothing. The man's a worm. He has a lot to cover up. I'll deal with him when we’re back. In the meantime, let's get some leaders for this armada who are not raving lunatics.”

  A new Executive Group for the mission

  Xplozhen decided there and then to relieve all four of the misfits from RARSP of their duties and appoint new senior leads for all areas. He chose most of the new acting Captains from the crew of his own flagship, Lucifer, on the advice of his Chief Executive Officer. With a new Executive Group to work with, a sensible approach to the mission was quickly developed.

  The Lucifer and other ships of the armada then settled down for the journey to Plasmolidium. Captain Krik spent most of the journey locked in restraints as he was slowly starved of Orphium and had to deal with the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. However, the shock was too much for his mind and he spent most of his time now, when out of restraints, being a unicorn. He had even made a wide range of horns out of various soft materials he was allowed to have on the advice of the ship’s medics. Captain Noslen had been given his own mini swimming pool in his quarters so that he could play ‘Poseiden Rules’ whenever the urge took him and Ekard just watched endless re-runs of some private aircasts he really seemed to like. Krushum was put to good use, under supervision, providing training on how to kill anything that moves, using a variety of weapons and inventive approaches. The armada continued its journey.

  Plan of campaign

  The armada took just under 3 months to reach Plasmolidium. The ships were using a new modified hyper-lightspeed approach that enabled the armada to travel at between 125 and 175 times the speed of light. Despite the need to exercise some caution, as Xplozhen could not be sure that they would
not meet Mud Lizards in space coming the other way, the armada managed to maintain top speed for most of the journey.

  The plan that had been worked out for the campaign by Xplozhen and his new Executive Group had understandably been one with various options, depending upon what the armada encountered during the journey and upon arrival. However, the core element of the plan was to assume a watching brief on the planet on arrival, with periodic patrols to the surface in an attempt to gauge the Mud Lizard military capability and strength.

  Earth was now fairly certain that no Mud Lizard ships were between Plasmolidium and Earth as nothing other than designated vessels had been detected by the network of space stations Earth now had in that part of space. So, with the armada orbiting Plasmolidium, and periodic patrols probing the planet’s surface, Xplozhen and his team just had to decide how long they could wait for the aliens to come out of their hiding place on the planet’s surface.

  Scanning the surface of the planet

  From the bridge of Lucifer, the General’s flight crew scanned the surface of the planet. As with the Explorer before them, detailed and lengthy scans showed no signs of activity that could give a clue as to the Mud Lizards’ whereabouts on the planet. The conclusion reached was that the Mud Lizards must live under the surface of the planet and, perhaps because of some special physical barrier, the scanners used could not detect them. Quite quickly though the survey team on board Lucifer did learn how to distinguish the artificial structures housing mega-mosquitoes from ‘real’ mountains. A number of these artificial structures were then visited by patrols of RARSP troopers. No Mud Lizards were encountered by any of the patrols although several of the mega-mosquitoes were brought back alive for further study.

 

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