A Brave New World

Doc, Mark, and Steve pour out of the automatic door to the bridge and collapse into the hallway. A billowing cloud of black smoke chases them, while alarms of all kinds scream relentlessly.

The three lie there a moment. Veronica steps out casually, kicking Mark's legs out of the doorway.

She seals the door. "Initiate halon flood," she tells a com panel beside the door. The small panel displays some red warnings. There is a great hissing sound from behind the bridge door. The alarms die off one at a time.

Doc is the first to his feet. Soot splotches his face. Mark follows him up, exactly one half of his face is totally black, the other is slightly stained in vomit. Steve continues to lie down.

"Are we clear?" Doc asks.

"Yeah, we're clear," Veronica answers.

"Did we take a lot of damage?"

"Not sure. The damage analysis computer is offline. I'll have to go down to engineering to have a look. At a guess, though, I'm going to say yes, we took a lot of damage."

Steve finally struggles to his feet. He pants a moment. "I'll go with you. Doc, see if you can figure out when we are."

Doc heads back up to the galley. He calls out to the Cook, who is in the kitchen.

"Coffee, please, Cooky."

"Yes, sir, right away."

The Cook comes out carrying a fresh pot and a mug. His head is missing. The decapitated body places the cup down two feet to Doc's left and pours out a precise measure of coffee exactly four inches right of the mug.

"There you are, sir. Enjoy," the Cook says from the kitchen.

"Leave the pot, please," Doc asks.

The body of the cook sets the pot down gently a full inch from the top of the counter. Fortunately it doesn't break. Doc pours himself a cup.

Veronica calls up on the com. "Damage analysis reporting is back on-line. We're in the red here. Life support systems are yellow, main power is at 20%. We may need to dry dock. See if you can find one."

Doc decides to be straightforward. "Computer, what is the date?"

"Mission Time is 372 years, 11 months, 14 days, 16:13:52," the computer's voice replies. It has an English accent.

"What's the date on Earth."

"Unable to comply. Navigation imaging offline."

"Computer, turn on the monitor."

"Unable to comply. Fault detected in monitor hard-lines."

"Can you see infrared?"

"Negative,"

"What about radio?"

"RADAR systems online. Analog radio signal detected. Earth origin."

"Put it on, please."

It's in German. The voice is too familiar:

"...by circumstances again and again to keep silent, the moment has now come when to continue as a mere observer would not only be a sin of omission but a crime against the German people -- yes, even against the whole of Europe.

"Today something like 160 Russian divisions are standing at our frontier. For weeks there have been constant violations of this frontier, not only affecting us but also in the far north, as well as Romania. Russian airmen consider it sport nonchalantly to overlook these frontiers, presumably to prove to us that they already feel themselves masters of these territories. During the night of June 17 to 18 Russian patrols again penetrated into Reich territory, and could only be driven back after prolonged exchange of fire.

"This has brought us to the hour when it is necessary for us to counter this plot of Jewish-British warmongers and equally the Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik center in Moscow.

"German people! At this moment a deployment of forces is taking place that, in its extent and scope, is the greatest the world hitherto has seen. United with their Finnish comrades, the fighters of the victory of Narvik are standing in the Northern Arctic. German divisions commanded by the conqueror of Norway, together with the heroes of Finnish freedom under their Marshal, are protecting Finnish soil. Formations of the German eastern front extend from East Prussia to the Carpathians. German and Romanian soldiers are united under Chief of State Antonescu from the banks of the Prut along the lower reaches of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea.

"The task of this front, therefore, is not merely the protection of individual countries, but the safeguarding of Europe, and thereby the salvation of all.

"I therefore decided today to once again lay the fate and future of the German Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers.

"May the Lord God help us especially in this fight!"

There is a thunderous applause.

Doc shuts it off. "Steve? Veronica?"

"Tell me there's a space dock out there," Veronica replies in a frustrated tone. "We've got a thousand structural micro-fractures and our ablative thermal shielding is down to less than 5%. We need one hell of a paint job."

"Sorry, I don't think there is one."

"You know when we are then?" Steve replies.

"June 22, 1941."

Escape!

The Younger Brother Pear drops out of hyperspace in the midst of the asteroid belt. It is a place of serene chaos. Immense space rocks tumble silently towards each other for millennia, eventually crashing into each other with extraordinary violence resulting in peaceful coagulation.

"Okay." Steve spits out bile and attempting to regain some of his fortitude. "Start the asteroid collision tracking program," he manages to force his tongue to say.

Veronica brings the program up on the screen. Steve begins inputting a series of queries on his console.

"What are you doing?" Doc asks Steve.

"Trying to find a crater we can time-jump into."

"To where? I mean when?"

"The future. Home."

The alarms go off again. Veronica cancels them quickly.

"They're back. They followed us. They are maneuvering to flank us."

"Move, then!" Steve shouts.

"This ship cannot outperform theirs at sub-light speeds."

"Go to warp!"

"In the asteroid field? Are you insane?"

"Well, do something!"

They watch on the viewscreen as Veronica pilots the lumbering Pear around a large rock, trying to keep it between them and their pursuers.

Another alarm sounds. "Shots fired!" Veronica shouts. A streak of light blasts forward across the viewscreen and annihilates a small asteroid in front of them. "Warning shot. 20 gigawatt proton pulse passed 100 meters from our starboard side."

"Damnit!" Steve shouts. "Now the collision tracker has to recalibrate! It will take hours to recompile!"

"They're hailing us again."

"Do not answer," Steve tells her.

"Normally, you don't call a ship if you're trying to basilisk them. You just hack their monitors.'"

"They can't hack this ship. I designed the security systems myself."

"I hacked it," Veronica replies.

"Well," Steve thinks a minute. "I made you. I used some of the same security routines when I programmed your remote access system."

"Did you use the same routines to hide your anime porn collection?"

Steve is silent. "Just fly the damn ship."

The Younger Brother Pear dives close to the surface of the potato shaped asteroid. The two gunships fly in high orbit around the rock in opposite direcions, followed soon by the bigger and slower cruisers. They stop just above the Pear, where "up" in this case is relative to the asteroid, surrounding them. The large destroyer makes it's way over the asteroid and into the center of the circle that the other ships are forming.

All the ships are smooth yet triangular, and look a lot like shoes with wings. The gunships are the smallest and most angular, with sharp wings poking out of its slightly rounded pyramid structure. The cruisers are bigger, only slightly smaller than the Pear. They are more elongated and more rounded. Their smoothed noses are only interrupted by an intimidating pair of particle cannons. The Destroyer is much larger, nearly four times the size of the cruiser. It reminds Doc of the Star Destroyers from the old-timey Star Wars movies, except these are much less angular. It has sort of gull-wings that bend in a way that matches the top contour of the cruisers. The ships must dock together for long trips. To prove that point, two more gunships fly out of the underbelly of the destroyer, joining the circle.

"Shit," says Steve.

"Can we fight them?" Doc asks.

"I might be able to take out the gunships and maybe a cruiser, " Veronica answers, "but not before that destroyer turns the Pear into another floating wad of iron."

Another alarm sounds.

"Firewall intrusion detected!" Veronica shouts. "They're hacking our computers and attempting to plant a message in our com system."

"I told you!" Steve yells back. "Fuck the simulations! Doc, on your console is a command sequence for the ship's outboard Q-TIP. I want you to start running through it. Veronica, turn us around and launch a string of 20 megaton drilling warheads at the asteroid. We're going to tunnel through it, or at least make them think it. Doc, when the sequence is ready, open a wormhole at the nearest convenient crater, and Vernoica, fly into it with an explosion as cover. We're getting the hell out of here!"

Thunderhorse and Jazelle lie in the grass beside the pond on the observation deck, staring up at the rock filled sky and sharing a bottle of Chanana brandy.

A burst of violet light jumps from one of the other star boats and transform into green auroras dancing above them.

"Oh, how beautiful," says Jazelle.

"Yes," says Thunderhorse. "The spirits of the dead dance with us even here. The old man says they protect us from the fires of our enemies."

"I see."

Another particle beam hits the shields, creating another dance of lights which lingers a bit after the beam is gone.

The two sigh in wonder.

The sky above them turns 180 degrees as the ship comes about.

"Oh, my! The stars do dance differently here."

The four gunships begin to swarm around them, circling closer and closer. Their beams of light stir the auroras around them, creating a tie-dye of colored ribbons that spin as if on gymnasts' wands.

"Ooooh," they sigh together.

A new light show begins as bright flares and large flashes begin tearing away the mountain of rust colored rock at their feet. Streaks of white-hot glowing rock burst like fireworks from the stone. Giant boulders start barreling past the sky, brushing aside the circling sky-boats.

"Ahhhh," they sigh.

The flashes get bigger and brighter and shorter in between. The beams of light and the dancing auroras intensify. The boulders get larger and closer. The mountain splits in two, parting for them like the Clashing rocks after Jason had sent a dove. The thrill of whether they will smash together again strikes them giddily as they pass through.

They slip into the yawning mountain as the flashes glow and the lights dance. The bursts come ever faster and brighter, until one last flash, brighter than all the rest, engulfs the entire sky then shrinks away into the shadows of nothingness. In an instant, the Universe is reborn.

Jazelle applauds enthusiastically. "That was brilliant!" she says. "Have them do it again!"