MEGARAN LEGAL – Title Sequence and Act One

Opening Titles

Megara Three bobs jauntily along the office corridor, aware that all optical sensors, organic and non- were on him. And rightly so.

Cut to -

Megara Six spins around behind her desk to flash a tantalising glimpse of her inner glow.

Cut to -

Crusty old Megara Four pulses sternly as he surveys the other Megara arrayed before him around the conference table.

Cut to -

Megara One blinks his surprise, a picture of innocence as he zips out from under the skirt of a legal secretary.

Cut to -

Megara Two buzzes out from an office doorway, a dotty and endearing lilt to her flight path as she scans the corridor.

(Wah wah wah wadawa wah wah.)

ACT ONE

A beam, magnesium bright, lanced across the conference room and blew the Cyberman’s head off. The man’s grin could be classed as collateral damage as that was wiped clean off his face. Thankfully it had nothing to do with the searing energy and much more to do with the smoking Cyberman’s head that rolled across the carpet and thunked into a table leg close to Megara Three’s chair.

“What the hell did ye do that for?” demanded the tartan-suited fellow. “He’s with me!”

Three sympathised, in so far as his coolly logical mind would allow, but for the moment he was more focused on directing the appropriate level of disapproval at Megara One. “There’s also the question,” he said, “of where ‘Denny’ here availed himself of the disruptor beam. I thought we’d had you disarmed.”

“I believe every sentient being has the right to bear firearms.” One appeared to realise that everyone was expecting something more from his explanation. “And the right to re-equip themselves behind everyone’s back as soon as the opportunity presents itself.”

“Well, we’ll just have to disarm you again, won’t we,” insisted Four, managing an effective glower by upping the intensity of his natural glare by several tens of factors.

“Nothing doing,” protested One. “You’ll have to pluck it out of my cold dead core.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Anyway, it was a Cyberman. I reacted on impulse. They’re known to be hostile to all other forms of life.”

Two heaped on the wry. “It’s questionable whether you’re a form of life.”

The man in tartan stepped up to the table. “And anyway, like I said, this one’s not hostile.” He stooped to pick up the head by its convenient handlebars. Behind him the decapitated Cyberman stood framed in the doorway, still upright and coughing up black smoke from his collar. (Three considered a comment about the office’s no-smoking policy, but deemed it unwise given that their betartaned client still looked a little upset.) “At least, he wasn’t,” the man added, glumly examining the Cyberman head in his hands. The fixed slit-mouth and round eyes with the little tear-drop indent actually combined to lend it a fairly miserable expression of its own. “Alas,” the fellow began with a sigh, “poor – ”

“Please don’t do that joke,” requested Three. “We’re very sorry for your loss. Of course the firm will reimburse you.”

“Reimburse? You’ve got to be kidding!” The man held out the head for everyone to see. “This is an Invasion era Cyberman. Mint condition, he was. Irreplaceable.” He glanced back at the charred and ragged neck of the still-standing body. “I guess I can effect some repairs. But he won’t fetch nearly as much on e-bay.”

“E-bay?” said Six, horrified. “Are you meaning to suggest you trade in sentient species?” She nodded to Three. “I can see now why you were dubious about defending this man.”

“No, no. I’m not saying I’ll sell him. Poor lad.” He patted his Cyberman’s crown. “But you know, if he’s no good to the team any more, I’d like to make sure he goes to a good home.”

“The team?” queried Six.

“Aye.” The fellow surveyed the room, taking in each of the bobbing glowing spheroids in turn. “Have you no gone over the facts of my case yet?”

“We were getting to that,” said Two, shooting a sidelong datastream at One. “Please, take a seat, Mr – ah?”

“Jester,” said the man. “The Jester. Pleased to make your acquaintances.” He smiled as he sat, depositing the Cyberman head in his lap – and then thinking better of it and placing it on the table in front of him. He winked at Six. “Will you be taking my case, lassie? I think I’d rather like hearing your siky tones pleading my innocence.”

“No, I’m afraid Megara Six will be busy with another case. A parole hearing.” Three did his best to bow towards the Jester. “I will be handling your case. Ably assisted by Megara One over there.”

One beamed. Not with the disruptor this time, but merely shining a tad brighter. “Can we at least drop the Megaras?” he suggested. “Excuse us, Jester, we were discussing the matter of names when you entered. Megara this and Megara that, it’s all a bit of a mouthful, wouldn’t you agree? And it’ll be hard to tell us all apart on the page.”

“Er, what page would that be?”

“The minutes,” said One like it was obvious. He winked at Claudia, the human secretary who had carried on tapping quietly away in the corner throughout. “You are taking the minutes, I take it, Claudia?”

“Trying to,” she said. “Except someone keeps buzzing me with their tactile projection field.”

“What I like to call my sphere of influence,” said One and he winked again.

“It always comes back to balls with you, doesn’t it,” observed Two with more wry on top of her earlier wry. “Now can we please get back to the matter in hand. Perhaps, Jester, you’d care to go over the key points of your case. What is it that you’re supposed to have done?”

[To Be Continued...]

MEGARAN LEGAL – Pre-Credits

[Warning: I apologise in advance. This 'story' is unlikely to make any sense to anyone but Doctor Who fans. Non-Who material from yours truly can be found at Tortenblog (fantasy) and 4dEvil (SF Comedy). As for this site, please don't worry, this story will all be over in six parts.]

MEGARAN LEGAL

Pre-Credits Teaser

There was a buzz in the conference room. Several, in fact. This was nothing unusual for any room where a number of Megara were gathered – alien energy spheres were apt to emit some sound when hovering – but the first item on the morning’s agenda was cause for some excitement – and a fair amount of debate.

“I just don’t think we should take the case,” said Megara Three. “He’s a Time Lord.”

“Being a little racist, aren’t we?” remarked Megara One from the other end of the conference table. He hovered a short way above his chair, like all the Megara present, but was applying his tractor beam to push it gently back at what he liked to think of as a casual angle. He was fond of the human habit of leaning, but it wasn’t always easy to indicate posture when you were a spheroid. His political leanings, on the other (purely figurative) hand were notorious and it always amused him when his more liberal colleague, Three, sounded like he was taking a turn for the right.

“It’s not his race I’m concerned about. It’s the fact that he’s a renegade. He has a past record.”

“None of which will be admissible in court,” Megara Six pointed out in tones that couldn’t help being silky and sexy even when discussing business. Everyone knew it was down to a reprogrammed vocoder, but she wasn’t about to change her voice to suit them. Not when she could see the effect it had on the male staff and she was keen to retain that edge.

“It’s true,” agreed Megara Two, who had attempted similar adjustments to her vocoder, but her voice had come out a little gravelly. She didn’t mind: it still sounded quite sexy and fitted well with her seniority in the practice. It helped convey the wise air of a Megara who had been around the block a few times. And she had, that first day they had set up the practice and chosen their premises. Unaccustomed to human buildings, she had experienced some difficulty in locating the entrance. She had finally descended through a ventilation duct, only to be told that the doors at the base of the building and an elevator ride would serve as the conventional route to her office in future. She had – quite rightly – pointed out the redundancy of an elevator to a species that could freely levitate, but Megara Four had made it clear that they were now professionals in their own law firm and should act as such. Thus a little unnecessary luxury – like riding in an elevator – went with the territory. She had adjusted soon enough and now everyone, including Four, looked to her for guidance. “We can easily object to any attempt to bring it to bear,” she said.

Three was still not satisfied. “Yes, I realise that. But will our objections carry any weight when the Time Lords show up to bring him in?”

“Would they do that?” worried Four. “They have no jurisdiction here.”

“They’re Time Lords,” sighed Three. “They believe they have jurisdiction everywhere. Also, I’d hate to suggest such a thing, but they have no extradition treaty with Diplos, so if they do come after him it probably won’t be through official channels. I suppose it depends how badly they want the fellow.”

“Ah!” One chipped in keenly. “Then we hold them off with firepower. It’ll be like Rio Bravo, holed up in the town jail while the bad guys come to get the guy in our custody.”

“He’s not in our custody. He’d be our client.”

One wasn’t listening. “Or was it El Dorado? Which was the one with James Caan? I forget.”

“Well, movies aside,” said Four with heavily reinforced patience, “I think we should go ahead and take the case. We have, ahem, very little on our books at this time.” All the Megara present bobbed a shade lower. It couldn’t be denied: if they took this case, that would make two. It was early days and the success of their bold venture into private practice depended on their first big case. “And our client has been out enjoying the sights of Diplos for the past two days. If the Time Lords wanted him, they surely would have come for him by now.”

“Surely,” said Megara One, mulling it over. “That brings me to another matter.”

“Oh dear god,” said Four. “Not names again.”

“Well, it just so happens I think ‘Surely’ would suit Megara Two very well. Or ‘Shirley’. That’s even better. She sounds like a ‘Shirley’.”

“Does she really?” growled Four sceptically. “Personally I don’t see what’s wrong with our current designations. And I’m growing tired of you bringing this up in every meeting.”

“It’s on the agenda.”

“It’s always on the agenda,” said Six silkily. “You’re always putting it there.”

One inched suggestively forward over the table. “I haven’t made up my mind what to call you. How about we have a face to face and see what comes out? Or better yet, a face to – ”

“I’ll report you for sexual harassment,” she warned him.

“How can it be sexual? You’re an asexual justice machine.”

“I have a voice identifiably in the female range. That’s a different sex. Plus you know how good I am. I can make it stick.”

“If you’re going to talk dirty like that – ”

“Megara One – ” broke in Four. He’d heard quite enough.

“Call me – Denny.”

“I certainly won’t.”

“But when I repeat my designation over and over,” One protested, “I feel so foolish.”

“In that case I have a radical suggestion. Don’t do it.”

“But I have to convey the weight of my reputation somehow.”

“Then eat more doughnuts.”

One blinked, off and on once like a light bulb. “That’s not nice. Odo.”

“Excuse me?”

“You look like an ‘Odo’. Doesn’t he look like an ‘Odo’? What do you think, Alan?”

“Me?” Three was startled. He’d been busy thinking about the case and just how wonderfully identifiably female Megara Six’s voice was. He’d been picking up a lot of thoughts like that since working so closely with humans on a day-to-day basis. At first his precision-programmed legal mind had found it troubling. Right now he just found it – pleasant. “Me?” he repeated. “An ‘Alan’? Do you really think so?”

“Enough of this nonsense!” objected Four angrily. “Now can we please – !”

“Hallo! Sorry to interrupt,” said a new voice in an accent that each Megara’s internal database identified as ‘broad Scots’. “But have you lot decided to take my case or no?”

In the doorway was a shabby looking man in a shabbier-looking tartan suit and badly scuffed trainers. His unkempt brown hair was receding from his high forehead and heading for his shoulders. The bags under his eyes looked like they’d be good for carrying a fair quantity of duty-free, which went some way towards explaining the beer belly. His broad smile inflated his heavily stubbled cheeks and made his face look something like a grinning puffer fish.

Megara Three was set to castigate him for sticking his head in on their meeting, but stopped himself.

Just behind this unlikely figure stood a Cyberman.

Cygnus Belle – Part 4 of 4

The ship sped on, back on course for the target world and the mood of her compliment drifted through numerous shades as if shifting with each crossing of a planetary orbit.   First, there had been tension with the uncertainty of other chance patrols or even a determined pursuit; then the mood had relaxed and become almost leisurely as the distance between the Belle and the outer screens of ships lengthened with each second.   Finally, the tension and awe had returned, suspenseful accompaniment to the objective’s approach, everyone suddenly aware that subsequent execution of their duties would have a critical effect on the outcome.   Moreover, as usual, Lady Luck had yet to declare her side.

To Perry, though, Lady Luck held no significance.   His own actions, in recovering from an unforgivable delay, had saved the ship.   The Commander’s words had inspired him greatly and he had largely forgotten the total annihilation of the enemy crew.   Only now, in the sanctity of his bow turret, did any reticent thoughts choose to invade.

Defiantly, he shook them off, reminding himself that those men had died instantaneously.   In becoming nothing, they had felt nothing.

From the moment the alarm sounded, he was gratefully safe from such reverie, and devoted his attention solely to the target board in front of him.   The contacts encroached on the flatscreen display, clustering like bees, and his fists tightened over the paired triggers that tethered his reflexes so securely to the ship’s defence.

In they came.   Over a hundred asteroids; implanted with a sensor array and an inexpensive set of rocket motors, they had been vigilantly hovering in their scattered sentry posts for decades.   Now, their computer-intelligences grasped the notion of a threat to their ward, and they steered their massive bodies to intercept the interloper.   The anticipated impact would be mutually destructive, but their human co-ordinators were safely housed in great fortresses below the verdant surface of Psalms; they were men who would doubtless pray on behalf of the poor foes whose lives they had extinguished.

The swarm of rocks approached from all angles; port, starboard, high, low.   The Belle would depend upon her stately grace and manoeuvrability, as well as her gravitic deflectors, for survival; she would also look to her sharp-minded gunners to seriously thin out the lumbering hordes long before any reached her.

So Perry set to work, keying in as many targets as possible, locking them in an appropriate order of fire according to their estimated time of strike.   The computer automatically filtered out any targets similarly acquired by the other turrets.   Voices chattered over the comm, but they were muted, intended for ears other than his – Engineers, Helmsmen, the Screens Officer.   Aron Perry fingered the smooth pip of the locket about his neck, then returned his mind to the task at hand.   He was ready.

Target markers illuminated on the flatscreen, Perry’s turret swung and a bead crossed to intersect with the digital marker; Perry’s thumbs pressed hard, twice.   The cannon flared with broad beams of white and the turret interior dimmed in answer.   The target marker splintered and vanished; on came the next.

Lights played in Perry’s head and his eyes only rarely sneaked glances at space beyond his revolving bubble.   The advancing contacts appeared to disperse, their numbers dwindling comfortably.   The ease of the operation astounded him, threatening to intoxicate him; he laughed and saw Myranda’s adoring face.   He fired again.

There! His eyes caught a light, tumbling towards the ship from space – too close! Panic forced him to spin the turret manually, searching out the mark with his naked eyes, while cold sweat danced over his brow and his heart beat the time.   There was nothing to be seen.   He looked down; nothing on the board either.   It would’ve hit by now.

Then he saw the locket, spinning its loose pirouette from about his neck, hanging rebelliously outside his gunner’s tunic; he recognised its sickening reflection, goading him in the clear surface of his turret’s bubble.   Thumping his chair, he switched the turret back to automatic and saw the first real threats seeping through the Belle’s phalanxes of fire.

A boulder loomed in his vision like a train from a tunnel and he knew he would never shoot it in time.   His hands slipped from the triggers and he threw his arms up wildly, as the boulder grew to a small hill and brutally smashed its way through the straining shields into the Belle’s starboard hull.

The first to reach Perry was the searing wave of heat, radiating from the friction of the rock’s passage through the shields; next was the impact itself.

The explosion sent the turret and his chair within it into frenzied revolutions, while Perry’s body arched and twisted like a smoking ant under a magnifying glass.   His thrashing limbs struck the walls of his turret and a fire sprouted from his fingertips and his feet, blasting its way up through him until its sheer volume seemed to force his brain from his skull in smouldering fragments of consciousness.   As he embraced oblivion, Perry’s burning mind reflected on how easily his hand slipped through the metal shell behind him, and wondered at the force that had turned his walls to liquid.

 

***

 

 

“Bow gun’s out!   I’ve two more targets in that sector!”

The panic in Sensor Officer Chapell’s voice was decidedly unseemly, but Hensa let it pass without a reprimand.   He stroked his chin as if the game had the pace of chess, then smiled with a confidence that spilled over into his voice.   “Jettison the Bottle, Mister Kamov.”

The Lieutenant raised no objections, either because he was an absolute model officer, or perhaps because he had sided with Shaun over the original argument.   He triggered the separation, and they almost felt the cramped vehicle being wrenched from the ship’s gut.   “Lifeboat engines to maximum.”

“Nicely done, Lieutenant,” Hensa commended him quietly; it had been no more than he had expected.   The Commander settled easily back in his chair as the mines on his display chased the bright blotch that was the Belle’s only infant.

Moments later, with just her nose ungraciously bloodied, the Belle successfully launched her precious load at the still distant globe of Psalms.   As the bomb was blown from its housing and sailed cleanly away, Commander Hensa swore his vengeance complete for the damage done to the Empire’s -  his - grand old lady.

Kamov issued the verbal countdown for H-1 ignition on the bomb.   When those seconds had elapsed, not the most powerful of Trinity weapons could prevent the bomb’s detonation.

“Amen,” said Hensa as Kamov’s commentary concluded and earned himself an appreciative smile from the first officer.   He addressed the Operations Bridge over the comm.   “Turn her about, Mister Kamov.   Prepare to engage the homeward program.”   He paused, stroking his chin, then stood from his chair, wandering over to his Sensor Operator.

“Relay aft camera output to all internal screens,” he advised the man quietly.

“Aye, Sir!” the man snapped eagerly.

And they were witness to heaven’s most glorious display yet.

 

***

 

 

The bomb saw very little of the real universe, unleashed from its kennel within the ship.   At completion of countdown, it faithfully made the transit to the first level of H-space and proceeded to the molten heart of the living planet at approximately one million times its launch velocity.

At the exact moment of re-entry into normal space, it detonated.

Exploding between two universes, the bomb ruptured the curtain separating one from another, flooding the broiling core with expanding hypermatter.   As the tremor of the blast sought the crust, the magma collapsed in a ballooning wave of energy.   An ethereal ring of fire overtook the concussion wave, devouring the very substance of the world around it.   The globe became a sphere of diamond and gold, galloping outwards like God’s chariot until space itself was a glorious conflagration across the entire spectrum, that dazzled from every screen inside the Belle, burning its astral radiance as a permanent rainbow-star in the minds of its humbled audience.    It was a flowering garland of fiery gems; a vision to still the heart of Man.

And Hensa thought, Today, we have destroyed the Universe.

 

***

 

Painful consciousness seeped in and Perry awoke to a gallery of discomforts, the least of which was the booming voice, somewhere far off, announcing that someone or somewhere had been destroyed.   He thought perhaps the message referred to him.

Blood filled his swollen nostrils and his throat gulped for air; his ears were shrilly whistling and he couldn’t open his eyes.   His body was alive with pain and shaking with the fierce cold; he was weak and nauseous and his – right? - arm and leg, such as he was aware, were locked in some fearsome vice.   A universe of agony rewarded an experimental tug to free his arm and brought a swimming vision of molten walls, his arm cutting through thick fluid and blackness.   The horror of his survival forced a fit of sobbing and a descending weight of pain and despair.

Alone, in cold, emotionally debilitating silence, Perry cast his mind back to the Trinity naval crew that he had melted away into space.   Their disintegrated forms carried his thoughts to the people of Psalms, military and civilian alike, for whom time was forever arrested and for whom life was no longer trial nor blessing.   Although the captain had explained the bomb’s function, the sheer scale was beyond human imagination, even in its dulled condition in Perry’s battered skull.   Perry was left to contemplate the smaller scenes: laughs and smiles that died in a wave of superheat, men melting to oblivion in mid-stride over a land that had boiled away to gas, gently sobbing babies evaporating in the arms of their loving mothers.   Not one would know their death; not one would know another thought.

The Belle had preserved even this crewman – the pathetically charred doll that had nearly cost her very existence.   “I’m sorry,” he whimpered in frantic succession, slowly falling into tearful moans.

He was still crying when they found him, but their presence and their efforts to cut him free were an offence to his crippled senses, irretrievably immersed as he was in the arrested lives of over four billion humans.   “Leave me!   Get away!” he screamed, his words only barely intelligible to the watching officers and the men who worked to save him.   “It’s God’s punishment!   They’re all gone!   We deserve to die for what we’ve done!”

Lieutenant Kamov started towards the invalid, poised to strike him with his glove and snorting like an angry bull.   “Enough, Gunner!   Where’s your honour?!”

Hensa stayed his first officer with a hand at his elbow.   He said softly, “It’s alright, Lieutenant.”   His eyes roved over the mangled wreck of the turret interior, the dull backdrop of space beyond the pressure shield, the horrid mask of flesh and blood where the man’s face had once been.   He thought back to the spectacle of Psalms; he thought of the rim of that jewelled crown, advancing two centimetres every Martian year, chasing the Cygnus Belle back home.   He felt its magnificence blazing silently somewhere inside him.

“He never saw it.”   Val Hensa brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the smooth black velvet of his uniform.   “He never saw it.”

 

SAF

Cygnus Belle – Part 3 of 4

Bow Gunner Aron Perry clicked the locket shut, sealing away the hand-painted miniature of Myranda, his betrothed; he would see her again after all and he didn’t need her peach-skin beauty to see him through the next four days.   The Belle would engage in her prolonged pounce on the hopefully unsuspecting world of Psalms and, before the launch of her payload was over, she would spin on her toes for deceleration and the journey home.

More than glory – or Nobility – Myranda was what the Belle meant to him.

He had served three prior missions with the one lady in order that he might woo the other.   Though his marriage had been an agreed contract between ambitious parents, the love between the children had to be won and a man was not fit for wedlock before he had sufficiently matured in the service of his choosing; Myranda’s affection for Perry had blossomed with the action against the Trinity’s Twelfth Fleet, even though much of his own glory had been as a mere brass-rubbing of the whole engagement.   Since then, Perry had concentrated on his sole objectives in life – attainment of the rank of Senior Gunner and the consecration of his planned marriage to Myranda, a pleasant daughter of a moderately wealthy merchant whose home sat on Mars itself.   His vivid and fanciful imagination allowed him to see this happy future whenever he chose and, in times of difficulty, it was always the bright gleam of Myranda’s eyes in her tiny portrait that shouldered his failing spirits.

That and the grand history of the steel princess that conveyed him in her armoured womb.   For, in her distinguished career under hostile fire, the Cygnus Belle had never failed one of her sacred sons.

He only began to doubt her again when the firing jerked him rudely into alertness.

 

***

 

 

When sensation returned in full, Hensa’s first sight was of Senior Gunner Murchik, dangling limply from the rail to which his lanyard was hooked, suspended over the gallows’ trapdoor of the weapons bay.   His feet drooped partly into the opening and had prevented the automatic defences from sealing the doors.   Pressure was normal and Hensa could just hear the shock waves subsiding through the hull.

He had only been momentarily stunned and the pressure shield had held.   So far, so miraculous.

Standing and instinctively brushing down his uniform, Hensa edged towards the opening to follow the solemn indicator of CPO Shaun’s own harness, flailing uselessly like some dull black ribbon.   The bay’s squared-off perimeter defied his searching eyes for as long as possible, before he gazed down at the sprawling form of the Chief Petty Officer; the man’s face was scorched red and hair and coat had been blasted away.   He lay perfectly still on the scored surface of the bomb, the occasional bright point of a star flicking by either side like some hasty torch-bearer at a military man’s funeral.

Hensa bit his lip hard in semi-despair, but his quick mind forced action on his only moderately beaten frame.   He swung his legs over the bay doorway and dropped himself onto the bomb; he was shouting orders into the button-comm on his sleeve even as his boots clunked down.

“Marine Section Four!   Medical Team!   Main Weapons Bay, now!   Helm, guard our stomach, if you please!” his voice thundered about him in the metal cave, but their oppressive resonance made no impression on him; his thoughts were already on the urgent matter before him.

Kneeling beside Shaun’s inert body, he gently cradled the skull in his right hand – and happily noted a flickering eyelid.   Encouraged by the revelation that his crewman had not died after all, he looked behind the fellow’s head to examine the crucial firing contact against which he had fallen.

 

***

 

 

Aron Perry felt the shove of an attitude change and geared himself for the target to swim into view.   Eyes fixed firmly on the flatscan before him, hands on the twin controls that would engage the pulse cannon, he uttered a bullet of a prayer to the Belle while his mind seconded with an impassioned vow to Myranda; his kill had been dedicated before it was made.

The ship’s blunt nose arced through fifteen degrees and Perry made the wasteful mistake of scanning surrounding space for a visual contact.   He was rewarded with the shape of an impossibly variable star, flaring and shifting against the deep blue sphere of heaven – there! to port and high!

The target – a corvette of the Holy Navy of the Human Trinity, as identified by the sensors, which squawked for attention from their controlling gunner – took advantage of Perry’s delay and it’s guns sent four sunlight beams raining in on the gracefully-manoeuvring Belle.   One, it seemed, was directed at Perry’s vulnerably widened eyes.

It took all of Aron’s discipline to refrain from flinching and he felt the turret dim under the distortive effects of the shields, cast up in the space before the ship.   Heat and shock-waves broke through to him, but they had bean weakened to insignificance by the sheer defensive power dispensed by the frigate; as such, he ignored it and studied his console furiously.   The Belle was rolling on her central axis now, preparing to present her high flank to the enemy – and Perry was not about to miss his greatest chance of inflicting a wound.

His luck proved true, as the corvette spun towards them, nosing for an attack at the exposed sections of the old frigate’s belly – gunning for the weapon’s bay.   She crossed Perry’s path a second time and, on this occasion, he simply watched his instruments for that vital lock.

As the light reached his eye, he depressed the twin contacts and found his thumbs refusing to lift.   Each time the gun circuits were replenished, the energy was instantly discharged, the angry Belle spitting like a venomous dragon at the sparrow that had dared to strike her.

The target’s shields must have been weak, all the energy diverted for a concerted blast against the Belle’’s superlative force walls; white heat stroked one of her engine cowlings, massaging the hull to fluid, before the core of the ship burst into space and the fusion motor expended its remaining output in one burgeoning globe of plasma.   It died to nothing in a fraction of a second, but there was little wreckage to herald its passing rage.

His pride and his glory were mingled with plain relief.   He found, too, they were tainted with the worrying absence of debris signalled by his impartial console.   The bodies of the crew should at least have been permitted to tumble through space, a silent and eternal memorial to their respective displays of courage.

Perry relaxed back into his couch and sighed with the weight of the moment.

 

***

 

 

“Just bad luck,” conjectured Lieutenant Kamov gravely, and his cold eyes sent that harsh truth into the minds of all the officers assembled around the mess table.   “Psalms has extensive patrol patterns and we just happened to stray into one.   No need for gloom, though.”

“Indeed,” ruminated Hensa.   “We would have encountered a good deal more than a corvette had we not risked transit through the H-Snare.”   He addressed the other officers, sparing Kamov since he already shared a similar view.   “We haven’t wasted our efforts this far, gentlemen, and I don’t intend that we should waste them in future.

“Further, the payload is in perfect functional order and has only a few superficial surface scars for the enemy’s trouble.”   He welcomed the nodding heads and the reassured faces; it was time to lighten the mood.   “And since they won’t have opportunity for detailed inspection of the device, we needn’t feel too ashamed over the small matter of poor presentation.”

Polite murmurs of laughter were his response, as expected, with only Lieutenant Kamov confining his reaction to a stubbornly silent smile.   The first officer’s Romanesque features still offered supplementary encouragement to his fellows, though, as they were perfectly accustomed to his reserved modes of expression.

“For the superstitious among you, you may also rest easy in the knowledge that the Belle’s fatality record remains perfectly clean,” Kamov announced with inhumanly cool satisfaction.   “CPO Shaun is recovering already, while our Senior Gunner merely complains of a dented pride.”

“More than compensated for by the success of his man Perry, I think,” Hensa followed up.   “I afforded that man extended relief periods on the way home, along with a personal word of praise.   I think that will see him through to our return and a recommendation for a Promethean Star.”

But Kamov would not permit him the new enthusiasm of his subordinates to last.   “Let’s hope the boy shoots as well when we cross the Mine Barrier before the launch, mm?”

 

 

 

To Be Continued…

Cygnus Belle – Part 2 of 4

Ten minutes in H-space.   Barely sufficient to relate all the details he felt his thirty-four crew should know.   Still, he felt obliged to try and his voice sang out from the hidden speakers in every empty corridor and cabin, as well as descending on the expectant men at their respective stations.

“You will all be aware,” Hensa continued after his formal greetings, “that the Belle has undergone a recent refit – and that she has had her Disintegrator removed.   And I am certain none of you believe that has been replaced with a mail palette.”   He paused, allowing time for laughter and time for his own thoughts to compose themselves.   “No, she has been the lucky first recipient of a special type of bomb – and it will be our task to deliver it to the people of the Psalms homeworld.

“Psalms system is heavily defended and the Trinity do well to afford it such protection; it harbours one of their greatest centres for technological achievement.   And Intelligence states that, at an unknown facility there, the Trinity are near to development of a H-2 drive.   That means the scale factor will be squared, gentlemen.

“They could have drop troops in your homes and have you taking Communion before you’d rubbed the morning dust out of your eyes.”   Hensa arrested his speech again, even though he knew nobody would be laughing; he wanted the next statement to penetrate unhindered.   “I’d ask you to think about that when we destroy Psalms.”

Silence invaded the empty channel, filling the men with chill breezes from nowhere.   There had never been much question over what the bomb might do for the people of Psalms – it was over eight metres long and nearly as wide.   But the Commander had made it sound as if the system would be finished.

Then the circuit was jammed with the blare of alarms.

 

***

 

“Fire the motors, Mister Joland!   One hundred percent thrust!”

The Chief Engineer answered his CO with a glance of untempered curiosity.   It was unheard of to wastefully fire the fusion engines in H-flight; it would be more logical and worthwhile to paddle furiously down a waterfall.   Not to mention that they would be accelerating blindly the instant they entered Psalms system.   But Hensa was a man he felt compelled to respect for reasons more than mere seniority.   He complied, flicking fingers sending light-speed instructions from his console back to the main engines.

“And fasten your eyes to that scope, Mister Chapell!   If so much as an atom impacts on my hull without my knowledge, I’ll have you strapped to that bomb – clear?!”

“Aye, Sir!” the poor man snapped back, voice fragmenting like grit through a sieve.

“Troops to damage control points.”   That last Hensa issued in the full glare of vain hope.   If they struck the Grid at all, the damage control teams would be flailing uselessly in H-vacuum, utterly unable to grasp the surrounding reality, let alone assemble the cleanly sheared segments of Imperial Naval frigate that spun around them.   Like CPO Shaun with the Bottle, he had not originally wanted troopers on this mission, and he was hard-pressed to find them tasks to perform.   They were not full Knights, thank His Majesty, but their pride must still have hurt some.

He dismissed the reflection and watched the approaching energy source looming in his pictosphere.   In short seconds, it had expanded into the familiar shape of a burning net of scimitar-beams.

H-Snare.   Each node was a generator no larger than a football, and he felt their criss-cross pattern of light falling across his face.   He imagined he was sweating in a perfect array of X’s.

“Impact minus ten,” Chapell voiced reverently and unnecessarily.

“Grav Distorters!” yelled Hensa to his rear, revealing too much panic for his own liking.   There was no reason why this shouldn’t work, but -.

The Screens Officer rapidly triggered a selection of contacts and switches, then acknowledged; Hensa nodded and kept his eyes trained on the graphic image played out on the deckspace before him.

The grid was widening.

And the computer confirmed that it wasn’t only perspective’s bluff.   The H-Snares were designed to adjust grid-spacing according to the target, in order to conserve energy (why make fifty incisions where ten would suffice?), and the Belle was currently emitting energy at the level of a Carrier under normal H-operations.   With external generators  producing a deceptive G-field equivalent to a modest Battlecruiser, the little lady slipped by like a minnow.   The crew watched the Snare grow to a diamond, filling their displays, before disappearing to aft.

Smoothly, Hensa sank deeply back in his chair, emitting a quiet sigh.   Presently, he gazed down at the sleeves of his uniform.   It was hardly ruffled.

 

***

 

Commander Hensa had ordered the Belle’s flame-tail cut just moments after emerging into the Psalms system, while permitting the fractional bursts of minor motors to adjust for her correct approach to the target world.   Despite the enforced communications silence (there was no-one friendly with whom they could communicate), Hensa maintained alert status for the duration; their entry above the orbital plane would have bought them some time, but he was convinced that response units would be scheduled the instant the light of their fusion engine reached the main world.

After two hours of silent study of the sensors by his Bridge Officers, he at least gave the troopers leave to stand down.   He also ordered refreshments delivered to each duty station, granting Steward Mobelson his first chance for action.

Feeling satisfactorily revitalised, he took Senior Gunner Murchik and CPO Shaun down to the belly deck to conduct the formal inspection of the payload – required, following H-1 transit, for any equipment exposed to the aphysical universe through which they had travelled.   He left the icily efficient Lieutenant Kamov in control of the Command Bridge and met the non-coms two minutes later above the inner bay doors.

“Field strength optimum,” announced Shaun after a grave examination of the wall-mounted indicator.   He spoke a brisk order over the comm to the Ops Bridge and the men hooked up their harnesses while the deck slid away from beneath their boots.   Space sucked at their eyes in the gaps between bomb and hull.

Ignoring the illusory draw, all three dropped slowly on the harnesses to plant their feet on the pitted surface of the bomb.   Each mini-crater was proof of a collision with some small particle floating free in H-Space; all those on the upper side evidence of its single test-launch, at least a year before, against a non-existent target.   Its ugly, uncompromising cylindrical shape offended the Belle with its presence and offended Hensa with its smug lack of chivalry; to the Commander, the style of the weapon hurt more than the powerful warhead.

Sniffing at the fate of the target world, Hensa joined his two juniors in ranging over the limited curve of the bomb’s metallic surface, comparing actuality to their respective libraries of technical knowledge.   Hensa particularly concentrated on the launching bolts which secured the device to his precious ship; he would rather have seen her fall victim to a Snare than have this warhead detonate within the vessel’s hull.   The other men concerned themselves largely with the healthy function of the weapon itself.

“Lift!” Hensa commanded, more than content with his own conclusions, and his powered harness hoisted him back to deck level.

He barely heard Murchik’s similar order, was faintly aware of the man’s frantically whining harness, over the rolling blast that issued from beyond the bomb bay.   Sight abandoned him altogether, as a familiar furnace-glare consumed his surroundings, the ventral bay of the Belle and CPO Shaun, while an unseen boarder threw him bodily to the deck aft of the bay doors.

The Cygnus Belle had been hit, and he had felt the wound twice as deeply as she.

 

To Be Continued…

Cygnus Belle – Part 1 of 4

Another slice of ancient writing history from me, this time a dash of space opera I suppose you’d call it. Needs work, would be my kindest estimation of it now. But it’s the sort of core idea that, given time and greater talent, I might have fancied developing into a full blown novel at some point.

 

 

The gold of the buttons shimmered like so many stars, arranged in impossibly straight-line constellations on the velvet blackness of Commander Val Hensa’s uniform great-coat.   The Imperial Crest burst forth on each rounded surface, proclaiming the majesty of the Martian Empire with flame-bright certainty.   Eminently satisfied, Hensa drew a deep breath, inspecting the cut of his figure in the holo.   The image remained a frozen statue as he strutted a full circle around it, scrutinising the twin pleats draping gently outwards from the creaseless waist-sash of scarlet, gauging the precise tilt of the peaked cap and the tapering expanse of cropped hair protruding at the base of his own skull.   Incredibly enough, today there was nothing to adjust.

And that coerced a smile.

Today, he was to embark upon a special mission and it was essential that he looked his impeccable best.   It meant a great deal to the crew – they took it for granted that anyone who would devote so much care over surface matters would clearly give even greater consideration to any action they might undertake.

And they would be right.   For it was a basic truth of modern warfare in the Martian Empire; and not one of the other human territories could claim the same immaculate approach to the waging of interstellar conflict.   The Corporates could keep their shabby mercenaries and purchased slaughter, as could the Trinity retain their unruly – he would have said unholy - religious fervour, and the worst of fortunes to them all.   No, the Empire was the true seat of Humanity’s tradition, where Man could wear his honour with the ease of donning the Emperor’s cloth.   There were no medals to be had for being there, but there were awards for the kind of courage that could fill Space itself; courage worthy of an Interstellar Emperor and all the embodiment of such a daunting concept.

“Stand down!” he ordered the holo with pride and, sweeping his genuine leather attaché from the desk at his side, he exited with a freshly confident stride.   Seven floors below, he knew, a car waited to conduct him to his new command.

***

She was a kindly fashioned frigate, her designer’s love of war beautifully captured in every womanly curve.   Her hull stretched back from the wasp-tail bow, a smooth cylindrical fuselage only complimented by the eel-shaped fuel blisters that ran along her flanks, curling their tails into the tenderly squashed tube of the dual fusion drive outlet.   Atop her slender body (for there was an up, courtesy of full grav-fitting on all decks), sat the half-teardrop of metal that housed the Command Bridge, and nestled in the nose and tail of each curve were the glistening beads of the pulse guns’ lenses and the dark recesses of the automatic missile tubes.

The Cygnus Belle was a fattened sword, swollen but supremely graceful.

Currently hidden by the dock was the door of the Main Bay which, yawning during any of the ship’s conventional missions, would reveal the lethal snout of a Medium Grade Disintegrator.   Behind that, cosseted in its own separate pouch, was the ubiquitous lifeboat, otherwise known as the Bottle, for reasons additional to mere appearance.

“It’s excess baggage on this trip, I’d say,” opined the Chief Petty Officer, Rol Shaun, arguing with a couple of subordinates at the foot of the ramp.

His two juniors, Marl and Krieber were less than convinced.   The Bottle was a friend to no Naval man, least of all the non-coms, but there were a few tales of some boats reaching habitable planets, or evading enemy craft, drifting long enough to bring communicators to bear on a friendly vessel.   In short, many simply regarded her as the ship’s baby – essentially useless in practical terms, but inordinately precious to morale.   Marl said as much with an impolite cough.   “Sir, the Belle would hate to fly with an empty stomach.   She’s had her teeth ripped out as it is.”

Krieber sensibly said nothing.   He faced the others and had already seen the Commander step from the car that had come silently to rest behind Shaun.   They only began to suspect as Krieber fiddled with the lie of his cravat and cap.   Six heels dug deep into the hypersteel of the dock and the trio of officers snapped hands to touch the peaks of their caps; Hensa duly returned the salute and shook each by the hand.

“We’re missing the officers aren’t we?” he finished with a warm inquiry.

“No, Sir,” Shaun responded.   “Lieutenant Kamov and the others are aboard, running through preliminaries.   He was convinced you could be spared the trouble, sir.”

“Oh, I never find it a task to sift through a ship’s systems.” Hensa paused momentarily, reflecting on the various classes he’d had the pleasure of commanding; some of them were larger contemporaries of the Cygnus Belle’s class.   “At any rate, it will speed our departure some and we can only benefit from that.   Now, what’s this I caught concerning the Bottle?”

Shaun was first to explain, lending his evident bias to the situation, while his juniors merely awaited opportunity to chip in with a few addenda.   Hensa casually dismissed them, though, his mind already made up.   There was something about that shape, the moderate bulge it produced in the frigate’s abdomen when airborne, that defied replacement with an empty gouge.

“I think we’ll keep her, Shaun.   There’ll be absolutely no chance of a pick-up if we are forced to scuttle – bu-ut I’d rather have her anyway.   For the men.”   He nodded, his thoughts neatly ordered by the motion, and turned to assail the ramp to the port airlock.

“Welcome to the Belle, sir,” chirped both Marl and Krieber in unfortunate unison, and Shaun simmered quietly as they followed the Commander aboard.

***

She broke from the dock two hours after Hensa had boarded, effecting an upward freefall with a concerted push from her silent AG motors; she nosed through the clouds, a spear-straight salmon fighting the natural flow of gravity in her quest for the open waters of space.   Her shape slipped easily through the cloying air beyond Port Hamilton’s Environ Field, then the murky blue-grey petered away to a backdrop of blue tissue-paper; beneath her, the clouds milled and flocked, their matted eiderdown barely marked by the frigate’s passage.

The water-colour wash drained away to gem-specked blackness.   Cygnus Belle was home again.

***

“Prepare to light the fusion motors, Mister Joland,” Hensa commanded, suitably relaxed in the Control Couch following the arduous climb to escape velocity.   (In newer classes, the internal AG cushioned the effects of such acceleration – besides the basic commodity of up-and-down.)   “And,” he had to stop to recall the name of his First Officer, “Mister Galobi, calculate the H-course for an above-ecliptic entry into the Psalms system.”

“Sir, is that -” Lieutenant Galobi’s voice rang crystal-clear through the ship’s comm system; he was currently Duty Controller down on the Operations Bridge, up at the Belle’s smoothly tapered nose.   Hensa cut him short, but kept his tone diplomatically even; an Imperial Officer did not question orders without good cause, and Hensa knew how sound was Galobi’s reason.

“The order is confirmed, Lieutenant.”   He gazed about the Command Bridge at the few faces there, noting that all of them had turned back to their consoles after hastily snatched glances at their Commander.   Good, he thought, I don’t have many novices on board. He added, for everyone’s benefit, “And don’t worry, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, Sir.”   The circuit died, Galobi apparently satisfied.

Commander Hensa relaxed a little more.   This operation was not going to be easy, for sure, but it was made all the harder by having to conceal rather pertinent facts from his officers and men – at least until they exited into H-1.   Right now, he was surrounded by four of those men, all youthful and spilling over with enthusiasm and courage.   And why not?   The Naval College instilled them with everything.   But, sadly, too many knew how to throw up their screens, just like a warship, to project the image of an indestructible vessel of His Imperial Majesty’s Navy.   And too many saw their screens fail in the bright face of enemy fire.   Well, Hensa knew there were worse things than lasers to fear.

But then, there were still better prizes than glory to be won.

There was survival of the Empire.   There was justice, freedom, Right. And there was Nobility; because, in the Martian Empire, there was no substance more valuable than Royal Blood.   It was available to all, from commoners to Commanders, through genetic implants donated by their graces, the Imperial family, and sown into the offspring of any that earned its worth.   Commander Hensa, your son could be Emperor someday.

He surveyed the faces again, masks of bravura photographed in the light of their consoles – one to for’ard, two aft and another to starboard.   He let his eyes drift past, into the rigid hypersteel bulkhead and out into the stark, cold death of space; he tried to picture the Belle carrying them like chicks beneath her eggshell skin.

Nobility.   Will you grant me at least that, my Lady?

 

To Be Continued…

A Fly In The Eye – Part 2 of 2

The words, like a cold blade, sliced him cleanly in two.

He stared at his old friend in disbelief. He had spent many of his better days and evenings with the man who now sat in the chair opposite. He had been the only one to remain, while others fled in terror from small-town boredom. He had helped him through the sour disaster of his earliest romantic entanglement. His friendship had been one of life’s few constants.

And here it was, breaking like a cloud.

Clive stammered helplessly.

“That’s just the way it is!” Tim shouted, his voice shaky. “And you’d best wake up to it.”

“Desert me, will you? Toss your own friend on the scrap heap?”

Tim sighed, then leaned over the table so that he might project his hushed words the extra yard. Raised voices had no more than a tiring effect.

“Don’t give me that! Just take a minute and think about how much we’ve all had to put up with already.” He let the words travel. “All I’m saying, I’m saying for your own bloody good! I’m saying get your act together, get help. Or for Christ’s sake, suffer in silence and don’t come bothering me with it. Simple, straight up and bloody well real.”

He was cynical, thought Clive, but he could no more look him straight in the eye than anyone else. He was fully aware of how the sight pulled at their stomachs, and how people took detours around him in the streets. Their determined efforts not to share his seat on the bus had not escaped his attention either. Knowledge of that hurt deeply, and it competed fiercely with the throbbing pain around and behind his left eye.

“All I’ve said is real!” Clive protested. “The larvae are sleeping now. It’s only when they move, when they eat, I behave – unpredictably.” The voice’s apparent calm was not reflected in his expression and he begged without speaking.

“Listen to you, Clive! You’re truly convinced by all of this. For Christ’s sake, you’re not well!”

At that point, Clive could only break into tears, his head burying itself hurriedly in his quivering hands. Tim’s voice became an unwanted muttering, sinking further and further across the room. Somewhere along the way it had slipped into a well, and had plunged, muted and receding, until it was lost forever.

Clive cautiously raised his head.

Tim still sat across the table and he was still talking, but none of the sounds completed their journey. For an uncomfortable two minutes, Tim spoke and Clive stared, trying to read the emotions as they swept over his friend’s face.

Until he had read enough.

“Do you think I really need your help?” he cried. “I can see it in your eyes. Thinly veiled disgust! You don’t even recognise me any more!”

Admission, empty of guilt or shame, made itself known in Tim’s silent gaze.

Clive struggled to find breath inside him.

He stood sharply, his head reeling with the loss of someone close. His legs, straightening, pushed the chair back, its legs scraping noisily on the kitchen tiles. Peering through water at the stranger sitting an unmeasured distance away, he waited for a response.

Then, without a glance back, he stormed from his friend’s house, slamming the door behind him.

 

***

 

 

Their entire life cycle! He could fathom it now.

The One – the Mother, if you will – had completed her task and her lifeless husk probably lay buried in there somewhere. She had curled up, contented, on a bed of a thousand crystal-white eggs, warmed by the flesh of his cheek, and dutifully awaited her end.

Clive wondered momentarily at a creature that would surrender its own life with such ease.

Days or weeks might pass before a starving multitude would begin wrestling its way out of those granular capsules. The Mother’s remains would be devoured with the passing of the first second, and there they would rest. A herd of tiny, crawling, milk-skinned cattle grazing in a field of red, and warmed by a steady flow of blood. Strength, growth, increasing all the while, sleep following feast, banquet following slumber, their appetite would run unbridled as they flocked from pasture to pasture. They had been delivered into a land of plenty.

Clive’s pain would grow with them.

Wings sprouting slowly under protective canopies, they would gather as one family around the eye, in an instinctive exodus towards the light of a new world. Teeming and swarming with the sapped energy of their reluctant host, they would confer with a chirping and an experimental flutter of filmy membrane, plotting their escape through soft prison walls.

Forcing and squirming, eating and burrowing, they would poke their mandibles inquisitively through the epidermis. Pausing for scant seconds, they would then rip across the host’s body in their thousands, cleansing the skeleton of the flesh it no longer required.

Then the locust-plague would disperse, anonymous bones discarded behind them.

And the wheel would have turned.

On the next revolution, the abandoned skeletons would number in thousands, and the invaders in millions.

Clive saw the world as a corpse, stripped of its flesh with lightning motions of some unseen swarm. He could sense the pocket of miniature spheres, nested in his cheek. He could clearly see every bony frame as meat fell off in avalanches into invisible mouths. Children, dogs, cats, women and men alike.

All of this came at him, an endless stream of sickening, mind-jarring images, all sharply focused onto the black, glazed screen that was his left pupil, reflected back at him in the bathroom mirror.

 

***

 

 

“Yeah,” said Tim, “but it’s the sort of event that occurs every single day. A hundred – a thousand times over.”

Clive nodded, his thoughts heavy.

“Exactly the point,” he whispered finally, with a grim smile. “An event so common you wouldn’t even normally discuss it. Not if you were the only soul around when it happened. That’s just what really worries me.”

Tim leaned closer to his friend.

“Are you genuinely taking all this seriously?”

“Yes!” Clive surprised himself with the volume of his reply. “God, yes. Purely because it is such a blatantly unremarkable incident, treated as little more than an annoyance for the most part. The threat, if it did exist, would quickly explode to catastrophic proportions simply because no sane person would be expecting it to approach from that direction.”

Tim laughed. “And that doesn’t tell you something about yourself?”

Clive shot a well-aimed glare at Tim’s gently shaking figure. Then his mind was back on the current line of thought.

Allowing a mouthful of barely warm coffee to play in his mouth a while, he tasted the anxieties building inside him. When he eventually swallowed, an uncounted number of fears slipped down with the liquid, giving it that extra bitter edge.

 

***

 

 

The air was fiery hot that day, and it stuck in his lungs as he walked. He paused beneath every tree, waiting for it to pamper him with whatever shade it could offer. Sweat sucked his shirt in, underneath his arms.

The shopping bag made its weight felt, the contents dragging the handles deeper into his fingers. It swung carelessly about and crashed into his leg as he moved. Attempts to keep it level met with a renewed assault on the side of his knee.  He resolved to pass the burden to the other hand on arrival at the next lamppost.

Clive wished he was home. His eyes flicked this way and that, displaying an involuntary interest in anything that happened to shimmer by, before it disappeared from view forever. Lichen basking on the stone walls, balls of light hurled at him from closed windows, birds revelling in the draught of their own flight. Everything called for some small slice of his attention.

His head turned briefly, following the noise and colour of a passing van. Fascination lost, his face looked forward -

- where a black shape loomed, hovering.

Clive snapped his eyelids tight, but succeeded only in trapping the stinging sensation that now pierced his eye. The organ was quickly scooped out and replaced with a raw, peeled onion that burned the inside of his socket. Clive’s hand came flying up to cover the troubled area and the bag, forgotten, dashed itself on the ground and cast its contents over the paving slabs with artistic abandon. Clive, wheeling around at the noise, vision still impaired, placed a steadying foot on an ill-chosen soup tin, and lost his balance irretrievably.

The ensuing crash knocked the dry air right from his lungs and he could only lie there, stunned.

His eyes opened cautiously and he waited while the lemon-juice moisture cleared from the left. Sadly, he surveyed the various items that lay around him.

So much destruction.

He never did find that fly.

 

***

 

A fly. Was that all?

Suddenly, his eyes were open, the world tearing at his clothing and whipping through him like an icy wind. He imagined that the pain had left him, forced out by a new feeling.

A nagging, haunting horror that held his heart fast in its grip. The fear of, perhaps, having made dreadful mistake.

Reality watched his approach with calm indifference.

 

 

SAF

A Fly In The Eye – Part 1 of 2

Here’s another short story from the archives. It’s another of those that was originally written on a typewriter, so basically ancient.

Clive Morgan’s mind had never been so active.

He mopped his brow and attempted to stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket. He fumbled with it for too long and a breeze quickly lashed out to lift it from his hand. His grip tightened a full second later. Only slightly daunted, he took a single step forward.

The wind whipped about him even stronger here, stinging his face, but the pain there was too great already for him to pay much attention. He could sense every bead of sweat, picked out in cold needle-points, before each mingled with another, blown into tiny streams, to run around and down over his twisted features. The deep lines in his face formed perfect channels along which the rivulets could run their course.

He thought of his handkerchief, airborne over the city, fluttering madly as it was buffeted, thrown and spun in a wild game of catch between the breezes. It was a shame that he instead would fall with seventy-one kilos of absolute certainty.

Dreams were still possible, and he smiled.

Smiles only ever brought increased agony, as if his resident parasites were greatly antagonised by the suggestion that their host might be cheerful. The pain came, sure enough, like a flame licking every nerve under his left eye, and it poured out in tears. They flowed gently down, only to lose themselves in the streams of perspiration.

Clive forced his eyes closed against the fire that now burned in his left cheek, and hoped this would trap the tears. It did nothing to dampen the unnerving sensation of height which shook through his body – threatening to cast him off the building before he was prepared. He tested his heart with another faltering step forward.

He cursed himself aloud.

He had wanted to be bold, firm, decisive. Imagination of this event had granted him copious amounts of courage and he had already leapt to his death with confidence at least a hundred times.  Over and over he had reminded himself how dangerous any delay could prove, with the risk of being sighted ballooning with every second. He had responded, in his mind, by dashing his body on this very pavement with unfailing assuredness.

Reality, of course, had its own story to tell.

He had waded out towards the edge, knee-deep in some unseen ocean, his soles sliding on a shingle bed. A shivering, quaking fear-blind form feeling its way, feet searching for the precipice over which could be found release and salvation. A walk, where a leap would serve.

If he was seen now he might yet be talked out of the idea. God forbid! He could really kiss the world good-bye then.

No, it had to be done. Fall or jump, however he could manage it; although, he considered, a push from some kindly Samaritan would be easier. Once ended, this crawling pain would be spread so far across the concrete below that it would no longer be a worry to anyone. He would finally be able to sleep for more than an hour at a time. The Human Race could continue in contented ignorance of the horror that had threatened it. Clive Morgan could at last claim to have achieved something of worth. The Ultimate Sacrifice, no less.

A glance ahead and down showed the side street to be empty.

His eyes recoiled and sunk hurriedly back into their reddened hovels. Motion always held more excitement if unsubstantiated by the benefits of vision. From rollercoaster rides to easy strolls along familiar paths, from the steady climb of a department store escalator to the final whirlwind rush of a suicidal dive, the rule held.

He felt the creatures shift again, en masse, forcing the flesh away from his cheekbone. Agony rippled out from around his eye and burned its way through into the brain. In an instant, fear had been drowned.

Every emotion welling up inside simply faded as it appeared and his whole body shot forward. Confident at last, he fell.

Wind ripped and played all about him, and he felt his coat flapping like a handkerchief in flight.

 

 

***

 

 

They were about ready to emerge now.

He could feel his skin puffed up with their hidden mass as they nested and seethed and shifted restlessly against his left cheekbone. Their migration carried them ever closer to the eye, each stirring executed with deliberate, excruciating slowness, and with that overpowering sense of purpose.

Clive screamed for help, but he lay alone.  Alone, with the iron hammers pounding at his brain, the steel finger pushing and probing at the back of his eye, and a thousand writhing, feasting insect-horrors.

In line with his thoughts, they gathered in slowly, closer still to his offending eye. Their pressing squeezed out the teardrops like moisture from a glassy sponge, their swarming motion echoed and magnified in the spasmodic flexing of the body. Electric convulsions tossed his frame uselessly while his limbs groped desperately for some source of comfort, searching every corner of the bed.

Futility realised again, he allowed his grateful form to fall, limp and wasted, onto the damp, sweat-stained mattress.

He wept. And screamed.

This second cry spilled over with urgency, as it exploded from the mouth to fill the room entirely. Its piercing clarity shot into the darkest corners and beat against the crumbling plaster in its efforts to journey further. It shocked the stale air beneath the worm-eaten chest-of-drawers, rattled the flimsy hinges of the wardrobe doors, and bounced recklessly off the speck-covered panes in the room’s only window. Even the simply fashioned bedside lamp caught a glancing blow, and it rocked audibly on the pitted tabletop. The scream died like a passing siren, faded and settled easily onto the flat, bare surfaces, along with the dust it had aroused.

Clive struggled to focus his mind.

The gnawing agony beneath his skin had a purpose. The plan, which stared at him like a ghost and scared him to hell. Who, what, had selected him to be the carrier of such a hideous apocalypse? Who?

Answers came, he fancied, but the distance they travelled reduced them, stripped them to whispers, too weak for Clive’s straining senses to grasp. Could he even be certain they were right?

He did have a solution of his own, of course, but that could take a while.

He lay still for a minute, staring at the drab ceiling through blood-red eyes, trying hard to put the thought out of his head. It lingered defiantly, jeering and taunting before his tortured gaze. It would never stand for being ignored, and it beckoned and bawled like a spoilt child, demanding serious attention from this new visitor.

Clive surrendered, too tired for anything else. He mulled it over, took it by the hand as it led him excitedly along a new path, shouting gleefully of the treasures that might be found further ahead. All around him, as he went, were glimpses of riches only he could appreciate.

Shining revolvers with bullets poised to snatch pieces of his brain in their passing. Intricate ropes, every thread a golden hair, ready to tense at the correctly weighted pull. Glowing bottles of gemstone tablets, asking the opportunity to pour their contents in a rainbow cascade down his waiting throat. Death, in all its colourful varieties, painted ream-like on the walls of his desolate room. Death that required no help from others.

And if he failed to take this path?

Gone were the days when men expected invasion to come flooding from the bowels of silver saucers. Here was the age of indifference, with aliens shrivelled to the status of fantastic whim, entertainment and nothing more. Clive Morgan’s face would be the least probable source of such an invasion in most people’s minds.

Yet, here was a pestilence of Biblical proportions, growing and mutating within him.

The creatures still needed him alive, he was certain. They were not fully developed. Deprive them of their sustenance and they too would surely die before their life cycle completed another turn.

This was his chance to save the world, to feel good, to achieve a great deal more than all but a handful, and to bring an end to his thirty poorly expended years. It was an opportunity of which he had to take advantage, and there, on the bed, with the dust settling lazily into his open mouth, he vowed to do just that.

He would do it tomorrow.

To Be Continued…

BugEye – Part 3 of 3

Dawn floated down to Grel with a lazy, leaf-like despondency that synchronised perfectly with his waking mood. His mission here, he knew, was practically over and even the effort of moving seemed too challenging for him at that point.

Perhaps darkness was not the correct environment for instilling fear.   Perhaps it was the raw light of day, where every grotesque detail could be observed.   He figured it was a theory worth testing and the suggestion was all he needed to overcome his sloth.

Stretching up though, he oozed himself out of the gutter like so much rotten toothpaste. Trying extremely hard not to recall the experience at the ‘cinema’ (he had seen the word on garish display outside), he searched the street for targets.

Without warning, a yellow robot trundled by, battering him half to death with a fiercely rotating weapon that was all hard bristles and shooting him in the eye with a powerful jet of water.   He fell back into the sewer with a loud splash, just as he had felt the powerful suction from the tubing in the automaton’s side.

What was that thing? His brain shuddered.

Cautiously, he ascended to the street once again, peering right, then left.   The mechanical beast was some distance down the road from him now, still attacking the guttering with its baffling assortment of appendages.   Its swollen back indicated some sort of tank, and the ensemble rolled along on large, cumbersome wheels.   Grel could not be certain it had not been driven by humans, like many other vehicles on the road this morning.   Automated or not, the thing was a poor combat vehicle, indeed, with bright yellow camouflage in such a grey battlefield.

Ha! It was the humans’ first attempt to oppose him, to take him as a serious threat – and it had failed.   Grel’s faith in his ability as a scout was partially restored.   He hauled himself clear of the guttering and sprouted two sturdy legs so he might walk brazenly along the pavement.

This decidedly brash approach to invasion was destined for abject failure, however.   In all the varied reactions Grel earned himself, there was nothing approximating the horror he truly yearned.   Many simply walked by, as the policemen had done, diverting their eyes purposefully to some other point of inexplicable interest further up the street; boarded shop-fronts or discarded chocolate wrappers, perhaps.   An equivalent number pointed fingers and laughed, particularly mothers keen to show the ‘funny man’ to their infants.   Smaller numbers waved and made faces at a spot somewhere past Grel himself, as if addressing themselves to some hidden camera or observation device along his route.   There was even one supremely embarrassing moment when a sizeable group flocked around him and refused to let him pass until he had done some ridiculous tap-dance or other.   Still dissatisfied with this, his ultimate humiliation, they even hurled metal discs at him afterwards.

By the time he had once again bumped into Herbert Pottington, even agriculture looked like an attractive prospect.   And, to his shame, he found himself shrinking from the harmless box that the human aimed at him from just a short distance away.

 

***

 

Herbert hummed quietly as he awaited development of his Polaroid shot of Bem, as he had dubbed the alien visitor. In contrast to the invader, he had actually enjoyed a rather good night, eventually drifting off to sleep on the tide of a tremendous idea that had occurred to him on reaching home.

“So how’s it going?” he asked his reluctant model.

“It isn’t,” glowered the alien, his single eye visibly steaming. “Look at them.”

Herbert nodded, comprehending, at the milling crowd. The majority were too concerned with shopping to spare the unfortunate Bem the time to recognise his invasion spearhead. Even the kids exhausted huge quantities of their spare time and energy shooting horde upon horde of electronic creatures more fearsome than Bem.

“Well, you’re doing it wrong, you know,” Herbert said gently. “They think you’re some sort of publicity stunt. You can’t just stroll down the high street and expect results.”

“I can’t?” Bem gargled, struggling.

“No, no. You have to do it big – expensive! Land in the centre of Washington with a bloody great saucer and a gigantic silver robot.”

Bem spluttered ineffectually; indignation took over. “How is it you know so much about it?”

“Oh,” Herbert explained easily, “practically everyone has seen all those old sci-fi movies. From back in the fifties. They were all the rage then. It’s a matter of timing, you see. You’d have been more at home if you’d come along in that massive spate of saucer sightings back then. That was where it all began. Fifty years ago, you’d have – “

“What?!” Bem was spitting and hopping up and down; looking more ridiculous than ever. “But, I can’t have been that late! One faulty hyperdrive connector! You can’t have a spearhead arriving after the main force!” The alien’s head threatened to burst with the pain of revelation. “But, that means – our invasion failed. I mean, you weren’t invaded, were you? You’re not secretly dominated by – no, what am I saying? They’d have eaten you all by now!”

Herbert sympathised. “Ah, I’m sorry, I really am. They only seemed to hover around, abduct a few people for experiments – allegedly – and gradually disappeared from the news.” He sighed, discarding all of his foolish old dreams at last. “You could never exert authority over a world where you’ve been parodied in books, films, artwork and everything. You’d never be taken seriously.”

Bem nodded slowly, slumping and ready to run all over the pavement. “You are right, human.   I’m done for. My scouting time is over.”

Herbert smiled not unsympathetically, then inspected his photograph. A vague smudge loomed menacingly out of a misty street scene, reaching out with indistinct limbs in a predatory fashion. “Excellent!” He showed it to Bem.

“I could have told you that would have happened,” Bem complained. “We all emit a radiation that fogs your kind of photographic film.”

“Even better!” enthused Herbert. “I shall call it the Pottington Effect. They’ll have to run all sorts of tests. I bet it applies to all sorts of things. See, it all helps to preserve an enigmatic air. Ups my credibility rating several notches, I’d say.”

“What are you prattling about, human?”

“My book,” Herbert told him. “Of course, I never told you. It’ll be a best-seller. My true-life encounter with an extra-terrestrial. Why he chose me out of all mankind, how I finally persuaded him to seek conquest elsewhere; the whole story. Naturally, I’ll have to invent a few things, just to pad it out. Or you could stay and help me for a while. What d’ you say?”

Bem was very obviously insulted. “That’s exploitation! How dare you! That is the final disgrace! My career may be over, but I do not have to stay here and listen to this!” For a moment he was stuck for a suitably emphatic phrase, and by way of hurrying things along, settled for a curt, “Good-bye!”

Growing legs again, he stomped off in an elephantine sulk, leaving Herbert alone with the beginnings of an exciting career.

In later years, Herbert embarked upon a full scientific discourse on the Pottington Effect as his second massive project, after his highly popular (it made a bomb) factual account of this unique meeting of two highly different intelligences. That second undertaking would lead him all over the world, from Loch Ness to the Bermuda Triangle (wherever that was).

 

***

Extract from the log of the <Bloodhound>, Terran Pioneer Ship, 3124 AD:-

In all my days as a Captain of the Pioneer Corps, I have never encountered such a bizarre story as I heard today on this remarkably fertile world of Snappy Joe. (The crew objected to my naming the planet after my wife’s terrier, but having personally discovered no less than forty-seven habitable worlds, I am sure the Corps will understand my difficulty in coming up with new names.)

Our survey rocket put down in a wide, low basin which appears to have been a lake at some point, now drained by forces unknown. Our planetographer, Lewtun had extemporised on the possibility of some great irrigation project, but it was a theory we all dismissed.

Nonetheless, only three days later the patrol returned with evidence that the verdant surface of Snappy Joe was indeed the result of some ambitious agricultural project on the part of an alien race. According to Lewtun and Jaxxon, they had in fact stumbled upon a farm – and a farmer!

Jaxxon and Lewtun are both level-headed Corps officers and I had to lend at least a modicum of credence to their report. The little that is left of the alien corpse indicates a hideous creature, but is not nearly sufficient to divest me of my healthy scepticism as to its precise level of sentience.

Between myself and the log, I am not convinced that Lewtun and Jaxxon and the others didn’t just have themselves a riotous party and shot up an innocent example of the native wildlife.

The thing that really convinces me they’re having me on is the way they say the creature got itself shot. As they reported it, they neared a clutch of buildings with single holes cut in their roofs for the purposes of entry and exit, and Lewtun believed this apparently deserted community to be just another remnant of his lost civilisation.

Just then, they maintain, a movement stirred from behind the buildings and a creature squirmed its way timidly around the base of the hill to face them. After studying them with its single, bloated eye, the thing’s mouth seemed to tremble and Lewtun suspected it was attempting to communicate.

But then, horror of horrors, the alien beast charged at them, screaming rabidly and spitting a shower of quite disgusting liquids. Interpreting its actions as hostile, Trooper Jaxxon promptly whipped out his blaster and burned it in mid-snarl.

When asked what made him so sure the thing was hostile, Jaxxon insists that it was ranting at them to “Leave me the bloody hell alone!”

Honestly, that Jaxxon will be the death of me.

 

SAF Circa 1990

BugEye – Part 2 of 3

It was not until later that Grel fully appreciated how difficult his task was going to prove. This miserable race either tolerated an unusually high level of insanity, or his own ability as a scout was failing him. If that were true, he reflected miserably, he would be expelled from the colonising forces and pressed into the inglorious, unmentionable occupation of greenfood cultivation on one of the backwater vegetable planets.

Grel slavered hungrily as the shadow-washed bushes exuded his gelatinous frame onto the clipped lawn behind his first unsuspecting victim. The figure sat, head falling forward on its chest, on a crude bench of wood and metal. Grel crept forward over the sharp blades of grass, the sound of his approach drowned out by the anxious murmurs of the breeze through the surrounding screen of foliage. Exultant, Grel wormed about the base of the seat and hissed with glee.

His eye pounced. The human head lifted.

A male. The head turned and turned again. Not fear! Confusion!

The face, rugged like the bark of an indigenous tree, screwed up with the pressure of deliberation. The human’s thoughts were plainly experiencing difficulties in negotiating a straight line; words took an age to stumble forward, while Grel braced himself for further disappointment.

“Bloody ‘ell!” this human said.

The exclamation was mincemeat after one pass through Grel’s translator. He grew a number of small protuberances so he might drum them rapidly on the edge of the bench.

The man, apparently oblivious of the alien’s impatience, groaned and dug furiously into the shabby depths of its great overcoat. Amid a rustle of tired brown paper, it retrieved a translucent container with a slender neck, an orange-brown liquid sloshing about inside. With respectful solemnity, it unscrewed the metal cap and gulped back a large mouthful of the mysterious substance; whatever it may have been, it immediately forced the human’s eyes wide open like searchlights. Grel could only surmise that it was a variety of potion for vision enhancement.

The man coughed. He leaned over and astonished Grel by nudging him in the abdominal area. “Heh!   Just you and me, is it? Hah! Me and an alien from Mars! Rich, that is! Want a shot of whisky?”

He proffered his container of sight-restorative. Poor Grel reeled from the noxious vapours. Out of sheer frustration he might have consumed this babbling half-sentient there and then, were it not for a sudden fear of  an acid stomach.

Oddly hunched, he sloped silently away, steering for the park’s exit.

Hope resurfaced on his departure over the green gate and onto what looked like a major thoroughfare.

Ahead of him, two figures emerged steadily from the enveloping dimness, a cone of illumination striking their shoulders and lighting up their pale faces.   Clad in identical dark blue attire, topped off with curious helmets and specked with bright buttons, they moved purposefully towards him.

Grel perched himself on two stumpy legs, raised his forelimbs and dropped his lower lip nearly to the ground, baring his gullet in the traditional display of dominance.   He saw the spark of concern, the germ of fear in both pairs of eyes and his spirits leaped with joy – they had seen him!   He salivated in expectation of his first Earthbound feast.

Suddenly resolute, the tall, authoritative figures marched past on either side.   “Should be quite a game on Saturday,” murmured one to the other.

“Mm,” agreed its partner.   They walked back into blackness while Grel stamped up and down furiously, wishing angrily that paving slabs were, in fact, the predominant race on this miserable world.

What the – “bloody ‘ell” – had gone wrong? He suspected he would never know.

(The two policemen never did refer to the hideous creature they had both seen with such stark clarity that night.   It had not been an experience to share with a colleague, just on the chance that he had not, after all, seen the same bizarre thing as you.   Then, too, each wanted to progress beyond the humble rank of constable someday.)

From then on, Grel, weighed down by greater forces than simple gravity, dispensed with limbs and slurped and dragged along the artificial ground.   He spied more lights ahead, neatly piercing several sides of various buildings. Assuring himself there would be riper examples of humanity in such a community, he pulsed and gurgled into the shadow of the largest, most intriguing structure.

Within, many lights still blazed and a refreshing gust of warmth informed him of the presence of an entire host of people. This, he smirked with greasy lips, is the one!

Seeping along the wall, he came to a metal grille and deduced it to be a kind of ventilator.

Eagerly, now, he squeezed himself through the mesh, sniffing for the teeming swarm of meat. He plopped down into the shaft and groped his way forward, throbbing with anticipation. They were here! Hundreds! He could sense their emotions charging, mounting some hidden peak within their feeble frames. They knew he was coming, and they knew there was no escape! Saliva trailing behind, beneath his thundering belly, he surged for the other opening, sucking in every yard between him and his prey. Slowly, with patience straining, he oozed disgustingly through into the chamber beyond.

There were at least a hundred gathered before him, huddled together in cramped rows of seats. The hall was dark, with only variegated patterns of light playing a random game across the tensed faces. The humans were chiefly young, under-developed examples and all the more vulnerable. Additionally, the floor sloped upwards to the main exit, making for a slower escape route.

Grel stood high, projecting himself and throwing out a stalk-mounted eye above the height of the fearful crowd that was to be his larder. Elated, he felt the growing panic, the frothing wave of terror crashing in upon their pathetic brains. In the ultimate homage to his obvious supremacy, they let rip with a single, unanimous, heart-bursting scream.

In the next instant, they sighed their relief. And only then did Grel follow the direction of their collective gaze: glued fast to the flickering screen that dominated one wall. The patterns of colour formed ever-changing pictures; their emotions responded with ready flexibility.

Dejected and utterly ignored, the alien glooped back out the way he had come. Even he had to admit some of those images on the screen had been uncomfortably realistic. How was a scout supposed to compete against that?

 

To Be Continued…