SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #09 - Enter the Darkness

Nanoc the Librarian, resplendent in his leather loincloth and horn- rimmed glasses, advanced on our heroes. At his back, close to a dozen slightly smaller Librarians raised their reference books in a very menacing manner. "Let's eat," mumbled one of them.

Time Agent 357 (retired) holstered his useless weapon and looked to his companions. These were Ralph the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V and Doctor Bing Von Spleen from Earth. As they were not armed to begin with, they had nothing to holster. Ralph was waving his ukulele in a vaguely threatening manner. He was not, however, waving it at the approaching Librarians, but rather at Spleen, who was making "don't hurt me - take the weasel" hand gestures.

357 activated his comm system. "Val, now would be a good time to get us out of here." The comm system was deader than 4 o'clock. 357 was getting ready to make one of his famous last stands when he sensed movement on the cliff face above him.

A lithe hooded figure sommersaulted over 357's head to land in front of the Librarians. Hands and feet lashed out, sending books and index cards flying in all directions. Within seconds, the Librarians were routed and running for their lives. "The Dark Mistress! It's the Dark Mistress! Run for your lives!"

"That's Miss Dark, you idiot information junkies!" the figure yelled. The figure turned around. The hood was pulled back to reveal an attractive young redheaded humanoid female. "Ralph, great to see you again! Doctor Spleen, you look well." She finally turned to face 357. "Time Agent 386, when did you get so old?"

"Actually, I'm 357," answered 357. "386's uncle."

"Oh," answered the female. "Well, there's a big family resemblance thing going there. You look just like I imagined he would when old."

"I'm sure. Who exactly are you, and how do you know my nephew?"

Ralph stepped forward. "This young lady is miss Diana Dark, a human who travelled with Time Agent 386 and myself for a time. She was instrumental during our attack on the Planet of the Supermarkets. When we parted company, she was still with 386, as I remember."

"I was," said Diana. "We traced renegade Time Agent Greez Hyperiok to a ship in orbit around this planet. After we captured him (which involved a case of beer, a set of handcuffs, and a very good acting job on my part), 386 went off to take Hyperiok to Time Central. As that was expected to be a milk run, 386 left me here in the mean time to make peaceful contact with the natives." She tossed a dictionary at the retreating figures. "As you can imagine, this was a difficult task, especially considering that no advanced technology seems to work on the planet's surface."

"So I've noticed," grumbled 357. "386 never returned?"

"Nope. No word."

"Time Central records show that 386 brought in Hyperiok, then left a flight plan saying he was coming back here. He should have been here by now, if I understand the timeflow in this alterverse correctly."

"You do. Months ago," Diana confirmed. "I hope nothing happened to him. Well, at least Hyperiok is locked up in the SuperMaxi Security wing of Time Central where he can't hurt anybody."

Spleen, who was idly plucking pieces of equipment off 357's belt to see if anything was working, spilt the beans about Hyperiok. "It turns out the Hyperiok in the SuperMaxi wing was an andriod duplicate, which self-destructed after chewing the scenary a bit. We have no idea when or where the substitution took place."

"It took place after 386 left with him," answered Diana firmly.

"How can you be so sure?"

"During the capture, I bit him," Diana said. "Androids don't bleed."

357 looked Diana over again. He liked a woman who could fight. As long as she wasn't fighting him. "I see. Well, we'll worry about that later, along with finding out what happened to my nephew. Right now, we need to figure out a way to get back to my ship, the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial is named."

"Serial? What serial?"

"Um, never mind. Do you have any sort of signalling device?"

Diana Dark parted her cloak, revealing many interesting things, which included several sophisticated electronic devices. "I'm a walking radio shack, meaning the fancy room on a ship and not a trademarked chain of electronics stores, but none of them work down here."

"Let me see what I can do," said Spleen as he ran his eyes and hands over Diana's equipment. After she smacked him several times, he limited himself to the electronic devices. Within minutes, he had constructed a device which he claimed would signal the ship.

"That should do it," he said as he flipped the switch and the rest of the group dove behind a large rock. He was about to chide his companions for their lack of faith in his abilities when the device exploded in a huge ball of flame.

Onboard the HMS Golden Lance for which this serial... Um, never mind.

Anyway, onboard, Omegas was amusing himself by trying to use the Temporal Teleporter Terminal to duplicate a particularly tasty keg of beer. He had just set the proper temporal and dimensional coordinates when he was interupted by the ship's computer, the VAL 9000.

=Sorry to interupt you, Omegas...=

"No, you're not," answered Omegas.

="Okay, so I'm not. However, I do need you to step away from the TTT platform. I've just scanned a large energy discharge on the planet's surface and 357 is not responding to my signals. I'm going to TTT everybody up as a safety precaution.=

"Well, okay, but just let me move..."

With a swirl of rainbow colors, a group of people appeared, displacing the atoms of the keg and its contents, spraying them all over the walls and teleporter controls.

And all over Omegas. "...my beer."

Spleen looked around and took an appreciative sniff. "Reminds me of my lab back at the university." He and Ralph snickered at Omegas, then left the room, each carrying a load of assorted reference books they had scavaged.

Omegas wrung beer from the tail of his loud Hawaiian flowerdy shirt. "357, that infernal computer of yours has got to..." Then Omegas seemed to notice Diana Dark. "Well, hello, there!"

"Omegas," answered Diana coolly.

"I see my reputation has preceeded me," Omegas said suavely. "But please do not believe anything these ruffians have said about me. I'm sure that you'll find that the truth is much more interesting. Might I show you around, my dear?" He turned smoothly to lead her into the corridor. Well, smoothly until he tripped over a lexicon on East Europan postal workers of the 2200's.

"Um, some other time, perhaps. 357 and I have something we need to discuss right now."

"Very well," said Omegas, as he strode away, his sandals making little splish splishing noises in the beer.

"357, is something wrong with Omegas?" Diana asked.

"Nothing more than usual. He's currently without his immortality and near infinite powers, so he's fairly harmless as long as we keep him away from sharp objects. Why?" As he talked, he led her to the nearest break room, because she really looked like she could use a good meal.

Diana shucked her cloak and hung it on a hook by the door. "Well, he acted like he didn't know me. 386 and I have encounted Omegas several times. And I've never known him to be polite. The first time we met, he asked me to please step outside."

"That's not polite?"

"Outside of the spaceship."

"That's rude."

"That's my point." Diana sighed. "Anyway, Omegas has plenty of reasons to remember me, and no reason at all to be nice to me."

357 considered. "Well, Omegas and I did just spend the last 150 subjective years trapped inside a temporal, dimensional, and spacial anomaly. I know that I've had some memory lapses because of it. For example, I still can't remember exactly how we ended up inside that anomaly in the first place, though I'm sure it's his fault."

"I'm sure," agreed Diana in her best 'humor the Time Agent' tone.

"Well, let me find you a room," said 357, who hated being humored. "Val, assign Miss Dark a room."

=Working on it. Do you prefer pinks or purples?=

"Pinks." Diana made herself at home in the break room, helping herself to a large portion of whatever it was the food slot was serving at the time.

Seeing that she would be busy eating for a while, having survived the last few months on roots, berries, and the leather covers of various types of reference books, 357 wandered off to do whatever it was that he did when he wasn't being a hero.

As he walked down the corridor, an observer would observe that 357 flickered in and out of reality several times like a badly tuned and impossibly archaic TV signal. There were no observers, however. 357 paused, shook his head, and moved on, not realizing that he'd just been part of an important plot point.

Diana was on her third plate when Ralph came in. "So nice to be adventuring with you again," he said.

"Thanks, Ralph," Diana answered, suppressing a burp because, after all, she was a woman. She looked around the spacious break room. "Say, how is it that this ship is so much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?"

"357 said it was dimensional transexualism or something like that." Ralph helped himself to a plate.

"But what does that mean?" Diana wondered aloud.

"It means that it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside," Doctor Bing Von Spleen answered aloud as he entered the break room and began filling a plate of his own. "Hey, I designed it, and even I don't understand it."

They all chewed quietly for a while, except for Ralph, who literally could not chew with his weaseloid mouth closed due to anatomical reasons beyond the scope of this story.

"Say," said Ralph, spraying his half-eaten food halfway across his half of the table. "I just realized that you are both from the same alterverse (alternate universe), same planet, and even roughly the same time period. What are the odds of that?"

"Pretty good, actually," answered Spleen. "Most of the authors are from Earth in that alterverse, and they tend to write what they know, limiting themselves to humans or at least human-like characters."

"Authors?"

"Never mind," Spleen said hastily. "Anyway, my Automatic Beet Peeler and Sub-Atomic Re-integrator Mark I, or ABPSARI, was sabotaged by Radar Vogel, which is how I came to leave Earth. You?"

Ralph finished the last of his food. "I was quite happy on my homeworld, Liebowitz IV, when my P.R. agent decided to rename me as the Giant Space Weasel of Anthrax V and signed a contract on my behalf with Hell (back before they were incorporated) to be a Satanic Agent At Large, or SAAL. By the time I weaselled out of my contract, I was far from my home with no idea of how to get back."

Diana decided to tell her story. "I had kicked out my boyfriend and was cleaning up the apartment. I carelessly threw a pair of handcuffs under the bed, knocking an open can of beer into leaking can of a processed cheese-like snack product."

"Ah," gasped Spleen. "The reality-warping properties of the leaking Cheez-Whiz (for it could be no other product) combined with the mood- altering properties of the beer, no doubt destroying your apartment and transporting you into another reality."

"Right," continued Diana. "There was an explosion the likes of which I had never seen before."

Just then, a massive explosion ripped through the HMS Golden Lance, the likes of which no one had ever seen before.

Except Diana, of course.

What caused the explosion?
Has Diana really seen its likes before?
What is happening to Time Agent 357?
Why can't Ralph chew with his mouth closed?

For answers to these and other questions, consult a Ouiji board, cause you ain't gettin' nothing here...

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