“Sorry, but still drawing a blank,” said Space, shaking his head. “I just don't remember you. That's all. Not trying to offend you or anything.”
Omanx cursed in Delkarian before switching back to Universal Common. “Do you remember freeing slaves owned by the East Wingden Mining Company in the Delta Asteroid Fields? Do you remember who owned those slaves and who you tied to a meteor and fired into space?”
Space scratched his chin. “Now that you mention it, I do recall Galaxy and I freeing some slaves mining some the Delta Asteroid Fields. That was years ago, though. In fact, I think that that might have been the very first adventure that Galaxy and I undertook together.”
“How come I don't remember it?” asked Sparky, tilting his head in confusion. “I have been by your sides for as long as I have been alive.”
“It was before Galaxy built you,” said Space. “We just never told you about it, I guess, because we didn't consider it worth talking about.”
“At least you remember that much,” said Omanx. “Now, do you remember the name of the slave driver who made those slaves work and who made millions of digits for his company off their labor?”
“Uhhhhh …” Space trailed off. “Was it George?”
“No, you idiot,” Omanx said. He pointed at his ugly octopus-like face with one slimy tentacle. “It was Takerious Ninda Omanx.”
“Oh,” said Space. He started in his chair. “Wait, you mean there's another Delkarian with a captain's hat out there named Takerious Ninda Omanx? Are you a clone or something?”
Omanx gave Space the same look that as a child his tutor used to give him whenever he failed to understand a simple math concept. He was surprised at the similarities, seeing as his tutor had been a human and Omanx was a Delkarian.
“No,” said Omanx with a sigh. “There is only one Takerious Ninda Omanx and I am he and he is I. It was I who you fought, tied to a meteor, and shot into space. Do you remember me now?”
“Hmmm …” Space shook his head. “No, but I guess I'll take your word for it.”
“Surely you must remember our most recent encounter,” said Omanx. “Remember? After I survived being shot into space, I was found by a Delkarian trading vessel that took me back to my superiors. They gave me a squad of Delkarian warships to hunt you two down, and we did. We had you in our sights in an annulus ring from which you shouldn't have been able to escape.”
“That does sound familiar,” said Space. “How did we escape again?”
“You used your ship's warp drive to escape at the last possible second,” said Omanx, his tone now one of frustration more than annoyance. “The resulting blast from our combined attacks destroyed the rest of my fleet, leaving my ship as the sole survivor. The only thing we managed to destroy from you three was your stupid robot.”
“Sparky?” said Space, looking at Sparky, who appeared just as surprised by this revelation as Space. “But he's standing right here.”
Sparky patted his chest. “It is entirely possible that I was given a new body after the destruction of my old. I know for a fact that this is not the first body I had. I do not remember why I was given a new body, but I probably deleted the memories in order to make room for more relevant and important ones.”
“You mean … neither of you two remember me at all?” asked Omanx, his voice now tiny and weak.
“Nope,” said Space. “Galaxy might, but she's not present at the moment, so we can't ask her right away. Can I take a message for her?”
Omanx now looked like he was very depressed at the thought that Space and Sparky apparently did not remember him at all. But then he slapped his face and now looked far more serious and angry. “It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am going to kill you both and redeem myself in the eyes of my superiors.”
“Redeem yourself?” said Space. “Didn't you just say that you work for the East Wingden Mining Company?”
“I used to work for them,” Omanx said. “After my last failure to kill you both, I fled the company, because they do not let failures like myself simply quit.”
“Seems like a pretty harsh company,” Space said.
“All Delkarian companies are owned by the government of Delkaria,” said Omanx. “They therefore also have the same powers as the Delkarian government to execute failures. I decided to become a bounty hunter in order to make ends meet, now that I cannot return to Delkaria without being executed.”
“Really?” said Space, leaning back in the captain's chair. “How's that going for you?”
“Very well, actually,” said Omanx. “I love the thrill of chasing down criminals and the pay is—wait! What am I doing having an idle conversation with you like we are old friends catching up with each other? I am your enemy and I should kill you.”
“I'd rather not be killed,” said Space. “Anyway, what are you even doing here? Did you really come all the way out here to this obscure corner of the universe just to kill me and Galaxy?”
“In truth, Mr. Space, I did not even know you two were out here initially,” said Omanx. He tapped some keys off-screen and an image of Doctor Discovery popped up on the screen to the right of his face. “Instead, I was looking for this man, who goes by the pseudonym Doctor Discovery. Do you know of him?”
Space would have nodded, but he stopped himself before he could do so. He wasn't so sure it was a good thing to tell this obviously crazy Delkarian bounty hunter that Doctor Discovery was right now sitting in the toilet on their ship.
“Well—” said Space, before being cut off by Omanx.
“Of course you do,” said Omanx. “Your ship is connected to the Anagnorisis, which, according to all of my sources, is the name of Doctor Discovery's ship. Is Doctor Discovery still on that ship?”
Space gulped, but tried not to look too worried. “Uh, why do you want to know? Does he have a bounty on his head or something?”
“He does,” said Omanx. “Doctor Discovery is wanted by Princess Ellaya Majito of Garth for stealing the Majito royal family's prototype trans-dimensional vortex generator. The Majito royal family's sources indicate that Doctor Discovery either has the generator on his ship or knows its location.”
“Really?” said Space in as casual a tone as he could. “A prototype trans-dimensional vortex generator. Never heard of that before. Is it cool?”
“It is extremely experimental technology,” said Omanx. “I don't know much about it myself beyond that, but I don't need to understand it in order to get it. The Majito royal family is offering one hundred thousand universal digits to anyone who can bring in Doctor Discovery along with the prototype.”
“Wow,” said Space, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “That is a lot of money. You could buy tons of chocolate ice cream with that.”
“Yes, that is indeed a lot of money, more than most bounties I've received,” said Omanx. “Anyway, I managed to track down Doctor Discovery to this quadrant of space. Because that is obviously his ship, I know that you must know where he is.”
Again, Space gulped, though he tried to look cool and casual by leaning back in the captain's chair. “Oh, uh, um, I guess it does look just like his ship, don't it?”
“You're avoiding the question, Mr. Space,” said Omanx. “I should blow up your ship right now and be done with it, but the bounty specified that Doctor Discovery must be brought alive and the prototype intact, which I cannot do if he is on your ship when I blow it up. Again: Where is Doctor Discovery?”
“Well, er, uh …” Space struggled to come up with a plausible-sounding excuse to buy him some time. “He's not on it.”
Omanx raised an eyebrow, which caused his captain's hat to rise as well. “He's not?”
“Yep,” said Space, nodding. “He's not. His ship was totally abandoned when we found it. Its engines are damaged, so I bet Doctor Discovery decided to abandon his ship instead of trying to fix it. He probably used one of his ship's escape pods to get away. Don't know where he is now.”
Omanx cursed in Delkarian aga
in, but then said, in Universal Common, “Very well. But perhaps the prototype is still on his ship. I will only get half of the universal digits promised if I bring back the prototype only, but I would rather get half of the bounty than no bounty at all.”
“Oh, er, um, I think he took the prototype with him,” said Space. “Because Galaxy and I explored the ship when we found it and we certainly didn't find any sort of prototype anywhere.”
“I doubt you would,” said Omanx. “You wouldn't even know what it looked like. From what I am told, the prototype is too large to fit inside the kind of emergency escape pods that a ship like the Anagnorisis has.”
“Oh,” said Space. “Well, what does it look like, anyway? Can you describe it for me.”
“It resembles a warp drive engine, only somewhat smaller,” said Omanx. “It also has a seat for a pilot to sit on. I was told it hasn't been tested yet, so no one knows if it actually works. But it is a fact that it was stolen by Doctor Discovery, so I am here to get it back, with the Doctor himself as well if possible.”
“Ah,” said Space. “Well, I am not sure it's in there. I mean, Doctor Discovery is supposed to be a Man of Science. Maybe he used his science to science it away or something.”
“Let my men board the ship and search for it,” said Omanx. “Surely that won't be a terribly inconvenient thing for you to allow, would it, Mr. Space? You obviously have nothing to hide, so I see no reason for you to deny my crew the opportunity to board and search the ship.”
“I'm not so sure,” said Space, stuttering slightly when he said that. “I mean, I think that maybe you should perhaps go search for Doctor Discovery elsewhere? I mean, his ship is missing an escape—”
“No, it's not,” said Omanx. “Our ship's scanners detect that all three escape pods on the Anagnorisis are still there. That means that Doctor Discovery is still aboard his ship, although he might be hiding if you two have not yet found him.”
“Uh huh,” said Space. “Well, why should I let you onto the ship, anyway? You can't make me do anything.”
“That's very simple,” said Omanx. “If you continue to refuse to allow my men to board your ship, I will order my crew to use my ship's plasma cannons to blow up your ship, with you on it. That may end up damaging or even destroying the Anagnorisis, but aren't you humans fond of saying that you must break eggs to make an omelet?”
Space's eyes widened in shock. “You wouldn't.”
“But I will, if you continue to refuse to comply with my requests,” said Omanx. “But I am feeling generous today, so I will give you a choice: Either surrender the Anagnorisis and everyone and everything on it to us and we will let you go on your way or refuse and we destroy you. I will give you fifteen minutes in which to decide your fate.”
Space stopped trying to pretend to be brave now. He was thinking about Galaxy, who didn't even know about the Delkarian warship threatening to blow them to smithereens, and with the communication channel connecting her helmet to the ship's computers shut off, he had no way of letting her know about this situation.
Oh, Galaxy, how are we going to get out of this one alive? Space thought, dread creeping up his spine as the fifteen minutes began to tick away.
-
What Galaxy found strangest about the interior of the Anagnorisis was how much larger it was on the inside than it had first seemed. Galaxy had already climbed down a ladder into the ship's lower decks—yes, decks, plural—where she found room upon room full of supplies like clothing, medicine, food, water, and other things. Her sense of space was beginning to fray as a result, because she wasn't sure she could accurately judge the size of this ship anymore.
Even the rooms were quite large. Most of them were as large as the Adventure's hold, which was itself a rather large hold. The size of the Anagnorisis's rooms seemed more befitting the hold of a massive cargo ship than the rooms of a personal cruiser, which made Galaxy wonder if Doctor Discovery, despite his stupidity, was in fact some kind of starship engineer genius who knew how to make a ship bigger on the inside than on the outside. She made sure to take dozens of pictures so she could study the design later and see if she could incorporate any of what she learned into the design of the Adventure at some point.
Of course, Galaxy was well aware of the fact that she was admiring the work of Doctor Discovery, who she had always thought of as an idiot. Still, Galaxy always appreciated good starship design, so she was going to make sure to find out as much as she could about it while she was here.
But Galaxy did not forget the real reason she had come down here. So far, she had not found anything terribly incriminating, unless Doctor Discovery did not want the world to know that he was addicted to the snack food called Cheez Asteroids, of which there was at least fifty pounds in one crate alone.
As she walked down the hallway of the ship's hold, making sure to avoid hitting her head on the pipes and wiring running along the ceiling above, Galaxy thought, Maybe I was being too harsh on Doctor Discovery. He might not have anything illegal to hide at all. I should probably head back to the Adventure and apologize to everyone for cutting off the communication channels. They're probably all worried sick about me.
That was when Galaxy noticed a large, metal door at the very end of the hall. It did not look like the doors on either side of the hall. It was like the vault of a safe, complete with a gigantic spinning wheel on the front. It was so unusual that Galaxy forgot all about going back and apologizing to everyone. She ran the rest of the length of the hall, stopping only when she was a few feet away from the vault door.
The vault door was a few feet taller than her and a dozen feet thicker and was clearly locked. She noticed a keypad on the door that was what probably kept it locked.
Looks like all I need to do is input a password to open it, Galaxy thought. But what kind of password would Doctor Discovery use to lock this door?
It took Galaxy all of two seconds to come up with the answer to that question. She reached over to the keypad and punched in the password 'SCIENCE' and hit 'enter' without hesitation.
A second after she entered the password, the vault door slowly opened outward with a creak, forcing Galaxy to step backwards to avoid being crushed. Once the vault door was fully open, Galaxy stepped inside and looked around, wondering what she was about to find.
Standing in the center of the room, illuminated under the lights that turned on automatically, was what Galaxy first thought to be a warp drive engine. It certainly resembled a warp drive engine. Block-shaped, with turbines along the sides, constantly generating a low hum that was inaudible to the ears of anyone but a trained starship mechanic like herself.
But it was different as well. There was what appeared to be the seat for a pilot on the front of the machine. A fluffy, comfortable-looking seat, in fact, like it had been designed by a young girl who loved cute pink things. There was even a controller connected to it, which had at least three dozen buttons and six different control sticks on it. It reminded her of those old video game controllers Galaxy had once seen in the Museum of Earth History, except with a modern twist.
Galaxy walked forward into the room, wondering what the heck this thing was. It couldn't be a warp drive engine, because an actual warp drive engine would be closer to the bow of the ship, whereas this was located near the port (or so she thought. Due to the odd size and layout of the ship, she had no idea where she was exactly). And actual warp drive engines certainly did not have fluffy seats for pilots to sit on, nor controllers based off centuries-old technology.
Is this some kind of weird invention of Doctor Discovery's? Galaxy thought, running her hand along the smooth metal plating of the machine's surface. What is it even supposed to do?
“Found my secret, did you?” said a familiar voice over her intercom that caused her to whirl around to see who was speaking.
Standing in the doorway of the vault was Doctor Discovery himself. He wore one of their helmets over his head and had a tank of oxygen strapped to his back, but o
therwise looked exactly the same. Because his head was bigger than either Galaxy's or Space's, the helmet looked like a tight fit over his skull, but he hardly seemed bothered by that.
What was worse, however, was the fact that he was aiming a light-gun at Galaxy. His finger was even on the trigger and his grip was steady, causing Galaxy to back up against the strange machine.
“I should have known that that was why you cut off communications with the Adventure,” said Doctor Discovery, whose words were somewhat distorted due to how close the helmet was around his head. “You suspected that I had something I shouldn't, so of course you pretended to lose connection with your ship so you could look through my things without anyone knowing. My brilliant scientific mind came to that conclusion one point five seconds after you did not answer me when I contacted you.”
“Yeah, sure it did,” said Galaxy, not moving from her position in case Doctor Discovery planned to shoot her. “What are you doing down here? I thought you were on the ship with Space.”
“Space is currently talking with a bounty hunter who wants my head,” said Doctor Discovery. “I thought I'd slip out while no one was looking and return to my ship and get out of here before Space handed me over to the bounty hunter to save his own hide.”
“There's a bounty hunter after you?” said Galaxy. “Why?”
“Because the Majito royal family put a bounty on my head,” said Doctor Discovery. He gestured at the machine behind her. “After, of course, I stole that machine from their royal laboratory.”
Galaxy did not dare take her eyes off Doctor Discovery's light-gun. Still, she was curious, so she said, “You stole this thing? What is it?”
“I guess there's no harm in telling you, because you won't be able to get it from me,” said Doctor Discovery. “It's a prototype for a trans-dimensional vortex generator.”
“Trans-dimensional vortex generator?” Galaxy repeated. “You mean it can be used to cross dimensions? I thought that that technology was considered impossible.”
The Spacetastic Adventures of Mr. Space and Captain Galaxy: Season Two Page 4