SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #01 - The Return

In space, no one can hear you art direct.

In space, no one can smell your breath.

Or touch your forehead to see if you have a fever. Or kiss you goodnight. Or eat a good meal. Or do any of the other things one is normally fond of doing.

In fact, space is a silly, boring, utterly useless place. Let's not go there.

We're already there? Darn. Okay, then what do we find in space?

Nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. I mean, imagine the emptiest piece of nothing you can imagine. Now, stretch it out nice and thin until it covers an entire universe. Now, run it through the wash several hundred times using the most caustic detergent you can buy. Dry on 'High' for 114 years. That's the type of nothing you find in space. On a good day.

On a great day, however, you might actually find something interesting going on, if only in one small corner of one small section of one small quadrant of space. (Definition of quadrant: A really big, large space; one fourth of a bigger, larger space.) What would a hypothetical observer see in the particular space that you the reader is currently reading about?

He would see a temporal, dimensional, and spacial anomaly forming. It would be so unlike any he had ever seen that it would be completely unknown and utterly unknowable. It would boggle the mind.

Actually, our observer wouldn't see very much, because his eyes would freeze over when exposed to the vacuum of space, followed almost immediately by several small blood vessels rupturing, surrounding his face with a cloud of rapidly freezing/boiling blood and other, even less pleasant, bodily fluids. And even if he could see through all that, he'd be distracted by the feeling he'd get when his lungs and various other organs would attempt to leave his body.

Assuming our hypothetical observer was wearing a functional space suit, he would see a temporal, dimensional, and spacial anomaly forming. Then said observer would instantly die, the very atoms of his body breaking down due to the intense radiation accompanying an event such as this.

Assuming our hypothetical observer was in a space ship nearby, said ship, followed quickly by said observer, would be ripped to shreds by gravitational fluxes.

Assuming our hypothetical observer...

For the sake of convenience, we will assume our hypothetical observer is aboard a well-shielded, well-equipped, long-range research vessel located some seventeen light-minutes from the anomaly.

This observer would see the anomaly grow from nothing to something slightly larger than the size of Rhode Island, which exists only so long as people continually compare it to things larger. This observer would see the anomaly change from darkest black to brightest white. Then, from this anomaly, something would emerge. Something soon did emerge, and the narrative shifted from present tense to past.

The "something" appeared to be a ship, or rather what one could call a ship if one were legally blind and in a charitable mood. It tumbled end over end in a stately if somewhat nauseating ballet, sailing quickly away from the anomaly but moving more slowly every second. Small attitude jets fired in short, precise bursts. The tumbling finally stopped, more or less, just as the ship exhausted its forward momentum and began to slide backwards towards the anomaly.

With a light brighter than that of a small sun, a drive engine kicked on. Several others, each progressively larger than the last, followed. Engines from a dozen different technologies kicked ions, plasma, tachyons, neutrinos, and small furry woodland creatures backwards out of the ship, stopping its slow return to the anomaly.

Tumble corrected and progress slowed, it was now easier to make out the alleged ship. It might have once been a sleek, functional, even graceful ship. Now it looked like Rube Goldberg on acid. It was a shadetree mechanic's wet dream, with devices and instruments and doodads from a hundred different worlds welded and glued and zip-tied on with no thought of beauty or grace or even symmetry. It looked, instead, every bit like someone's half-mad attempt to cobble together enough power to escape from an inescapable temporal, dimensional, and spacial anomaly in which one was trapped.

With what sounded like a scream of pain, the largest engine of all began spewing forth a wicked stream of radiation so powerful, so dreadful to gaze upon, that it looked as if it could have come from the right hand of God, or from the darkest depths of Hell, or from an unholy (by definition) marriage of the two. The ship began to gain ground, slowly pulling away from the anomaly in spite of the intense gravity, spacial gradient, and rubber bands that tried to stop it.

One part of the hull, a cyan-ish blue in color, sported the name "HMS Golden Lance." This was perhaps the largest and best preserved part of the hull. Another part said "HMS As Yet Unnamed." A third could possibly have read "USS Challenger II," if one squinted and looked at it sideways. Several other identifiers were simply unreadable, hence they did not even qualify as identifiers.

The ship began gaining ground faster, finally making what looked like decent headway in its mad dash for freedom. But then, with another seeming scream of pain, which is in itself remarkable considering how poorly space conducts sound, the largest drive unit fizzled out. One by one, the others followed suit as their control circuits fried, their fuel tanks drained, their reaction chambers split, or they simply stopped working due to their warranties expiring.

The small attitude jets, supercharged and modified so that each was powerful enough to lift the ship off a standard gravity planet, came into play again, but their combined thrust was a butterfly's sneeze compared to the larger drive engines which had been lost. This ship began another long, slow slide backwards. The useless engines and several unidentified pieces of equipment went flying off into space, either by accident or design. The anomaly gobbled the loose pieces up and patiently waited for more.

Several antennae of various designs sprouted on the hull. They began transmitting an ultra-wide broadband distress signal. It fought to be heard over the other transmissions flying through the area.

"...like a virgin (hey!) touched for the thirty-first time..."

"...and in other news, pants are flying at half-mast today at Time Central in honor of the disappearance of Legendary Time Agent 357 some ten years ago this date. 357 is credited with saving The World As We Know It (tm) on countless occasions. I'm Ran Dather, and this is ESPN, the Extra-Sensory Perception Network. Coming up next..."

"...one small step for a weasel, one giant leap for..."

"...there ain't no lower class than Tennessee Trash..."

=...is being transmitted on data subchannel F. Message repeats.=

=MAYDAY! MAYDAY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! There is an EMERGENCY going on! This is the VAL 9000 computer onboard the HMS Golden Lance. This ship has been trapped inside an unknown and unknowable temporal, dimensional, and spacial anomaly for indeterminate period of time. If you are receiving this transmission, we have successfully exited the anomaly. However, we calculate that the transition to normal space will leave the ship with insufficient reaction mass to keep it from being pulled back in.=

=EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! This is the HMS Golden Lance. If you receive this transmission, please respond immediately. The anomaly emits high levels of unknown radiation. I am sending details of the radiation and how to adjust your shields on data subchannel A. Attempting to approach the anomaly without proper shielding will result in your ship going inactive and eventually being pulled into the anomaly.=

=CQ! CQ! CQ! Please prepare your medical bay to receive wounded. Passengers are expected to be seriously injured, if not technically dead, after the transition to normal space. Complete medical files are being transmitted on data subchannel B.=

=MAYDAY! EMERGENCY! In the event that we do not survive, I am transmitting redundant copies of our life stories on data subchannels C, D, and E. We respectfully request that you remember us, and pass our stories along to any who have known us in the past.=

=EMERGENCY! MAYDAY! As I do not expect my computer intellect to survive the transition to normal space, I have placed this message on tape for endless repeat. In the event that the VAL 9000 hardware from this ship is salvaged, or that another equivalent hardware package is available, a backup of my current mental state is being transmitted on data subchannel F. Message repeats.=

=MAYDAY! MAYDAY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! There is an EMERGENCY going on! This is the VAL 9000 computer...= The rest was lost in a burst of static and ship's power failed and main systems shut down.

Still having minimal fuel reserves but lacking central computer control, the attitude jets each fired as they saw fit, fighting valiantly but slowly losing ground. One by one, they ran out of fuel. With increasing speed, the ship began to fall towards the anamoly.

And what about our hypothetical observer? Still watching from his well-shielded, well-equipped, long-range research vessel. Tired of being left out of the story, he powered up his engines, adjusted his shields, readied his towing beam, and screwed up his resolve to do something exceedingly brave and totally out of character.

Is it really out of character?
Who exactly is this character?
What exactly is a Golden Lance?
Who exactly is among the crew?

Find out all this, and more, when Troy H. Cheek aka "The Cowboy" returns to the world of SFSTORY!

Copyright 2006 by Troy H. Cheek. Free to read, but please reprint only with permission.