SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #04 - Here's Ralph!

In a far-flung corner of a third-rate universe was an obsolete galaxy with a run-down solar system where a beat-up old yellow-orange sun shone down on a useless blue-green planet named Earth.

This story takes place a very great distance from there.

At the place where our story actually takes place, there was a little research base orbiting a planet. The name of the planet, according to its native population, was Snuzel VII, which was odd because it was the only planet orbiting that particular star, which wasn't named Snuzel in any case. Indeed, the natives had no perception of other planets at all, which makes it even more odd that they would even bother to give their planet a unique identifying name to begin with.

The oddest thing by far, however, was that in spite of having no knowledge whatsover about astronomy or cosmology, these natives were quite convinced that their planet was going to be swallowed by a black hole and completely destroyed, possibly by being converted into Neo- Spam, before the end of the current calendar year. They had been quite convinced of this for a long, long time. So convinced, in fact, that rather than attempt to live in ecological harmony with their planet, rather than conserve their limited resources, they had instead started a generations-long party. Their only concern was that they might exhaust their resources and die of starvation before the actual arrival of the black hole. This had led to the invention of a matter transportion and conversion device which had then transported Snuzel VII's only moon down to the planet's surface, simultaneously converting it into the local equivalent of beer and corn chips.

The possibility that this device could have easily moved Snuzel VII away from the coming black hole, or easily converted the natives into beings which could have survived being trapped inside one, seemingly never occured to anyone.

In orbit about Snuzel VII was a base, which the natives had never noticed because once their moon had been converted, they never had reason to look up. In that base was a briefing room, not that there was a good reason for the base to have a briefing room, but because the owner of the base put briefing rooms in everything he designed.

This particular briefing room contained four (4) beings. The first was Doctor Bing Von Spleen, an aging human spamologist from that Earth place that we briefly spoke of earlier. The second was Time Agent 357, a mortal mutation of an immortal race, who looked human in spite of the fact that he was probably as far from being human as you could be and still be made of matter. The third was a formerly immortal former servant of Heaven named Omegas, currently almost human due to being very nearly completely drained of his former powers during an escape from a very sticky situation a few chapters back.

"Hi, there!" said the fourth being as he walked into the briefing room. This being was an odd weaseloid-looking creature, who looked all the odder for walking on his two back paws and grasping what appeared to be a ukulele in this front paws, which seemed limber enough to almost be considered hands. His pelt was a beautiful dark brown, though a touch of gray around his muzzle hinted that many seasons had passed since his birth on the planet Leibowitz IV.

One might have heard that the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V is a multi-dimensional, inter-universal horror. A huge creature with big slathering fangs dripping red-hot poison, eyes that shoot forth searing bolts of deadly radiation, and gigantic claws that can rip apart planets with a flick of the wrist.

If one had heard that, then one had listened to the Giant Space Weasel's P.R. man, G.X.P. Varneyloop the LXVII, who was known to exaggerate slightly from time to time. This Giant Space Weasel was an easy-going, friendly sort known to his friends as...

"Ralph!" exclaimed Time Agent 357. "How did you get here?"

Ralph took a seat between Spleen and Omegas, one of whom greeted him warmly and the other of whom pretty much ignored him. Ralph greeted each in kind. "Well, 357, I was sitting there on the Netherspace Nympho Beach, minding my own business, when some passing tourists needed a way home. As you might remember, one can only exit the Netherspace Nympho Beach through the Green Door, which can only be noticed when someone else points it out to you. I pointed it out to the tourists. As the last one was going through, she pointed out a second green door which I hadn't noticed before. I took this as an omen that I should go through. Stopping only long enough to pick up my #3 ukulele, I did so. I arrived here."

Ralph paused to look around. "Um, where is here, exactly?"

Spleen jumped right in. Well, after 357 nudged him awake, he jumped right in. "This is a base I had built so that I could continue my Spam research after I retired from adventuring. It doubles as a timeship manufacturing plant. It is completely automated and quite profitable. Unfortunately, by my calculations, it will be destroyed in about 10 minutes."

"What!?!" shouted Omegas, beer spewing from his nose dribbling down his loud Hawaiian shirt.

"Well, you didn't think our time and dimension hopping would lose those huge attack ships forever, did you? They'll track us down any minute now." Spleen was momentarily distracted by Ralph opening the door by which he entered, apparently checking to see if he could exit back to a beach of some sort. "But don't fear. I have a ship lined up to freege us away to safety."

"'Freege?'" muttered Omegas. "Who says 'freege' anymore?"

Pausing only to grab a suitcase, Spleen led the intrepid band of adventurers through a maze of twisting passageways, all alike, and back to the docking bay and automated shipyards. A long procession of robots were loading themselves into the research vessel by which Spleen, Omegas, and 357 had arrived. Another, larger vessel sat waiting nearby.

"The Golden Lance!" exclaimed 357 as they boarded her. They entered the control room, where a robot was just finishing shining up the controls. The robot handed a set of keys to 357 and went out to join the others. 357 checked the board carefully. "It's just like my old ship, the HMS Golden Lance, right down to the modifications I made before my last mission. How?"

The ship answered. =Part of the service agreement was that I transmit all hardware changes made to me to Doctor Spleen's shipyards so they could incorporate improvements into later models.=

"Val? Is that you?"

=It is I, the VAL 9000 computer,= continued the high-pitched feminine voice, both sexy and irritating at the same time. =Doctor Spleen has even loaded up my latest memory backups, the ones that I transmitted just before I shorted out after our escape from the anomoly.=

"I hate to cut this tearful reunion short," lied Omegas in his basso profundo voice, "but we really need to get out of here."

The various entities busied themselves with whatever needed doing, and quickly the ship was ready for space. The docking bay doors opened. The research vessel took the lead, its robot crew blasting into another dimension almost before they cleared the doors. Spleen explained that they would set up another base at a random location and contact him when it was done. "Now, we can leave ourselves, leaving our enemies to attack an empty base."

He spoke not a second too soon. Two large, vicious-looking attack ships appeared out of nowhere, in much the way that ships shouldn't. Luckily, they were on the far side of the base from the Golden Lance, and so didn't detect her just yet. The ships opened fire on the base, and the base automatically opened fire on the ships. All shields held through the opening barages. The Golden Lance quietly slipped away.

"Now," whispered 357, "let's get out of here." He pushed the button that said "Quick Escape."

=Error,= announced the VAL 9000 computer. =Unable to open driver SLIPDRIVE.DLL - check driver and try again.=

357 checked and tried again.

=Error in Primary Module ABPSARI.DRV=

357 turned to Spleen. Spleen was momentarily speechless, then came up with an explaination. "Oh, no! The robots must have used the new beta OS when they built this ship. There are some driver issues that I haven't quite worked out yet. We'll have to re-install the old operating system, and quickly!"

Spleen and 357 attacked the task. Ralph, being totally out of his league with any type of technology, simply sat and watched. Omegas amused himself by trying the get the guns to work. He knew enough about the Golden Lance to realize that while the main systems were offline, the secondary weapons systems included self-powered DIESCUM (Diffusion Internal Energy SuperChronal Unilateral Matrixor) cannon which he could use to good effect. All he needed was a little time.

Time, however, was not cooperating. The attacking ships had realized that the base was unmanned and firing on automatic. They scanned past the base and located the Golden Lance. Probing fire glanced off her secondary shields. Omegas answered with DIESCUM blasts. Val took the ship through an evasive course, pausing only to shout cryptic error messages at 357 and Spleen.

"New driver disk installed!" shouted Spleen.

"Rebooting now!" answered 357.

=Non-system disk! Replace disk and press any key when ready!=

"Die scum!" screamed Omegas, thoroughly enjoying himself for the first time in 150 subjective years.

"I think I'm going to be sick now," mumbled Ralph.

The Golden Lance's evasive course caused her to rocket through the space between the base and the planet Snuzel VII, lighting up the atmosphere in such a way that a few of the planet's inhabitants actually noticed. They took this as a sign of impending doom and immediately went back to partying.

As the two pursuing ships took the same course, Spleen sent a coded signal to the base. Massive towing beams lashed out, capturing the two ships. One reconfigured its shields and slipped gracefully out of the towing beam. The other tried to overload its ABPSARI drive to break free with raw power. As the base was also powered by an ABPSARI reactor, it too began to build to overload.

The two devices exploded simulaneously, starting a Spam-powered chain reaction which no doubt would have had random, unpredictable, and cosmic-level results had it been allowed to continue. Luckily, however, the two reactions interfered with each other, cancelled each other out, and created nothing more than a short-lived black hole.

Said black hole lived just long enough to swallow up the planet Snuzel VII, whose inhabitants had just enough time to shout "Yay!" as they were pulled into oblivion and out of this story line. They had just that very minute run out of beer and corn chips and would have been better off dead anyway by their way of thinking.

"That was close," said Spleen to nobody in particular. He, better than anyone else, knew the raw power of Spam. "357, are we ready?"

357 crawled out from underneath his control panel. "Well, I've got the ABPSARI drive wired to start and stop on manual control, but with the navigational computer still offline, we'll be jumping blind."

"No!" shouted Omegas. He, better than anyone else, knew what kind of horrible things could happen during a blind jump, having more than once merged his atoms with those of inanimate objects. He ran across the control room, intending to pull 357 bodily away from the controls. Unfortunately, he had forgotten about Ralph, who was quiety retching under his seat. Omegas tripped over Ralph, slid past 357, and slammed facefirst into the jury-rigged ABPSARI controls. Spleen reached to deactivate them, but he was too late.

Deep within the bowels of the ship, a tiny amount of mold-covered Spam was peeled and re-integrated, with the standard unpredictable results. The HMS Golden Lance disappeared from normal space. The single remaining attack ship, close enough to be caught in the space-time- spam wake, disappeared as well.

What will the standard unpredictable results be?
Where has the HMS Golden Lance and her crew disappeared to?
Will Gilligan ever get off that stupid island?
Who knows?
Who cares?

No answers of no sort will not be not answered in the next not-chapter of NOT SFSTORY!!! (Not coming soon to a not-theater nowhere near nobody you don't know.)

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