SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #08 - After the Explosion

The SuperMaxi Security wing of Time Central was completely wrecked, almost as if a very powerful android replicate of a renegade Time Agent had overloaded its power cells and exploded with sufficient force to kill everyone present.

Which, now that you mention it, was exactly what had happened.

First Lieutenant Floyd Cobalt of the Time Police struggled to his feet. This did not take long as he was fairly low-slung and walked around on all fours anyway, closely resembling a giant Earth turtle the way he did and all. He was quite surprised to find himself unharmed. Well, not any more harmed than he was before the explosion. He checked that his sling was still in place and looked around at all the other Time Officers and assorted beings laying around him.

The only being not laying around was the being known as Omegas. He was still standing. His arms were outstretched in some kind of warding gesture. His body was surrounded by a soft blue glow of some kind. As Floyd watched, the glow flickered and faded. Omegas dropped his arms, swayed back and forth a bit, and collapsed in a heap. The melted remains of his DIESCUM pistol smoldered beside him.

Floyd noted that Omegas, in his zest to get first shot at the android version of Greez Hyperiok, had inadvertantly shielded most of the rest of the group from any major harm, though a squid-like being was holding a few of his arms as if he thought they would fall off should he let go. The main exceptions were three Time Central Safety and Security Officers (aka TimeCen SafeSecs) wearing uniform yellow shirts and Time Agent 357.

The security officers would have made really interesting abstract art exhibits, if anyone could have looked at them without throwing up.

Time Agent 357 rolled over, the force of the turn helping to re-seat his dislocated shoulder. By the time he climbed to his feet, most of the bleeding had stopped, and his lungs had healed enough that he could take a deep breath. "Needlewarp," he cursed quietly.

Being a genetic throwback, 357 thought not for the first time, had its advantages. He might not live forever like most of his kind, but he was damned hard to kill in the thousand or so years that he did have. Still, had his miniature shield emitter not contained most of the force of the explosion, he would have been neatly vaporized.

The pile of beings shifted slightly. "I say," came a cheerful voice from the bottom of it. "Is anyone besides me in extreme pain?"

"We all are, Ralph," said 357 as he and Floyd helped Ralph, the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V, to his feet. Together, they dug through the bodies and located Doctor Bing Von Spleen.

"Did anyone, I say, did anyone get the number of that truck?" Spleen asked. Being the only person from Earth present, nobody recognized the reference. Well, 357, having spent many years on Earth during various missions to save space/time as we know it, recognized the reference. He just didn't think it was funny.

"We need to get back to the ship and track down the real Hyperiok," barked 357. "I'm now certain that he's responsible for the theft of your ABPSAR Mark II." 357, Spleen, and Ralph picked up Omegas and started back towards their ship, the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial is named.

The form of a large blue turtle stepped in front of them. "Sure you don't want to stay a while?" asked Floyd. "We can help patch up you and Omegas, give you some help tracking down Hyperiok..." He trailed off when 357 showed no signs of stopping to talk.

"No time, Floyd," snapped 357. "I want to get started right away."

Floyd seemed distressed. "Well, at least let a few of us come with you. I can ask for volunteers?"

"No time," 357 repeated. Once aboard the HMS Golden Lance, he ordered the VAL 9000 computer to blast off immediately. "Val, start checking the GalNews Archives for any other Greez sightings. Spleen, start working on some way to track the ABPSARII. Ralph, get Omegas to the medical bay. I'll ready the ship for combat. Enough of this running around waiting to be attacked. We're going on the offensive!"

Meanwhile, on a planet where the trees walk around and sniff at dogs which are firmly rooted to the ground, which was known officially as Latigid though most people simply called it the planet where the trees walk around and sniff at dogs which are firmly rooted to the ground, two beings sat around a campfire.

"Dog for dinner again, Eert?" asked Brnie.

Eert's reply was cut short by a technicolor explosion of spectacularly bad special effects. A tall, robed and hooded figure stepped through them. "REPORT, MY MINIONS!"

Brnie stuttered and sputtered, but Eert was able to find his voice. "We defected and waited here as instructed, my Master. We gave Time Agent 357 the name you told us. By now, he has no doubt been blown to bits along with all of Time Central."

"NONSENSE! 357 LIVES!" The robed figure turned as if to leave, then paused. "HOWEVER, YOU HAVE PERFORMED YOUR ASSIGNED DUTIES WITHOUT FLAW. I GRANT YOU A BOON. WHAT DO YOU DESIRE?"

Brnie said "We humbly request that we be allowed to live out the remainder of our days here, my Master. This storyline is entirely too confusing for our tastes."

"SO MOTE IT BE!"

"Um, is that a yes?"

Onboard the HMS Golden Lance, Time Agent 357 answered an incoming comm signal, cutting off his evening viewing of Andromeda City Limits. "...looks like I'll run out of space/time before I outrun the pain..."

Floyd Cobalt's face appeared. "357, I'm sending you a list of the last dozen places Greez Hyperiok was captured in. So far, this is all we've been able to come up with."

"Thanks, Floyd. We'll check for a pattern."

"You might want to try tracking down Time Agent 386. He was the last one to bring in Greez."

"I remember you telling me that. 357 out." 357 scanned the list and had the VAL 9000 set a course for the last entry.

Spleen looked up from his work. "Why this sudden urge to track down Hyperiok? And why the sudden conviction that he's the one who stole my ABPSARII, otherwise known as my Automatic Beet Peeler and Sub- Atomic Re-integrator Mark II?"

357 double-checked the navigation computer before finally turning to answer. "I remembered what you said about how the ABPSARII worked, how you could specify an object or person or situation and it would sort through all times and all realities to find whatever it was you were looking for."

"Yes?" prompted Spleen, making a silent pledge to stangle the author for inserting all these dramatic pauses.

"Well, I remember Eert and Brnie on Latigid telling me that just before the person claiming to be Greez Hyperiok first showed up, some of the guys were sitting around saying that they were so bored that they'd take the next job offer that came up, even if it came from a power-hungry psychopath bent on multiversal domination."

Spleen considered for a moment. "That's pretty weak."

"Oh, I think Eert and Brnie were telling the truth about that..."

"No, I mean it's pretty weak presenting the information that way. You left it out of your log entry, out of your earlier verbal report to me, and even out of the narrative of the previous chapter. I think that withholding vital information like that is the worst kind of literary shenanigans you can pull on somebody."

=357, we're approaching the location you specified,= came the voice of the VAL 9000 computer.

"Where Greez Hyperiok was last captured, and the last known location of my nephew, Time Agent 386?" 357 asked.

=The same.=

"Reviewing information that all the characters already know just to cue in the reader. Weak." Spleen toddled away.

357 began looking for something to throw at Spleen.

The planet was fairly nondescript, having no local name, only a catalog number, too long to go into here, the reader being bored silly by numerous commas, which connected a flurry of incoherent sentence fragments, totally against all rules of proper grammar. Grammer?

Whatever.

In the mean time, the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial is named arrived in orbit. Time Agent 357, Doctor Bing Von Spleen, and Ralph the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V zapped themselves down to the surface using the Temporal Teleporter Terminal.

"I wish we could have brought Omegas along," said Spleen. "Now that he's starting to manifest his old powers again, I want to keep him where I can see him."

"Sorry, doctor," responded Ralph. "The Autoquack v1.5 told me that he'd be unconscious for at least another hour."

357 said nothing, being fully involved with scanning for any life forms in the area, but couldn't seem to get the scanner to work properly. In fact, he was so involved with working the scanner that he failed to notice the group of life forms sneaking up behind him. He did notice them once the things they were throwing began to rain down around him.

"Take cover!" he shouted. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, as Ralph and Spleen had already hit the deck. He reached down and picked up one of the things being thrown at him. "Books?"

"Oh no!" wailed Ralph. "The dreaded Librarians!"

Spleen didn't see the point. "Librarians? Little scholarly guys who not only didn't make the football team, but they couldn't even make the band? Those Librarians?"

"Maybe on your planet, Doctor," huffed Ralph as he made a shield wall out of old copies of Encyclopia Galactica. "But most civilized races realize that knowledge is power, so only the most ruthless, power- hungry individuals devote their lives to being Librarians."

The deadly rain of books slowed. Several massive figures, who looked no less menacing for their bad haircuts, oversized ties, and horn-rimmed glasses, closed in. Each hefted a hefy book. All were overdue. The largest one approached 357.

"Auio ioiaa oiaeeiy oui!" he declared.

357 smiled. "Ioueaii ioiaie ii ya ieeaoi?" he asked.

The smaller librarians looked at each other. "He knows the sacred language, Nanoc!" "This has never happened before." "Nanoc, whatever shall we do?"

"Quiet!" shouted the largest, the aforementioned Nanoc the Librarian. "We do what we always do!"

"And what's that?" inquired 357.

Nanoc smiled. "Eat our prisoners." The Librarians advanced.

357 shook his head sadly. Well, if it has to be this way, it has to be this way, he thought. Raising his trusty telechronal displacement pistol, he prepared to send all Nanoc's individual molecules on random unplanned trips through space and time. 357 pulled the trigger and was surprised to hear only a faint click.

"Uh oh."

Meanwhile, back on the Golden Lance, Omegas awoke.

Is this the end of 357?
Of Spleen? Of Ralph?
What will Omegas do now that he's awake?
Will Spike and Buffy ever go all the way?

For the answers to these questions, tune in at a random time and date for the next exciting episode of SFSTORY!

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