The Rebellion Hyperbole (The Adventures of Trek Gibbons Book 1)

by John P. Logsdon

  “What the hell?” Belchore said. “That’s not fair!”

  “Nobody ever said life inside the Gordo Galaxy was fair, Belchore.”

  “Actually,” Torg noted, “it’s part of the Gordo Galaxy motto.”

  And that it was. No matter, thought Trek. The reality was that life was only fair to those who made the rules, and that wasn’t him or any of his crew, and soon it wouldn’t be anyone in The Committee either.

  “Well, wait,” Belchore said to Trek. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “I’m heading this way,” Trek said and started walking. “Good luck to you all. Really. It was, uh, swell working with you.”

  He walked back toward the main terminal and got Herb on the datapad, telling him to get everything packed and ready to go, and then to stop off and warn Tweller, and then to get his butt to the space docks as quickly as possible. Herb, obviously used to having to leave places in a hurry because of Trek’s past, just nodded and disconnected the call.

  Trek pushed open the door to the main level and heard footsteps. He looked back and saw the entire GDA team was right behind him, and they had Broog in tow.

  “What’s going on?” Trek asked.

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Torg, “we’ve kind of gotten used to following your lead.”

  “It’s been less than a week, Torg,” Trek said. “Look, you’re all resourceful people.”

  “I’m not,” said Opal.

  “Fine, you’re all resourceful teams.”

  “What teams?” Broog noted. “I’ve got no team. Because of McCracken, all of I.S. is out to arrest me.”

  Trek frowned. “But you haven’t been following me anyway, Broog.”

  “Well, I just followed you with these guys for about thirty seconds or so. Seems okay to me.”

  Trek looked them all over. They were a motley crew if there ever was one. Why they were putting any faith in him, though, was beyond him. Certainly they had a much better chance of survival by staying as far from Trek as they could. Logic was a dubious thing, he supposed.

  His first thought was to tell them to stop following him and to make a path of their own, but then he remembered that conversation with Tweller at The Hideout. Sure, it was an alcohol-induced dialog, but not from Tweller’s side. Trek’s main takeaway from that conversation was to be himself. Truth was that, yes, he used people to boost himself, but he had that other damn gift, too: the gift of leadership.

  People followed his lead. What he never understood until just now was… Why?

  Their faces gave him the answer. It was all about his ability to bullshit.

  People like them stood around looking lost, where folks like Trek could manufacture things to do.

  People like them waited for someone to point so that they could walk where they were told to walk. Trek chose his paths, mostly, even if they were often the wrong ones.

  People like them needed a leader.

  Trek was a leader.

  “Fine,” he said and tapped his datapad again and pulled up a connection to Elf. “I hope that ship of yours is a good size,” he said, “because we’re going to have quite a few passengers.”

  “The team?”

  Trek nodded at the datapad and then shut down the connection.

  “All right,” Trek said. “I don’t want any dillydallying. Anyone breaks ranks or gives me any crap and you’ll be fending for yourself. Got it?”

  Nods.

  With a sigh, Trek snagged his datapad and sent a message to Lelly. If his crew was going to join him in this escape, it would be his entire crew.

  “Good. Let’s go!”

  The Time has Come

  McCracken replayed the satisfying crack of his fist against Trek’s jaw over and over in his mind as he continued his ascent away from Quarn.

  One of the many bonuses of being in the military was that he didn’t have to worry about space ports and clearances. If he wanted to leave, he left. End of story.

  “Joolahk,” he said through his datapad, “are you through the gates?”

  “Last ship is coming in now.”

  “Excellent. I couldn’t drop the power but the ports are still down, so no other ships are getting in or out of that station any time soon.”

  “Looks like at least one of them is getting away,” Joolahk said.

  McCracken checked the feed and saw one of the strangest ships he’d ever seen. It certainly wasn’t one of the makes he was accustomed to.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Never seen the model before.”

  “Armament?”

  “Nothing from what I can tell,” she replied. “Probably hiding something, though”

  McCracken’s eyes scanned the vessel. “Destination?”

  “Unknown, but it’s going the opposite way of our position.”

  “Gibbons,” McCracken said with a hiss while making a fist. “He’s getting away. I told him to get off the station, but I didn’t think he’d actually have the means to do it. Get all the information on that ship that you can and send it to my datapad. I’ll make sure that his pal Riggo gets informed as soon as our takeover is complete.”

  “Will do,” Joolahk said smartly. “What’s your ETA?”

  “I should be on board within the hour. Make sure everything is set and ready to go. We can’t afford any mistakes, Joolahk.”

  “Nope.”

  “McCracken out.”

  He cut the connection and waited for the information on that rogue ship. After a few minutes, he snapped his fingers and gave his second genuine smile of the day.

  “Excellent thinking, McCracken,” he said while tapping up a connection on this datapad.

  He went into the Attack Delivery Nanotech Agent folder and entered in his credentials. What he was about to do to Gibbons and his crew was far worse than a right hook to the jaw. Then he realized that he wouldn’t be able to use visual controls because he had left the ocular intercept unit back in his office.

  “Dammit,” he said.

  He would have truly enjoyed watching the spectacle that came from seeing Natasha destroy everyone on that ship. He’d find comfort in imagining their demise.

  There were plenty of vessels that she could commandeer in the area that could the catch strange vessle with relative ease. With that, McCracken activated her sequence knowing that she was resourceful enough to find a way to get to them.

  Enough is Enough

  The simple part was getting past the guards at the Spaceport, and that wasn’t very simple.

  Trek had shown his GDA badge and explained that there was a prison ship that needed clearance for docking. That part worked out swell. What wasn’t so easy was getting Broog through. While he was barely recognizable due to the beating that Adna had given him, his outfit clearly marked him as the head of Internal Security.

  Fortunately, that’s where Trek’s story about the ship that had been allowed to dock being a prisoner ship had saved the day.

  Unfortunately, the ship—Elf’s ship—was like something they’d never seen before. It was big, blocky, and had a distinctly unpleasant odor that Trek couldn’t quite place. There were strange markings on the side and front of it, and it looked like it hadn’t been given a good washing in a million years.

  Though it had taken some maneuvering, Elf had been able to get the nose in just far enough so that the boarding door was accessible. A force field covered the rest of the ship, protecting the terminal from the vacuum of space.

  Once inside, Elf called out that he was sealing up the ship and told everyone to lock in and get ready for propulsion. Never before, in all of his years of space travel, had Trek ever felt such a stomach-sucking pull as when Elf gunned the engines, and the sound was so mind numbing that he felt certain his eardrums were going to pop, which was only worsened by the piercing scream that Lelly unleashed as the ship jerked away. The only one who seemed to be even remotely enjoying the takeoff was Adna, and that was likely due to the fact that the ship was v
ibrating something fierce.

  “Where are we heading?” Elf called out.

  “Do you know where McCracken’s armada is?” replied Trek.

  “Yes.”

  “Go the opposite way of that.”

  After a while the engines died down to a hum, leaving Trek with a headache. Something big was going on, besides McCracken and his plans to take over The Committee.

  “Elf,” he said as the bot moved back into the central area, “where the hell did you get this ship? First off, it’s much larger than I’d expected. I was worried about the entire crew being able to fit, but you could easily house another fifty of us. Secondly, I’ve never seen a ship like this before.”

  “Me neither,” said Belchore.

  “Can’t say I’ve seen much like this anyplace,” Torg agreed. “I did notice some dirt in the back though. You got a green thumb, Elf?”

  Elf looked at his thumb. “No, it’s silver.”

  Trek stood up and looked Elf in his glowing eyes and said, “Spill it. What’s your deal?”

  Elf stepped back and sighed. “It’s a really long story.”

  “Give us the Scanner’s Digest version,” said Trek.

  “Love that magazine,” Opal said.

  “Great jokes in there,” Broog said.

  “Okay, okay,” Elf said with his hands up in surrender. “Where to start? Well… I’m basically the oldest being you’ve ever met, and are likely to ever meet. I come from a place that’s many thousand light years away from here.”

  “What?” said Belchore.

  “One thousand light years?” Opal said with eyes wide.

  Trek managed to ask, “And you’re a robot?”

  “Actually, I’m an Energy-Based Lifeform, hence the name ‘ELF.’ Thinking about it, I probably should have called myself that when chatting with The Committee folks. It would have saved a bit of trouble. Anyway, I spent most of my life residing in the internals of this ship, but I transferred into this robot getup once I heard you were going to be on station.”

  “Why me?”

  Belchore scoffed and said, “Yeah, why him?”

  “Because of who you are,” Elf replied a moment before his eyes dimmed. “Well, who I thought you were, anyway. Your books and the subsequent video series that went along with them kept me going for the last twenty years. I’ve watched every one of them so many times that even I can’t count it. Well, that’s not really true, it was thirty nine thousand, two hundred and three times. I was just being humorous.”

  “Hah,” said Trek with no emotion. “Go on.”

  “Right. When I found out you were going to be on station, I had to do whatever I could to meet you. And then when you made me your second-in-command, it wasn’t like I was going to turn that down!”

  Trek was having a hard time grasping this. “So McCracken really didn’t send you over?”

  “No, McCrackass would never have done that. He doesn’t exactly like me very much.”

  “I noticed that. Why did he call you ‘GOD,’ and why did it sound like he was saying it with all capital letters?”

  “As to that, it’s because I started using one of the chat lines on the ChattyChat™ networks about five years ago.”

  “So?”

  Elf was moving his foot about in circular motions. “I stumbled into the only room that was always active, but blocked. So I broke in and started talking with them. They asked me who I was and I knew from looking at the basics of your culture that what people really wanted was a name.”

  “You didn’t want them to know you were a ball of energy or whatever,” stated Torg. “Should never be ashamed of who you are, kid. I’m a gardener, for example, and I’m proud of that. I mean, I’m a detective too, but, well, you know what I mean.”

  “Thanks, Detective Torg, but I fear your view is in the minority about how people feel about unknown life, contrary to what the Archaic Traveler Theorists say.”

  “Yep,” Belchore said, pointing at Trek.

  “Anyway,” Trek said with a grimace. “Continue please.”

  “I had to give the chat people a name,” Elf said. “I was actually thinking to use your name, but I figured that it would be unlikely you’d be on one of those calls, so I just translated the name of the business that I work… worked for… and then used the acronym.”

  “And who was it that you worked for?”

  “You wouldn’t understand the real name, but the translation is Geodesic Organic Disposal.”

  “G.O.D.,” Trek said with a laugh. “So you called yourself GOD thinking that would be more believable than using my name?”

  “I had no idea at the time what GOD meant to you all.”

  “Hmmm,” Trek said. “Who else was in the chat room with you?”

  “It was all of The Committee members.”

  Trek dropped his head into his hands and began to laugh heartily, but it was one of those laughs that was more from hysteria than humor.

  “What’s funny?” said Belchore.

  “McCracken was using Broog as a patsy for these crimes, even though Broog wasn’t committing them.” Trek was feeling his adrenaline on the rise. “He was setting up The Committee, hoping that our team would pin them on all of these crimes…linking them to The Rebellion. If we had succeeded in that, McCracken would have publicly decimated their names and then would have pointed out that their GOD made them do it, making them look even more loony.”

  “Sounds hilarious,” Torg said without laughing.

  “I just can’t believe that they thought you were GOD… or should I say God?”

  “Well, technically speaking,” Elf said with some hesitance, “I am your God, but I just didn’t really pay attention to the fact that your cultures considered me as such.”

  “What?” said Trek, thinking that a hit of Soothe would really be swell at the moment.

  “Like I said,” explained Elf, “I’m old. Really old.”

  “Like how old?” asked Belchore.

  “Just over twenty thousand of your years.”

  “Seriously?” said Opal.

  Elf nodded at the little fellow.

  “Why did you come here?” said Lelly, smelling like he genuinely fit in with the ship.

  “My job brought me to this section of the universe, Lelly,” Elf answered. “I was sent here to dump waste on the planets that many of your races now inhabit. Some of those trash runs consisted of organic materials in conjunction with non-organic materials.” He looked uncomfortable. “Well, during that time your worlds must have been in a life-bearing state and so the garbage that I dumped ended up as the right mix in order to, it seems… give you life.” Elf hurriedly added, “But I’m not saying I’m The One God or anything like that. I have no idea if he or she or it exists. My race spent a lot of energy trying to solve that mystery, but we never succeeded.”

  “Maybe he dumped trash on your world, too?” Trek said with a sigh.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So how long have you been coming to the Gordo Galaxy?” asked Belchore.

  “To explain that, I need to go back to the beginning.” He sat down and put his hands in his lap. “You see, my job was essentially dumping garbage, like I’d said before. Well, about six thousand years ago I made my first run to your Gordo Galaxy.”

  “Then you couldn’t have created us,” said Broog. “The general consensus of scientists is that life began three-point-six billion years ago.” Everyone stared at Broog in amazement. “What? I read it in a book.” Their astonishment increased even further. “What? I can read!”

  “I can see why they think that,” Elf said, “and it’s probably true for basic life, but the fast-acting organic matter that our people dumped on your planets consisted of a complex DNA sequence that melded with your basic lifeforms and rapidly grew into full populations of intelligent beings. And that happened roughly six thousand years ago.”

  “Like that other book says,” Broog pointed out.

  “What other b
ook?” asked Elf.

  Nobody answered him.

  “I’m curious as to why you never went home,” Trek said.

  “I did,” Elf replied softly, “but when I got there I found out that my entire race had ascended without me. I guess in the end they had found God, or at least their version of it. I searched for a thousand years, trying to find a way to join them, but it was useless.” He pushed himself back up and walked over to one of the panels. “With no place else to go, I started scanning the different galaxies I’d been to in the hopes of finding some other lifeforms so I wouldn’t be alone. The Gordo Galaxy was the only one that had promise, so I stuck around.”

  “That’s sad,” said Adna.

  Aside from the ever-buzzing engines, everything got really quiet. Each of them seemed to be in their own universe, thinking things through. Trek certainly was. There was no place left for him now. McCracken had pretty much sealed his fate, even if the Supreme Commander of the military, and soon to be the leader of the entire Gordo Galaxy, first saved him from death. There was no “What would Rebben Coolait do?” in this situation. Mostly because Rebben Coolait would never have been in this situation.

  It was time to ask “What would Trek Gibbons do?”

  And an instant later, he had the answer.

  He stood up and grinned so evilly that even Belchore looked concerned.

  “Turn the ship around,” he commanded.

  “What?” said Broog.

  “Are you crazy?” agreed Torg.

  “Listen to me,” Trek said, pacing, “McCracken not only set us up, he tried to set up The Committee, and he’s about to set up the entirety of the Gordo Galaxy to be under military rule.”

  “So?”

  Trek looked at the Worge. “So, Belchore, if that happens, do you think that people will have better lives or worse lives?”

  “Better?”

  It was then that Trek remembered Belchore was a Worge and military-controlled governments were a way of life with them. “Okay, for some cultures that works, but do you really want to have a human running the military that controls your world?”

  Belchore sat up at that and looked at Elf. “Turn the ship around!”