So It Begins (Defending The Future)

by James Chambers

The screen coalesced into a hideous, blue, skull-like face topped with a mane of silver crowning an unusually high forehead. Mendez heard strangled gasps of horror from the newer personnel as the image finally stabilized.

  “Are you reading me Arcturia?” First General of Or’Delle Carlo Reginald Dirkmann asked with undisguised glee. “Is that really you, Mendez? After all of these years?”

  “Janice, reverse screen. Let that cretin see me.”

  Dirkmann’s face brightened instantly. “It is you. My good friend Juan Carlos Mendez. It‘s been a long time.”

  “Too long,” Mendez agreed. “I should have finished you when I had the chance.”

  “You were always sentimental,” Dirkmann sighed. “And a fool. I have your ship trapped. I could destroy it at anytime.”

  “You wouldn’t dare. This hanger might be stronger than nytronium, but if we detonated our anti-matter reactors the resulting energy—”

  “But you won’t. You don’t have the guts to sacrifice your crew. Your ship.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you…”

  “You are going to deal with me?”

  “Listen to me, damnit. Allow me to come aboard Eden. Allow me to check the condition of the hostages. If they are still alive, I personally will carry back your demands.”

  “And if they do not live?”

  “Then I will kill you with my bare hands.” Mendez‘s voice was cold.

  “You may board. Not that I believe you about carrying back Or’Delle’s demands. I just have to see you again, traitor. Just one last time to allow you the privilege of bring in awe of my achievements before I destroy you and your ship as easily as I will destroy the Alliance. I will transmit teleporter cube combination frequency when you are ready to come aboard. Until then…remember the Yorktown.”

  The image faded to the sighed relief from several bridge officers.

  Vega was standing beside Mendez, his expression quizzical. “Sir, what is your ultimate plan?”

  “Can’t you read anything?”

  “Of course. But none of your strategy makes any sense.”

  “Who says that a strategy has to be planned out in advance? Or that a plan has to be logical to work? However, since you are so curious, get your action gear and meet me at the teleporter cube in fifteen minutes. L’Prawla, you have the con until I return. If I’m not back, or heard from in eleven hours, and the tractor field is still on, fire the Vortex Gun.”

  L’Prawla’s face was impassive as she acknowledged the suicide order. Her eyes met his, exchanging messages of love across the bridge. More likely the last interchange they would ever have on this plan of existence.

  Suddenly Mendez turned on his heels and left the silent bridge with Vega, on their way to meet destiny.

  Colonel Cynthia Masters SSMD looked strangely out of place in the foreboding teleporter room. Her face, her body marked her as a child of twelve, while her mind and skills belonged to beings three times her real age.

  She paced through the chamber nervously, her normally rosy pink cheeks drained of color. Cynthia had the uneasy feeling of déjà vu, as she relived the hell of New Persia.

  Cynthia was a lieutenant then, arriving just as the revolt broke out among revolutionaries demanding independence from the Red Star Empire and the Alliance.

  The surgeon managed to hide for all of one week before she was captured by the more radical of the insurgents.

  During her month-long imprisonment Cynthia has lost count of the brutalities performed on her body. Each day seemed to be a step closer to the lowest level of hell, until she even began to toy with the idea of death.

  The Celestial Navy arrived in the form of Taskforce Four which consisted of a Marine carrier, three battlecruisers, and five destroyers. In a matter of hours the attack had destroyed most of the revolution.

  Cynthia and six survivors from her medical unit were rushed back to Atmor, where most of the physical scars were repaired. Mental scars were another matter. The deep wounds to her mind would probably remain with her the rest of her life.

  Now she would be walking back into the same situation again.

  Mendez entered the room, followed closely by Vega. Somehow the woman-child gained strength from the man’s presence. The set of Mendez’s jaw; the determination etched into his features. A comfort she never quite felt when the far younger Commander Montgomery was the master of Arcturia.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Doc,” Mendez said crisply. “Ensign Huron, the second we appear on Eden, scramble the combination on the teleporter cube again.”

  “Aye, sir.” Her assistants prepared the machinery to warp localized space while Mendez stepped into the cube with his small party.

  “How did I let myself get talked into this bloody idiocy?“ Vega muttered as the tube lowered from the ceiling, cutting them off from Arcturia.

  Mendez did not have the time to reply before the three of them vanished.

  To Be Continued….