The crew threw glances at one another again, apparently still not used to being stunned by childlike genius—boy was that about to change—before he got the “Yes, Sir,” from Inc. “Relaying those instructions to Scale now.”
Inc. keyed in the orders on his control panel.
***
GYPSY GALAXY
ABOARD SIMUL’S TESTERN ASTEROID FIGHTER
Simul beheld the roping and corralling of the millipede by Thor and his crew with mild amusement. It was one of Simul’s more off-putting weapons in his arsenal. Just not off-putting enough. Leon and his people were going to be endless fun playing wargames against. No one and nothing had tested Simul quite like this before.
He had already resigned himself to joining up with the Gypsy Galaxy when it made its prison break. While The Collectors did offer Simul endless opportunity for warfare, none of it was creative enough for his tastes.
What’s more, The Collectors seemed to take great offense at the Testerns and just how much fun they derived from playing wargames. They fought from a place of joy, not overrunning anger, hatred, and an endless stew of negative emotions. As such, The Collectors would never truly set Simul free to do what he was born to do.
But without question, this Leon DiSanti would.
EIGHTY-ONE
THE HAUGHT GALAXY
PLANET BRAVAS
Thor paraded down the aisle created by the androids of General Schopenhauer’s private planet of solitude—and endless military training. They were clapping for him, cheering loudly, whistling and making catcalls.
With Frog Doll hopping along by Thor’s side, Thor held out his arms, waving heavenward, encouraging the salutations. “I know, I know. I’m something else, aren’t I? Be sure to tell my mother, under-appreciative wench and bane to all fun in the universe—scratch that, make that the multiverse, scratch that, make that the multiverse of multiverses. Maybe we will make her the queen of the damned.”
He took exaggerated mock bows in return before his admirers as he continued down the seemingly endless aisle. With the variety of humanoid lifeforms in attendance, it was like all of creation had come out to pay him his due. He couldn’t say he minded.
“You wish to say anything, Frog Doll, loyal minion, and purveyor of kickass caramelized popcorn treats in that bottomless kangaroo pouch of yours?”
“Only that they have not yet invented a medal that quite captures the significance of pulling your sorry ass out of danger again and again.”
“Remind me to have your memories edited so it plays the other way.”
His back getting sore from the mock bows, Thor returned to simply holding his arm up and nodding triumphantly. “Will you look at those two giants standing in line, throwing shade? Just as well. Who’d have thought you could catch a sunburn on a world where you can’t even see the sun?”
The first of the giants sneezed as Thor marched by. The gale force winds hammered Thor into the ground as if he’d been fired into it by a nail gun in the giant’s hands.
Thor was now buried so far underground that Frog Doll jumping up and down on his grave and sounding with his sonar in the guise of frog ribbits was doing nothing to pinpoint his exact location.
The giant’s wife, horrified by her husband’s faux pas, shrieked to high heaven, reprising the performances of every damsel in distress in a cagillion Hollywood movies enough to turn Frog Doll’s blue blood green. Worse, the shrieking triggered an avalanche. Frog Doll had just enough time to jump out of the way to avoid being buried alive a second time.
He stood atop the rock pile large enough to serve as the latest challenge course for the androids in training, croaking away. He would be blamed for this, of that much he was certain. Playing back the footage to clear his name would do anything but, before a hysterical mother.
He had to think quickly.
“Duh! The bioprinters. Ensured immortality, even against the kinds of idiocy of which Thor represented, possibly unparalleled in the multiverse of multiverses.” He sighed. And then he remembered. Oh no! Leon’s last orders were that prior life traumas had to carry through to ensure learning across lifetimes. So, instead, Frog Doll would be blamed for lifelong trauma to an eleven-year-old. Not exactly a win. Wait! Maybe the new Thor would be more cautious and sensible as a result, and his Mother would reward Frog Doll with endless fish treats, his own fish bowl! Yes! What’s a Cream Umbrage got on you for political savvy?
He hopped like a mad frog toward the bioprinters, wherever they were. Okay, hopping every direction at once, that part might have been a bit mad.
***
Frog Doll pulled up the lid of the bioprinter to find Thor inside, sitting upright, gasping. “Techa, dying really sucks!” Thor exclaimed.
Thor pulled himself out of the coffin-shaped box, happy to stand on solid ground. “I’ve been wracked by nightmares for centuries!”
“You’ve been dead for like five minutes.”
“Centuries, I tell you! It’s like some type of time warp. How can I ever be carefree me, forever haunted by demons like that?”
“I could lobotomize you.”
“Really? That works?”
“Techa only knows I’ve been dying to do it for ages. Solves all kinds of problems with people of your pedigree.”
“A cure-all, huh? Well, I’ll try anything once.”
Frog Doll sighed.
“Well? How long does this lobotomization thing take?” Thor barked impatiently.
Frog Doll mumbled, “I can’t take advantage of him when he’s in such a sorry state. Why don’t you wait until he’s being a full blown ass again, and the entire multiverse is at risk from his stupid antics?” Frog Doll checked his watch. “That should buy him a couple hours at least. Time enough to work through all the angles on this situation.”
Frog Doll looked up at Thor. “What’s say we see how you react in battle first, huh? Before…”
“Battle!” Thor jumped into Frog Doll’s arms. “I knew those shadows around us were getting ready to attack! I just knew it!”
Frog Doll croaked. “This could be a win for you, Frog Doll. If he’s afraid to leave his mother’s sight, she’ll thank me for curing him of his insistence on following in his father’s footsteps. I could get a promotion out of the deal. Guard duty over the fish bowl; it’s like your lifelong dream. Of course, you could just get retired to shelf duty, stuffed somewhere between python doll and Grizelda doll. How bad could that be? They’re no match for my manipulative cunning. At least that way, if I do ever see active duty again by Thor’s side, it’ll be me and my minions against Thor and his Zeta Force. Yeah, there really is no downside to coming clean about Thor’s own brand of Shadow Warriors. Start reciting the spiel from now. ‘Mom, I’m responsible for the child being afraid of his own shadow. Give me my just deserts, please.’ Huh, I think that actually works.”
EIGHTY-TWO
THE HAUTE GALAXY
ABOARD GENERAL SCHOPENHAUER’S PEACEKEEPER,
THE VITALIS
“Am I reading that screen correctly?” Schopenhauer had lost the neutrality in his voice he was big on preserving before his men. His heavily nuanced tone was a mixture of exhilaration, panic, dread, worry, and shock, with a few hundred other emotions he hardly had time to chase down.
“Yes, sir. This invasion is across the entire Gypsy Galaxy. They know we can fight on countless fronts at once. Their best hope is to play a war of attrition, hope that despite massive losses they can get lucky, hit a nerve that could make us vulnerable enough for the next wave.”
“The next wave? That’s a galaxy full of warships, son! How many waves can there possibly be?”
“Every galaxy in The Collectors’ Menagerie is represented, sir, allies and enemies and undecideds alike. That’s a lot of room to park galactic fleets until you need to mobilize them. There may be as many waves coming at us as the ocean has to bring to a beach.”
The XO, caught up in an increasingly heated exchange with Schopenhauer, was an Aquar
ium Man, of sorts, at least that’s how Schopenhauer thought of him. His transparent liquid body was contained in an equally transparent glass humanoid case, trimmed with thin metal along the seams, and inside him his symbiont “sea life” swam freely, what Schopenhauer presumed passed for his organs.
Schopenhauer stood staring at the screen defiantly, fists on his waist, legs spread, emitting air slowly in a combination sigh and groan. “To hell with this. We’re stopping this at the first wave. It’s a little too early on to be depleting their reserves and ours in war games when we may need every ship we have against The Collectors, and Techa be praised if we actually get out of here, to greet whatever containment force lies beyond, not keen on entertaining any prison breaks.”
“What do you suggest, sir?”
“Tell Leon, Mother, and the Gypsy Galaxy as a whole to stand down. I’ll take care of this.”
“You intend to repel an entire intergalactic consortium of warbirds spread across the Gypsy Galaxy singlehandedly?”
“This is a Peacekeeper, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, but…”
“But nothing. Initiate the quantum phase shift so we can be in countless places at once.”
“That will work for intelligence gathering, sir, but we can’t fire in that mode.”
“We can’t be hit either! We’ll be like a phantom. Once that intel is available to the ship’s AI, surrender control of teleporting from one location to the next to her. We’ll be in and out of each location before they can get a return shot off.”
“But, sir, they have AIs of their own. If they can analyze the flaws in Pria’s randomization algorithms…”
“Yes, yes, they may well be able to anticipate where we’ll be next. Let’s hope we can make our point before that happens. Even if we fail, once they see what one of these Peacekeepers can do, they might just turn tail and run.”
“Yes, sir.” What fight Schopenhauer’s XO had left in him, he seemed prepared to save for the enemy.
Schopenhauer had a few other tricks up his sleeve, not the least of which was availing himself of other elements of this Peacekeeper’s design.
His bridge looked like the floor of a NASA control room. His deck was an elevated platform he paced overlooking the pit. The pit included a battery of personnel, each with a different view from the Peacekeeper’s hull. As the ship had weapons solutions along its entire surface, so each patch of hull had to be overseen.
But this was the secondary bridge.
A smaller one above them could be manned by a far smaller crew if he lost too many of his personnel during an engagement, or the ship suffered too much damage in the wrong places.
What’s more, so long as his strategy was understood by Pria, she could carry out her orders even if the entire crew was dead. And if Pria was down, and so was much of the crew, that smaller top tier command deck would be worth its weight in gold. It was the bridge Thor and his sidekicks were no doubt using to run their Peacekeeper. Schopenhauer hated the idea of surrendering such a valuable asset to the kid, but while happy to entertain a prodigy in the making under his tutelage, he had to do what he could to keep the kid safe.
The fact that the Peacekeeper could print out new crewmembers as needed—on a dime—to replace the fallen would be another invaluable asset. So long as they could keep those bioprinters on line…
Well, the Peacekeepers and her crews weren’t entirely unstoppable. But damn close.
His orders given, Schopenhauer resumed his pacing, playing with the two silver Chinese meridian balls in his hands. He knew how to roll them to keep the chi flowing through his body how he needed it to. At his age, he was availing himself of a few more cheats than just what the Peacekeeper had to offer.
***
SMALL UFO
LEON AND CASSANDRA, CLONE TEAM ONE
“Leon?”
It was Mother’s voice coming over the UFO’s loudspeakers.
Leon was surprised his ears were still working, considering the shockwave delivered to his senses from his eyes. His viewport and the UFO’s AI both indicated full-on invasion. Every corner of the Gypsy Galaxy had been saturated with enemy warbirds. It was Leon’s guess that every galaxy in The Collectors’ Menagerie was represented here, allies and enemies, alike, as well as the ones who still couldn’t make up their minds.
He expected a few of his neighbors to take him up on his offer to test the Gypsy Galaxy’s offensive and defensive capabilities. But this was ridiculous.
“We’re receiving instructions from General Schopenhauer to stand down. He intends to repel the entire galactic invasion singlehandedly—with the help of his Peacekeeper.”
Leon restrained a smile. “I bet Patent would love to meet this guy. Sounds like a stunt he’d pull.” He panned his head to Cassandra. “Is that Peacekeeper capable of that?”
“Yes…” Cassandra’s response actually came in a split second ahead of Mother’s and sounded even more decisive. “If it were in my hands…. But a human primitive…?”
“He may last long enough to make his point, Leon,” Mother said, weighing in, “get the attacking fleets to back off. If he plays his cards right, if his ship’s chief supersentience isn’t taken out too early in the game, if…”
Leon put up his hand to arrest the data dump. “Give him a chance. The more of our armada we can save for breaking free of The Collectors, the better. We can’t afford to be consuming our resources and those of our allies, however flaky and tentative our collaboration, before we get a chance to use them when we need them most. That would just feed into The Collectors’ hands. I’m sure that’s what Schopenhauer’s thinking, and he has a point. We’ll stand down.”
“I’ve transmitted the message to the entire Gypsy Galaxy.” Mother severed the line abruptly. It was an indication she still had a lot on her mind.
Cassandra glared at him. “They may be willing to use that fleet to take out our Peacekeepers. If they can’t do it in the first wave, there’s always the second, or the one after that. It would be worth it, if they’re proceeding on the assumption that we have a limited number of those ships, and they’d be right.”
Leon nodded, weighing the matter. “We can print entire planets and their populations with The Planet Eaters. It’s not much of a stretch to believe we can print Peacekeepers as well.”
“But we can’t.”
Leon smiled. “They don’t know that.”
Cassandra roared.
“You’re just pissed it’s not you singlehandedly saving us. I thought Mother had made progress with you on that sticking point.”
“It’s why I haven’t ripped your head off and assumed command of the Gypsy Galaxy.”
Leon smiled reservedly, without showing his teeth again. Playing the emotionally blunted one was always a good move around Cassandra to help ground her. “It’s a big multiverse, Cassandra; your time will come, many times over. I can’t have you coddling our people. They have to have a chance to push their limits too.”
***
PATENT’S AND HIS BLUE’S UFO
Patent’s jaw had fallen sufficiently slack upon hearing the news about Schopenhauer’s stratagem to clear the Gypsy Galaxy of invading forces singlehandedly, and the subsequent approval from Mother over the ship’s COMMS that he had to catch his cigar to keep it from burning his lap.
Patent had a direct line view of Schopenhauer’s Peacekeeper, Vitalis, out his viewport. Staring at Schopenhauer pacing the bridge with his pair of Chinese stress balls in both hands, courtesy of the Blue’s hack of his COMMS, he said with regards to Schopenhauer, “I like your style, son.”
Soturi, the Blue in the captain’s chair hissed. “I’ve seen into his mind. He’s suffering from early Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh, settle down, woman. A little divine madness is just what you need in a situation like this. Ashamed I didn’t think of it myself. Remind me to flog myself when I get home.”
The Blue hissed. “I’ll be happy to do it for you.” She had murder in
her eyes.
“You’re such a dear.” He pointed his cigar at the screen. “Do what you can to keep pace with this madman and his Peacekeeper’s AI. He’s our white whale and I don’t want any of these Ahabs putting their hooks in him, you hear me?”
Soturi tilted her head both ways as if she was cracking her neck. But Patent was used to her shifting into an altered state—syncing with Mother’s supersentience, no less, and patching through, no doubt, to the UFO’s AI so it could keep up, with the Blue’s help. Without it, it wouldn’t have a chance. That weird space-time cheating mind of the Blues—and to one degree or another, every color in the Umbrage’s bloodline—was something to be seen to be believed.
Expecting the ride to get rough, Patent strapped in. “Be nice to get a tour of the Gypsy Galaxy. Even if it is under siege,” he mumbled.
***
COMMAND BRIDGE OF THE ROACK BATTLE CRUISER
PART OF THE MANAXO GALAXY FLEET
The klaxon was sounding throughout the ship, and commander Rawold wanted to know why, since he hadn’t given the order to move to high alert.
“Shut off that damn alarm!” he shouted from his command chair.
“You might want to rethink that,” Manaca, the ship’s chief supersentience said. To buffet her argument, she threw up images of the Peacekeeper on the smart screen portal to the stars, running the footage in slow motion so their humanoid minds could process what was going on.
Rawold’s XO, Semaj, gasped. “They have Peacekeeper technology!”
Not impressed by their response time, Manaca elaborated, “The Peacekeeper is in intelligence gathering mode. It cannot be targeted. Its phase-shift quantum dislocators make it too much of a phantom. When it goes to strike, it will be in our sector for less than a pico-second to release its weapons. I will have to take control of the ship; your humanoid systems are simply outclassed.”
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