by Frank Carey
The sound of a power buildup made our getting the plark out of here more imperative. The medics showed up and took over. In minutes, they had the crazy elf stabilized and heading to the exit. "Major, sound recall. It's time we vamanos."
"Roger that, General. This is Eloen," she yelled into her commlink. "Evacuate the pod. I repeat, evacuate the pod."
We got up and ran, the sound of the gateway power building up egging us on. When we made it to the door, I looked around for any stragglers. "We got everyone?" I asked Sana.
Sana nodded. "We've got a number of prisoners and lost only one person, Frasier. He took a sniper round meant for me."
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I had to put Frasier's death aside "Anyone see Muntz or his three friends?"
"Not a sign." She said.
"Seal it and move out."
Sana tapped the lock pad, closing the seal behind us. We ran down to the other end of the tunnel and out into foyer where Sana closed the seal behind us. I ran over to the wall and pressed the three buttons in sequence.
Nothing happened.
I did it again.
Still nothing.
"Traaler! What the plark is wrong with this thing?"
He ran over and did something. That's when I noticed all the lights were dead and stayed dead. "There must be damage from the fire fight. He pulled out his terminal and checked something. "The inner pod panel is functioning."
"Sana, get that seal open," I ordered.
She stood there, unsure what to do. "You'll die."
I walked up to her and hugged her, hard. "I know, kiddo. Now, open the door. Promise me you'll keep the elf in line."
She stood back, straightened her uniform, and gave me a salute that would make my drill sergeant weep with joy. I looked around and saw every single person in the room, even some of the prisoners, doing the same. I returned the salute, my heart filled with pride. Sana opened the seal, then sealed it once I was through. The tunnel echoed with the sound of it locking in place.
No time to say goodbye. No time to hug my grandbabies. Only time to open the pod seal, run through, and seal it behind me. I stood there for a moment before walking over to the wall panel and keying in the sequence. The pod lurched, throwing me into the seal. I heard my arm snap from the impact. I slid to the floor and cradled it the best I could under five gees of acceleration.
Then the humming stopped, replaced by buzzing. I looked up and saw thousands of silver beetles heading directly at the seal. They sounded angry. Well they can kiss my petite little ass. I sat back and laughed, then stopped when the room lit up with blue light as the air in front of me shimmered. As I watched, thousands of beetles splatted against... nothing, like bugs on an impossibly transparent windshield.
Then I noticed my two grandkids, at least I think they were my grandkids. "Ashley, Grayson, is that you? I asked as the pain from my arm washed over me."
Grayson was standing there in front and to the side of where I sat, his hand outstretched, facing the beetle horde. His eyes glowed blue fire just like the jewel in his chest. "Hi, General. Ashley, please hurry."
"Just need a second, Bro," she replied as she knelt down next to my arm. She had the same eyes and same jewel. She smiled as she placed her hand on the break. It and my arm began to glow as the break set itself. There was no pain, none. "Done!" She said as she picked me up."
"With one second to spare. Not even exciting," Grayson said as the universe blinked.
I screamed.
Chapter 36 - Marta's Return
Generals don't scream. It's a rule, so I stopped when I landed on the steel deck of a ship with the twins on either side of me and people all around me. A closer look revealed Shenda, Breanne, Adaira, Chasm, and Doc, the Marta's physician, standing wide-eyed in front of me while the rest of the crowd oohed and aahed.
"Damn, that really worked," Grayson said for the record.
"You risked your lives on a hunch?" I asked in shock.
"No, General, we risked our lives to save you, our favorite grandmother," Ashley said. "How's the arm?"
"Mom?" Shenda asked, her eyes getting even wider.
Thinking she might be going into shock, I motioned to the kids to comfort her. They walked over and hugged her. Meanwhile Doc slid over and ran a scanner over me. "What happened to the arm?" she asked as she held the scanner over the spot where it had broken.
"Broke it with a large pressure seal."
"Hmmm. Well, it's fine now. The scanner barely registers the repair. Looks like the twins had another growth spurt. That explains the missing emergency rations. Will you look at those two?"
Yeah, they were impressive. Definitely took after Harm in the height department, yet they had their father's eyes... sort of."
"Doc, can you excuse us for a moment?" Ruby said as she walked over, still in her encounter suit. I have to admit, it was very becoming. I looked closer and realized how much it resembled the twins.
"What's up?" I asked.
"You're kidding, right?"
Okay, instantaneous teleportation across ten miles without the use of instrumentality is pretty cool, but I was getting use to the impossible happening on an almost daily basis. "No, I'm not kidding. What's troubling you?"
"Those two are Logash."
Where the hell did I hear that word? Oh yeah, the briefing when we first found Kerus hold up in one of the tombs. Yeah, ancient race who had a run in with the Alue, the non-corporeal beings we mistakenly call AIs. "According to your friend, Malaki, the Logash died out two million years ago."
"Malaki isn't my friend. He's one of the oldest Alue in this continuum and he was here when the Logash died out. I just talked to him."
Ah, to be able to call anyone in the universe on a whim. Must be nice. "So, they're Logash. So what? Have you met their parents? Both Chasm and Shenda are genetically engineered life forms with nearly unknown lineages. Look, I'm no geneticist, but I'm betting that they both have a lot of Logash DNA floating in their genes."
Ruby shook her head. "You don't get it. Look at the suit I'm wearing. These people have a lot of Logash in them, yet they don't have glowing eyes, jewels in their chests, or the ability to teleport. Those two are freakin Logash, and they're not alone."
"What the hell are you talking about, not alone?"
I was talking to Lenora. There are reports of others like those two being born from pairings between Crystallanians, and elves, humans, and dracos. Chasm is Crystallanian, and Shenda is a mixture of the other three. Get it?"
"Why now?"
Ruby sat next to me. "During your Martok incident, the Tralaskans reported an uptick in the number of their women transforming into Tyens. According to Tralaskan legend, that only occurs if there is an imminent threat to Tralaska and her people. The thinking is the planet Tralaska is a living entity linked in some way to its people, and it detected a threat, so it started throwing Tyens."
"But no threat ever emerged."
"That you know of. Yet, Tyen conversions are at an all-time high. Now we have this, the emergence of a super race after its disappearance two million years ago."
My hackles started to rise. "Are you sure the twins are Logash reborn?"
Ashely walked over, probably to check on me. “Malaki told me of a simple test I can give them.”
“General, how’s the arm doing?” Ash said with a nod toward Ruby.
“Doing great,” I replied as I flexed it.
Ruby smiled and asked something in a language so alien that the UT locked up.”
Ashley replied in the same language as is she had spoken it all her life.
"Yep, they're Logash," Ruby said while standing there with her arms crossed.
"Really. Care to explain that to the audience?"
I asked Ashley how she was feeling using a language not spoken in over two million years. She replied in the same language.
“I did?” Ashley asked.
“Yep, and fluently I may add.”
"You sound happy," I said.<
br />
“I am. It's good to have the Logash back, and we have you to thank for that.”
"Me? Why me?"
"You never lost faith in the elf. None of this would have happened if you two hadn't gotten back together. No you and Harmon, no Shenda and her sibs, no Shenda, and Chasm, then no Ashley and Grayson. You, young lady, were the key, so thank you."
I had no idea what to say.
Chapter 37 - End Game
They held Frasier's funeral a week later. Dignitaries from around the League attended, including Royce and Losira. Sana's report of the sacrifice he had made during the Battle of Tryton Station was beyond glowing, so Royce had a talk with the members of Frasier's old unit and they agreed to forget Frasier's involvement in the double-cross. Hell, Harm cried as he signed the papers, he was so overcome by Frasier's willingness to sacrifice himself to save Sana. Of course, Harm completely forgot about throwing me aside and taking another bullet for me.
After three days of deliberation, Team Kimbra was declared the winner of the SFL Final Match by a margin of one point. The judges had no idea what to do when I hugged each one of them, thanking them profusely. My days of suit fighting were over. Next year, Trent would return as driver with Bobby as his engineer and Christa as his wife and network engineer. I'm thinking a spring wedding at the castle.
A few weeks after the final match, Lady Sienna was killed in a hunting accident on one of her many estates. The leadership of the family was assumed by her daughter, Kimbra. Trent severed all ties with the family and renounced his Tralaskan citizenship, becoming a citizen of Earth. He, Christa, and Bobby are actively recruiting elves, humans, and dracos for positions in the Earth-Ith-Ventos Prime division of the Suit Fighting League. Lenora has even taken-up sponsorship. Hell, she may even try her hand at driving.
Shenda, her family, and the crew of the crew of the LTV Marta McMurphy returned to being merchants, plying League space with cargo without the fear of someone trying to kidnap their children. Interviews with the captured SpecPro techs revealed Muntz had planned to ransom the twins for parts and more mega-routers. The failure of the kidnapping was what led to the stealing of the mega-routers from the SFL teams. I have never seen a crew so happy to get back to work.
Harm and I took a long-deserved vacation. We spent two weeks touring Hawaii. Life finally went back to normal.
Or so I thought.
###
One year later...
I hate waiting. I am a get' er done kind of girl and you can't get' er done while sitting on your ass in a pretty office somewhere inside the Cube.
I paced the room like a caged tiger.
I missed Harmon. The moron was on Earth working on some crazy, new-fangled ship design that was so top secret even Ciara didn't know about it.
I glared at the clock. It mocked me in return, its constant ticking reminding me of the seconds of my life I was wasting.
The office door opened followed by Ciara, Royce, and Malaki in a bright, shiny, new body complete with a set of intricate tattoos. "Malaki, love what you did with the tats," I said, commenting on his new artwork."
"Thanks. The artist is a pro," he replied as he slithered (I hated that word, but it was the only one that fit his mode of locomotion,) across the room to his cat toy-like perch while the rest of us took conventional seats. His new body was human from the waist up and serpent from the waist down. Thank God he went with hair instead of snakes on his head.
Ciara opened her briefcase and pulled out dossiers, which she handed out to the rest of us. Finished, she began her briefing. "As of eight hours ago, the League was formally at war with the Combined Army of Light."
Shit. Just when I thought I was going to spend some quality time with Harmon and the grandkids. I thumbed through the dossier. Incursions have been occurring around the League. Lucky for us these were only unmanned probes popping out in deserted areas of space. The problem was we weren't picking up on the incursions, only the probes once they were inside our continuum.
"It looks like someone is gearing up for a visit," I observed.
"Space Command agrees with you. We analyzed the probes and found they have the same quantum spin as Kerus, Lorg, and Vapin's bodies, which means the probes are from the prison universe."
Lovely. "I assume Space Command has a plan,"
"You're not going to like it," Royce said. "I know I don't."
"We are going to send a team over to the prison universe to reconnoiter the situation, and if necessary, take actions to stop any further incursions," Malaki explained.
I hate guessing games more than I hate waiting. "Who, how, and when?"
Malaki looked over at Ciara. She nodded.
"We are training a crew of 150 from all League member races including the Logash and Alue. Ashley, Grayson, and Ruby have all volunteered. They will..."
"No!" I stood up and pounded my fist on Ciara's desk. "No plarking way! They're children."
"They volunteered before we even knew to ask the question. They helped design the ship, the computer system, and the weapons," Malaki explained.
"And they apologized," Ciara said, "for bringing this problem to us."
I sat down and covered my face with my hands. "They're only kids."
"Kids who can move between dimensions, generate force fields, and lift a ton of dead weight without breaking into a sweat," Royce reminded us. "Those kids may be the only thing standing behind us and a genocidal army from another universe."
"You know, sir, you should really write a novel," I said. I hated having to agree with him, but I did. "I volunteer..."
"No," Ciara said. "You know too much and your value to the League is incalculable. We’re sending EMEF Teams Four and Five as well as members of the Space Marines and Tralaskan Home Guard, some of whom you know."
"The SFL?"
Royce nodded. "Every ex-military member of all the teams volunteered en force."
Damn them. I feel like I'm sending all of them in harm's way. "How do they get there?"
Your husband and a hundred researchers, engineers and scientists, including Tannith Aymar-Scott and Penny Scott Aymar, and Nebulon Blyst and her husband, Jason Thurgood, have been working around the clock designing and building the only hybrid biofield generator/FTL drive warship in this universe.
"Wait a damn minute! A biofield generator?"
Royce pointed to the center of his chest. "Your grandchildren and several of the Logash figured out how to grow one using the same tech the Crystallanians used to grow Chasm. It only took them a month to go from small seed to a crystal twenty feet in diameter."
"My God, we've got a fist-full of Harmons!"
"You got that right, sister," Malaki said. The four of them laughed.
"So how do we all fit into this plan?"
"Just the usual," Ciara explained. "I'm staying here to coordinate while you three are heading to Earth to train the crew with the help of EMEF Team One. I tried to talk Sana out of it, but thought better of it."
That's my daughter.
"When do we leave?" I asked.
"You leave immediately while these two leave tomorrow," Ciara replied. "General, your ride is waiting for you at the docks. I've taken the liberty of having your stuff loaded. Any questions?"
"No, none. I should get going," I said while shaking hands and getting hugs from Ciara and Royce. I headed out the door, plans for training the troops already dancing in my head.
I reached the docks and identified myself to the captain of security. He told me my ride was waiting in slot 57. I walked over and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what was waiting for me.
She was sleek, new, and looked like she was doing 0.75c standing still. The name emblazoned on the side right next to a female fox in an EMEF uniform, her nametag emblazoned with the name "McMurphy," was Star Vixen II. Standing underneath the bow were Harmon, Ashley, and Grayson, all beckoning me to join them on their next adventure.
Who was I to say no?
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br /> About Frank Carey
Frank Carey has been formally writing and publishing works of science fiction since late 2013. Over the years prior, he had dabbled in various forms of writing including haiku poetry, but that all changed when he and his wife, Jo, decided to try their hand at writing and self-publishing. All his work, to date, has been in the science fiction genre.
Most of his stories take place about two centuries in the future when Earth joins the League of Planetary Systems. Many of his protagonists are strong females. He is an inveterate pantser who believes the story will go where the story wants to go.
Frank’s background includes degrees in physics and extensive work as a scientific programmer and technologist.
Frank and his wife produce a podcast—Xtreme Self-Publishing—which details their self-publishing efforts.
Frank can be reached through his podcast at xtremeselfpublishing.podbean.com or via e-mail at [email protected] or [email protected]