Thunderdome!

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

A wobble. That’s how Ensign Reinhart described the odd winking light of planet 452. The probe data was unlike any other report the young ensign had ever seen. The mass of an entire planet would appear and disappear at random intervals. At first Reinhart assumed the probe was on the fritz. He sent out two more and they also returned with the same information.

Knowing his superiors would next ask if he had verified visually, Reinhart hopped aboard the astral viewer to see it with his own eyes. A natural projector, the young ensign skipped easily through the solar systems until he came upon the coordinates of planet 452. Once there his eyes confirmed the probe data. The entire planet would wink into existence and then wink into nothingness once more. There was definitely a wobble.

Entry One

A wobble. That’s how Ensign Reinhart described the odd winking light of planet 452. The probe data was unlike any other report the young ensign had ever seen. The mass of an entire planet would appear and disappear at random intervals. At first Reinhart assumed the probe was on the fritz. He sent out two more and they also returned with the same information.

Knowing his superiors would next ask if he had verified visually, Reinhart hopped aboard the astral viewer to see it with his own eyes. A natural projector, the young ensign skipped easily through the solar systems until he came upon the coordinates of planet 452. Once there his eyes confirmed the probe data. The entire planet would wink into existence and then wink into nothingness once more. There was definitely a wobble. But there was something else, too.

It looked like a ship.

*****

One Week Later...

It was cold.

He shivered, his first movement in more than a week. The chill seeped into his bones and coated his skin with a fine layer of ice.

Cryo, his mind whispered.

The words teased at the corner of his mind when the first sensation of heat enveloped him. It started in his chest and bloomed outward like a series of vines. They twisted through his body and banished the cold in spiral patterns. It felt as if he were being constricted.

He breathed. Warm air flowed into his lungs.

When he exhaled, he coughed. There was something in his throat. The animal part of his mind shrieked in terror, but he was helpless. He was drowning.

“Breathe,” a soothing voice said.

Light flashed in a glow that matched the warmth radiating through his body. A hiss started around him, like a thousand snakes. His skin crawled at the sound, but he could move again. His hands instantly went to his throat.

Before he could claw at his neck, he tilted forward. Gravity took hold of him and he instead grabbed a nearby rail. It was cold against his heated palms.

“Breathe,” the same voice said. It triggered a memory in his mind.

He drew in a shuddering breath and coughed. This time, the fluid came up. He heart a splatter in front of him and breathed in to repeat the process. Another mouthful of liquid fell to the ground. He vaguely recognized the same sound coming from either side of him.

“Breathe.”

He opened his eyes when he inhaled again, his lungs free. Light dazzled him and he squinted. Details slowly came into focus. There was a grey wall in front of him, emblazoned with yellow in a narrow strip.

A step forward was a grate. The thin metal strips sent lines of fire through his bare feet, so he quickly took another step. His feet slapped against smooth metal this time.

Someone coughed to his left, but by now Geoff was recovered enough to understand where he was, so he ignored the noise. Instead, he focused on the yellow name printed on the locker in front of him.

Cpt. Narvez, G.

Shaking his head to clear the fog lingering at the edges of his mind, Geoff Narvez reached for the locker’s handle and turned. The servomotors turned silently and the door opened, revealing a clean, pressed uniform. His first initial and last name were also printed on the front in neat, blocky letters.

“Shit, this stuff is nasty,” a feminine voice said from his right.

Geoff turned his head toward her, his eyes taking in her naked form. Her close-cropped, blonde hair still had a few crystals melting in it. “Sleep tight?”

She nodded to him and spat a mouthful of the nutrient compound into the grate before reaching out to open her own locker. It read Sgt. Stephens, O. “Loveliest dreams. I was a dashing knight and Gaz was my pretty, pretty princess.”

A booming chuckle came from the left. “You sure stepped out of the freezer in the right mood. Was I pretty?”

Geoff zipped up his uniform and glanced at the team’s demolitions expert, Gasçon LaVergne. The Staff Sergeant’s pale skin was covered in old burn scars, but he was jovial despite that. Freckles dusted his nose and red stubble covered his head.

“Doubtful,” another voice put in. “Man, I hate these trips. A day more of cryo sleep and I’d’ve come out swingin’.”

Geoff looked past Stephens to see Warrant Officer Michelle Ferreira pulling a tank top out of her locker, already nearly dressed. She was taller than Stephens, with her hair just under regulation length. Her dark skin shined under the harsh lights. The woman strapped on her boots, a prize of efficiency.

“I’ll be on the bridge,” Geoff said, closing his locker.

*****

“Mornin’, sleepy heads,” Second Lieutenant Cossey called from the helm. She tucked a strand of blonde hair under her flight cap.

“Situation?” Geoff asked her as he strolled onto the bridge with Ferreira on his heels. The other two were grabbing some food.

The pilot pressed a button on her console and waved to the holo-table in the middle of the bridge. “We’re green to go at the edge of 452’s orbit, or where it would be if it were here. Got some calculations from Fleetcom on how often the planet ‘wobbles’, too. Goes dark for a couple of hours before popping back in, though the time’s decreasing at a steady rate. In fact, she’s about to pop up.”

Geoff examined the timer. 42 seconds. “What about the ship?”

The Lieutenant pressed another button and a red dot appeared on the other side of the planet’s gravity well. “She’s human—a science frigate based on the readings. Transponder lists it as the Hawking. Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a problem. You two might wanna grab onto something.”

The counter blinked down to zero. Geoff glanced to the viewport showing empty space and braced himself against the holo-table. Ferreira mirrored him.

A second later, as if by magic, the planet appeared.

The ship rocked violently, almost knocking Geoff to the floor. Curses came from back down the hall and Ferreira grabbed onto his arm to keep herself from falling.

As soon as it started, it stopped, and the planet was gone. The timer restarted, now 1 hour and 40 minutes.

“What was that?” Ferreira asked once she had regained her balance.

“That,” Cossey replied, swiveling in her chair, “was the gravity well re-establishing itself. And if you look at the hologram, you’ll see Hawking drifting.”

Geoff ground his teeth. “Her orbit’s decaying.”

“Got it in one, Captain,” the pilot replied. “A couple more of those reappearances and she’ll end up crashing into the planet, or a few miles underground when it pops up again”

Ferreira drummed her fingers on the table and nodded to Gascon as he walked in. “So we’ve got about three hours?”

“Give or take. I’m not exactly a scientist here,” Cossey replied.

Stephens arrived a few seconds later and sent a glare toward their pilot, who responded with a roll of her eyes.

“Do we have any intel on the Hawking? Why it’s out here, what it’s mission is, crew complement?” Geoff asked.

The pilot turned back to her station and leaned forward. “The ship’s out here for... ‘routine scanning for rare minerals and testing on the planet’, according to the logs.”

“Routine, my ass,” Stephens said and walked over to the helm. “Let me see those logs.”

“Be my guest,” Cossey replied before turning her attention back to the captain. “Anyway, it’s a frigate, so at minimum, fifty crew members, not counting the science staff. But...” she hesitated, “scans aren’t picking that many up. We’ve got twenty life signs on board.”

“Just twenty?” Gascon repeated in disbelief. “What happened?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” Geoff ran a hand through his hair and tried to understand what everything meant. “Is twenty enough to fly the ship?”

The Lieutenant tapped her lip. “Frigates like this are pretty well automated. Just need a helmsmen to move them out. Of course, jumping’s a different story.”

“I just want to know if we can get it far enough from the planet so we don’t have to worry about it crashing.”

Cossey nodded. “Easy.”

Geoff rapped his knuckles against the holo-table. “Then that’s our first priority. Everyone suit up, we’re heading onboard. Hopefully the crew will have some idea what’s going on.”

“Captain?” Stephens said, her voice grave.

The pilot turned to the screen and her eyes grew wide.

Geoff frowned. “Got something, Sergeant?”

“Hawking really is here for scanning. They’re just not looking for minerals.” She looked up at him. “They found something else.”

*****

The hatch hissed in front of them as the pressure equalized between the two ships. A moment later, the door opened into the docking tube bridging the two vessels.

Captain Narvez moved forward, his rifle held loosely against the exoskeletal armor he was wearing. The armor served several purposes, protecting him from fire and other hazards as well as being tough enough to stop quite a few bullets. It also increased his strength and speed by a fair amount. The only weak point was the helmet that encased his head, but even it could stand up to a couple of glancing rounds.

The others were similarly attired, their frames marginaly larger when covered in the exoskeleton. Servo-motors moved soundlessly at the fully articulated joints and provided enough strength to reduce recoil to almost nothing, even for two-tiered combat shotgun Gascon held.

Ferreira held a rifle similar to Geoff’s own, though configured to suit her personal style. Normally she was their sniper, but with the cramped hallways of the frigate, she’d downgraded to a regular rifle with a longer barrel.

Stephens, on the other hand, held a medium machine gun. Its caliber was just low enough to not punch through a ship’s hull if she missed a shot, which was the only reason Geoff had allowed it. Privately, he hoped it wouldn’t be needed, but what Stephens had found in the buried records had bothered him.

The science team had been sent to study something not made by human hands.

”Gaz, open the door. Stephens, cover him. Mitch and I will hang back and provide further cover,” Geoff ordered when they came to the Hawking’s airlock. “We’ll use this formation until I say otherwise. Copy?”

“Copy that, Captain,” Gascon said along with the rest of the squad before pressing the button.

Ferreira, nicknamed ‘Mitch’, opened a channel with him while the door unlocked. “Expecting trouble, Captain?”

Geoff shook his head. “No, but I don’t want to be caught unprepared. No telling what’s on board.”

“Played a VR game like this once,” she said, letting the sentence hang between them.

“Let’s hope it stays VR,” Geoff replied uncomfortably. The truth was, humanity was spreading everywhere, waiting for first contact. What if this was it? “How’s that door coming, Gaz?”

Gascon stood up and pointed his weapon, finger against the trigger guard. “Opening now, Captain.”

The door finished its rotation and slipped into the ceiling faster than Geoff could blink. A form immediately fell forward.

“Hold fire, hold fire,” Geoff called out as the body slumped to the floor. “Stephens, Gaz, move up. Mitch, on the body.”

The team burst into action, Gascon and Stephens checking their halves of the hallway while Geoff moved forward to cover from the door. Mitch grabbed the body with one hand and pulled it to the other side of the docking tube, out of sight from the Hawking’s interior.

“Clear!” Gascon said over the channel.

“Clear!” Stephens replied a second later. “Covering.”

Geoff scanned the darkened hallway with his flashlight on. Stephens’ and Gascon’s lights were also moving in short motions, checking the ceiling, floor and walls. The two moved forward in alternating bounds until they came to another door. Geoff pulled the schematics of the ship up and saw it lead into the ship’s main hallway.

“Silent breach, check hallway, then pull back,” he ordered and then turned to Mitch, who was still examining the body. “What have you got for me?”

“Male, middle-aged, no armor. Scientist, I’m guessing,” she replied clinically. “Blunt force trauma. Skull’s caved in.”

Gascon’s voice came over the channel again. “Blood splatter here, on the right wall. Shit, it’s all over the floor, too.”

“Source it, Gaz. Stephens, you see anything?”

“Negative on that, Captain. Just darkness. Where’s the light switch?”

Geoff was wondering the same thing. “Got a source yet, Gaz?”

“Wish I didn’t,” Gascon replied through gritted teeth. “Positive ID on military personnel. Girl’s in two pieces, Captain. At least, I think it’s the same person. Lots of blood.”

A chill ran down Geoff’s spine. “Roger. Pull back and cover the door.”

“Copy,” Stephens and Gascon replied at the same time.

“Mitch, let’s bound up.” Geoff opened a new channel and connected back to the Stealth Corvette they’d come in on. “Lieutenant, we’re on board. We’ve found two of the crew, DOA. Do you copy?”

“I copy, sir. Two crew, dead on arrival.” Cossey’s voice was subdued. “Still want me to wave off?”

Geoff caught up to the rest of the squad at the next door. “Negative. Hold for ten, but lock the doors. Someone or something killed these crewmembers.”

Cossey hesitated before replying. “Copy. ‘Something’?”

“Just listing possibilities, Lieutenant. We’ll radio when we have more intel.” Geoff cut the transmission and turned his attention back to Stephens. “We need to find the ship’s logs. Where’s the closest console?”

The sergeant didn’t turn. “Down the hall to our left about twenty meters.”

Geoff’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “Alright, let’s go for it. Gaz, take point. I’ll be right behind you. Mitch, you and Stephens take our flank. I don’t want anything taking us by surprise.”

They moved down the hall in formation. Their boots clunked against the metal deck. The only illumination they had were the flashlights attached to their guns, which they swiveled back and forth to cover as much hallway as possible.

Eventually they came to a panel in a depression of the wall.

“Stephens, you’re up.”

“Copy that, Captain,” the woman replied. She leaned her gun against the wall and began to open menus while the rest of them spread out to cover her.

A moment later, she spoke up. “Found something, Captain, but something’s up with the system. It won’t let me into anything but a single log. I can’t even access the map.”

“I’m assuming you can’t slice into it, either?” Geoff asked with a frown.

“Negative.”

He sighed. “Patch the log through our HUD.”

“Roger that.” She paused. “Alright, it’s up.”

A picture appeared on Geoff’s heads-up display. It featured a wrinkled woman in a white lab coat. Behind her was the head of some kind of small robot, which moved when she began to speak.

“Dr. Kathryn Ramsey, log twenty. We have arrived on planet and have begun excavating around the tower the probe picked up before we came here. Initial estimates suggest that there is a large facility located underneath and around the tower. My team and I are excited to study whatever we find, but the tower itself is amazing on its own. We believe it was created by a race far more advanced than our own. A power source far beyond our technological level has been found nearby, which only further reinforces this belief. We—”

The picture disappeared.

Geoff was on instant alert. “Stephens? Why’d it stop?”

“I don’t know, sir. It just... there’s something in the system blocking any access. I’ve never even seen something like— wait, I have something. There’s a ping showing another panel nearby. It just appeared on my map.”

Ferreira growled. “Follow the breadcrumbs, huh? I don’t like this. Someone’s jerking us around.”

Geoff opened his map and saw what Stephens was talking about. There was a nav point set in the center of the ship. “Stephens, is that where I think it is?”

“The labs, sir.”

Gascon shifted on his feet and looked at his watch. “It’s on the way to the bridge, Captain. We should have enough time.”

“Let’s head in that direction, then. We’ll check it out. And get on the radio. Tell Cossey to detach and stay on station,” Geoff replied after a moment. He wanted to know more about what the science team had found on the planet. “But tell her we still don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

*****

It took them ten minutes to reach the labs. The route would have been shorter, but several of the doors were locked. Not even Stephens could slice through them and Geoff didn’t want to waste the thermal tape they’d brought with them. It would burn through most of the doors on the ship, but they only had two rolls of it. Enough for a bulkhead and a couple of regular hatches.

And still there was no sign of what had attacked the crew. Nor had they come upon any survivors, which bothered him. There were bodies, though. The squad had come upon several different sites, each more disturbing than the last. Some of them had giant holes drilled through them as if impaled, while others were crushed against the wall. Geoff didn’t know of any weapons that did that.

The closer they came to the labs, though, the more bullet wounds there were, and less of everything else.

What was going on?

“Hold!” Gascon raised his fist.

Geoff looked around with his finger against the trigger guard. “What is it?”

“Movement. Check your sensors,” Ferreira said from behind him.

A yellow dot had appeared on his motion tracker heading toward them. Geoff looked past Gascon, into the darkness. This hallway would end at the lab’s doors, but it was out of their flashlight’s range. There was nothing moving, either.

“Mitch, Stephens, keep your eyes behind us. This might be a distraction,” Geoff said. He pressed the his rifle’s stock against his shoulder and tapped Gascon on the back. “Kneel, Gaz. I got you from above.”

Gascon nodded and fell to a knee, his exoskeleton making it seem effortless. “Yes, sir.”

“Open fire only when you have a clear target. Do not fire if human, unless they have a weapon.”

A chorus of ‘Yes sir’s’ came through the channel.

The dot was approaching. Geoff could hear a strange skittering sound. It set his teeth on edge. Still nothing in front of him. His aim didn’t waver. He was ready.

There was a sudden clang from above.

Geoff looked up just in time to see a small object fall from the ceiling. It fell directly in front of them, lit the entire way. He saw a blur of green and nearly fired when his brain realized what it was.

“Hold fire, hold fire,” he called, relief flooding through him. “It’s just an iguana.”

Gascon let out a shuddering breath and laughed. “Wh-what the hell. A fucking lizard? Where the hell did that come from?”

Stephens snickered from the back. “Shit your pants yet, Gaz?”

“God damn near did,” Gascon replied. He reached out a hand for the iguana. It blinked and raised its head up at him, but otherwise remained motionless. “You doin’ alright, little buddy?”

“Gaz, get your fingers away from its damn mouth,” Ferreira scolded over her shoulder. “For all we know, that thing’s what’s killed everyone.”

The big man laughed again and patted the lizard’s skin. “Nah, this guy’s chill. Innit that right, buddy?”

It cocked its head before scrambling away down the hall. Its claws scratched against the metal, making that skittering noise again. Another noise, a small buzzing that reminded him of servomotors came from the same direction.

He sighed and shrugged his aching shoulders. “Gonna need a massage after this shit.”

“Ooh, that sounds nice,” Stephens purred.

“Let’s get to the lab. And keep your eyes up. Bad time to get careless,” Geoff said, mindful of the hysteria a situation like this caused.

They made it to the lab without incident. The iguana was skittering somewhere off in the darkness, but there was no sound otherwise. There weren’t even any bodies, though there was splotches of blood splashed against the floor and walls at random intervals.

“Door’s locked, Captain,” Stephens said when they arrived. “System’s still got me locked out, but I think the mechanism’s fried here. Gonna have to do hard breach.”

Geoff grunted and looked over his shoulder. “You heard the lady, Gaz. It’s time to make yourself useful.”

“You got it, Cap’n.” The man reached into a pouch on the exoskeleton and pulled out a roll of red tape. “One brand new door, comin’ up.”

Geoff turned back to the hallway, side by side with Ferreira. He opened a channel with her. “Any ideas?”

Her helmet moved a fraction of an inch toward him. “About the ship or what the hell killed all these folk?”

“Both. Either. Anything,” he replied, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

“Don’t know, sir. Stuff like this is like something you’d seen in a horror VR game. That ain’t exactly sitting well with me.”

Geoff agreed with her, but he kept his voice impassive. “You really think it’s aliens? Shit, it sounds stupid just saying that.”

“I don’t know, sir,” she replied again, biting off the words. “I just want something to happen now, when I’m ready, instead of later, when I’m not.”

She cut off the channel.

Geoff left her alone and thought about her words.

“Tape’s up, Cap’n,” Gascon said. “Think they’ll take this out of my pay?”

“If they do, I’ll lodge a formal complaint,” Geoff said. “Burn it.”

The demo-man held up a remote trigger and thumbed the device. “Can do.”

A bright, incandescent light lit up the hallway, accompanying a loud hissing noise as the tape ripped through the door. It went fast, and seconds later, it was done. Geoff blinked his eyes against the sudden darkness, willing them to adjust.

“Mitch, keep an eye on our flank.” Geoff turned to the slagged door, which now had a smaller, rectangular outline in it. “Stephens, cover while Gaz breaches.”

Geoff pointed his gun to the floor when Gaz got in his way. The demolitions expert kicked in the door and it fell away from the rest of the hatch. More darkness greeted them, but there was nothing on the motion trackers.

“Breaching,” Gaz said. He moved to enter the room.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, something slashed down at him, faster than Geoff could blink.

“Shit!”

“Whoa!”

Gascon fell onto his back, leaving the door open. Something moved in the darkness and screeched at them. A huge claw appeared in their flashlights.

“Fire, fire, fire!” Geoff heard himself roar over the sound of his rifle.

Stephens wasted no time obeying the order. She let out a primal scream and let loose with the medium machine gun. Tracers slashed through the darkness and slammed into the huge, clawed form.

The thing’s screech fell into a rattle as it fell backward and disappeared into the darkness.

Geoff’s weapon clicked dry. Stephens was still firing.

“Hold, hold, hold!” he ordered over the channel.

Stephens complied, but she kept her weapon trained on the door. Silence fell over the group like a blanket as they listened for the thing’s movements. Their flashlights all angled into the room, but there was nothing except for the far wall in sight.

“What the fuck was that.”

“Shiiiiiiit!” Gascon cried.

Geoff saw red streaming down the front of the man’s armor. “Gaz! Mitch, on Gaz! I’ll take flank! Stephens, cover the door!”

He twirled around while Ferreira sprang toward Gascon. His heart beat fast and loud in his ears and he could feel his pulse thundering in his neck. Eyes wide, Geoff stared down the hallway and numbly reloaded his weapon, letting the spent clip fall to the floor. His body screamed at him to turn around, to keep that monster in sight, but he had to cover the flank.

It took him a moment to realize he couldn’t hear Gascon anymore. “Gaz? Mitch? Report.”

“It fucking slashed me, Captain. Right through the fucking armor,” Gascon replied in a crazed voice.

“It’s a shallow cut. Armor seems to have taken most of it,” Ferreira replied clinically. “Gonna use some synthflesh to keep it from bleeding. He’ll be alright.”

“It cut me through my fucking armor! I am not alright!”

Geoff fought against the fear threatening to take hold and bubble out. “Stephens? Is that thing dead?”

“I’ve got a quarter of a clip left to make sure, sir,” she replied with false bravado, her voice trembling.

“Negative. Switch with me and reload.”

“Sir, I am not taking my eyes off this door.”

Geoff understood her reluctance. “That’s an order, Sergeant.”

It took her a second to respond. “Yes, sir. Switching.”

He turned with her and traded places, careful to keep his weapon trained on the inky darkness coating the lab like a shroud. Where the thing had been, droplets of dark blood puddled on the floor similar to what they’d seen earlier.

“Gaz, get up. We’re breaching,” Geoff ordered once Ferreira had finished with the wound.

The man looked at him sidelong, but he seemed to regain control of himself. “Yes, sir. Give me a second.”

“Sir, that thing is still in there, alive and dangerous” Stephens objected, her voice on the edge of hysteria.

“I’ll go first,” Geoff said, ignoring her. “You keep your head on a swivel, Gaz. Mitch, switch with Stephens. I want you watching the hallway.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferreira replied, unruffled.

Stephens clicked on a private channel. “Sir, you’re not seriously taking us in there.”

“I am. Get in position, Stephens. We know it’s in there now, so we’ve got the advantage,” Geoff replied before switching to the squad comm. “Gaz?”

Gascon took a few deep breaths before he nodded. “Alright, I’m good, sir.”

“Beach on three,” Geoff said, holding up three fingers and counting down with them. “One. Two. Three!”

Geoff went first, moving past the thing and waving his light across the lab in short, choppy motions.

There were rows of tables and desks by each of them. A few of the tables had a robotic arm dangling uselessly beside them. He shined his light in front of him and saw it reflect off glass. There was a raised portion where the doctors would watch whatever was being done in the lab itself.

What drew his attention most was the tables on the far left side. There were more of the things laying there.

Geoff held his breath and didn’t move. Neither did the monsters. They stayed as still as the grave. Were they dead? Where was the one that attacked them?

“Gaz, on me. Stephens, find that console.”

“Shit, sir, that’s a lot of them,” Gascon said when he turned toward where Geoff’s light was pointing.

“I think they’re dead, Gaz. But we’re gonna go check real quick-like. Keep an eye out for the live one. It might be hiding.”

Ferreira’s voice came over the comms. “Backing into the lab, sir. I’ll use the door as cover and make sure nothing traps us in here.”

“Roger that,” Geoff said, his boots clicking against the laboratory tile. He and Gascon were right next to one of the occupied beds. “I’m going to poke one, Gaz. If it moves, shoot it.”

“Sir,” Gascon replied reluctantly.

Geoff nudged one of the claws with his gun, but it didn’t move. It just fell limply back into its original position. Whatever it was, it was long dead.

“Console’s found, sir. Same as the last one. It’s just giving me a single log,” Stephens said over the radio, her voice tight and strained. “Want it?”

“Patch it through. Gaz, keep an eye on these while I watch this,” Geoff replied.

Again, the picture of the old doctor came up. There was something green on her shelf this time, and it twitched when she started speaking.

“Dr. Kathryn Ramsey, log thirty. In the many months we have been on this planet, new discoveries have been few and far between. We have successfully managed to turn the tower’s power source off and on, with fantastic results. It has the power to envelop the entire planet in a dimensional pocket, completely cutting it off from the rest of the visible universe! The ramifications for this are staggering, but it is still secondary to what we have found beneath the tower.

“We have found life.”

“Sir, the iguana’s back,” Ferreira’s voice came over the comm, automatically pausing the video.

Geoff turned toward the lab door to see the lizard skitter toward him. It immediately went for one of the alien corpses and jumped on its strange, nearly human torso. The iguana hopped onto what Geoff guessed was the head and then bit into one of the three eyes it appeared to have.

“That’s just fuckin’ disgusting,” Stephens said. She was standing on the other side of the table with her weapon pointed at the corpse’s head.

Geoff’s eyes ran across the alien’s body, taking in the four claw-like appendages on its bottom half. He guessed that’s what it used to move around. All four combined in the middle and merged with the torso. Geoff nudged the chest with his gauntleted hand and caused the lizard to hiss at him. The skin wasn’t soft, like a human’s. It was hard, like an insect’s. It’s arms ended in a strange bunch of seven smaller claws. They were curled, almost like fingers.

He looked away and continued the video.

“Strange pods were found in the facility. At first, we did not know what they were for, except that they were found clustered in huge warehouse-like rooms. There were rows of them. Our initial investigations revealed that there were living beings inside, so we opened one of them.

“The alien inside was unlike anything we had ever seen. It had claws almost like a crab’s for legs and hands, while its thorax was remarkably human. Three eyes stared at my team as it stumbled out of the pod, seemingly confused. And then it spoke! We could not understand the language, but it seemed as if it were disoriented.

“Unfortunately, when it looked around and noticed the pods around it, it grew violent. It immediately killed one of my team members and knocked one of our security personnel away before being neutralized.

“End of Log.

“Dr. Kathryn Quinn,” the woman appeared, this time harried and with wild eyes. “More have escaped their pods! They’ve rampaged across the facility and have infiltrated the ship! We have activated the tower, for that is its purpose, we’ve come to find! It was meant to keep these... life forms in check. They are highly aggressive and highly intelligent! They have already learned how to use firearms taken from our security personnel. We must stop them from escaping the planet! Security is destroying the invaders and the captain is preparing to leave the planet as soon as the tower’s power fails again. We don’t know why it fails. Perhaps it is old. Perhaps it is due to our tampering. But we will leave when the planet reappears in normal space. We must warn the fleets!

End of Log.”

“Captain! The ping is back! It’s pointing to the bridge,” Stephens said as soon as the log ended.

Geoff stared down at the alien again.

“Sir, with all due respect, we should leave—”

The ship shook and a wrenching screech rang through the hull.

Geoff and the others fell to the ground. The wail of rending metal continued for several seconds. It sent a lance of pain through his brain before his helmet’s audio line shut itself off.

And then it was gone again.

“What the hell?” Geoff said.

His comm sparked to life and Cossey’s concerned voice came through. “Captain? The planet just reappeared, but the timing’s way off. We might have less time than we thought.”

“How much less?”

“Forty minutes. Maybe an hour before it comes back. I don’t know. This thing’s unpredictable and at the rate the Hawking’s falling, it’ll crash in two more wobbles. Are you at the bridge yet?”

Geoff shook his head and regained his feet. “No, but we found why the ship’s gone to hell. The scientists found goddamned aliens.”

The line was so silent for a few seconds that Geoff thought Cossey had shut it off. Finally, she spoke, “Shit. Have you found any survivors?”

“Negative. But there might be some on the bridge,” Geoff replied brusquely.

“Uh, copy that. Orders?”

Geoff ground his teeth. “Stay on station. We may need a quick pick-up.”

“Sir, we can not stay here,” Stephens objected again. “Not on a ‘might be’. For all we know, all nineteen of the other signals might be these crab things.”

“I agree with the Sergeant, Captain,” Cossey said.

Geoff shook his head. “We’re heading for the bridge. We need to find out what’s— if anyone’s alive.”

“Sir—”

He clicked the channel off and looked up at the others. They stared back at him, Stephens angry and Gascon disbelieving. Ferreira was the only impassive one.

“We’re heading to the bridge. Keep in mind, these things can use guns.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Sir, we need to get out of here!” Stephens argued with fire in her eyes. “This is insane! We’ve found out what happened. Let’s bug out and let the ship burn!”

“Someone’s directing us from place to place, Stephens,” Geoff said. “And I think they might be human.”

“How can you know that?”

Geoff glanced down to the lizard, which was looking back up at him. “Because that’s not a real iguana. It’s a mechanoid. And it’s being controlled.”

*****

“Clear!”

Stephens swung her weapon through the door with a grunt of effort. Even with the exoskeletons, lugging around a medium machine gun wasn’t easy. The sergeant swept the area with her gun and moved forward to the next door.

“We’re coming on the cafeteria, sir,” Ferreira said. “After that is a straight shot to the bridge, assuming we don’t run into any more locked doors.

Geoff spared her a glance before following after their demo-man. “The lizard’s led us right so far.”

“We’re at the mess hall now, Captain,” Stephen’s voice came over the comms. “Door panel looks like it’s working, but the lizard’s just hissing at it. Mean anything to you, sir?”

He ignored her tone. “No, but if it’s doing something different, I think we can guess whoever’s controlling it is trying to tell us something.”

“What, that we get a free meal on our way to hell?”

“Can it, Sergeant. You can bitch later.” The doors came into sight, along with Gascon and Stephens’ forms on either side of the hallway. The lizard was between them and it was hissing like a sprung valve. “Any contacts on the sensor?”

Gascon’s burly form turned and he shook his head. “Negative on that. But we didn’t get one last time, either.”

“Cafeteria’s a good place for an ambush, sir,” Ferreira said as she pulled up alongside him, unflappable as ever. “It’s open and the columns break lines of sight. They could be hiding anywhere.”

“Well, we’ll push in slowly, then. Check the roof before you go in, Gaz,” Geoff ordered. “When we get in, stay together, cover each other’s blind spots. We do not want to get separated. Breach it.”

Stephens pressed the button and the doors opened without a sound. Again, darkness greeted them, with no contacts on radar. Geoff’s hands tightened on his rifle when Gascon brought his gun up to check the ceiling.

“Clear.”

Geoff swallowed. “Move up. Tight formation.”

Stephens went in first, with the demo-man on her hip. Gascon’s tactical light strobed across the walls. Nothing moved except for them and the lizard.

Their footsteps clunked against the floor panels, loud in the silence. Geoff felt eyes on the back of his head and he steadily shined his light in his arc of fire, trusting the other three to cover their own sectors. His visor fogged up and automatically cleared itself as he breathed; it sounded loud in his ears.

They were halfway across the cafeteria when Geoff heard something click against the floor.

“Hold, hold, hold,” he whispered, even though his helmet would keep any sound from escaping the suit. “Audio contact at sixty degrees. No movement.”

“No visual, sir.” Stephens replied quietly. “But I hear it, too.”

The click came again.

Ferreira clicked her comm on. “Possible contact at two-four-oh.”

“Confirmed contact, but it’s not moving. More dead?” Gascon asked.

Geoff clenched his jaw. “Keep an eye on it as we move past. If it moves—”

Something sprang at him, spearing him through the leg. Pain flashed through him and he was pulled off of his feet before he could react. It started dragging him away, its claw twisting inside his leg.

“Captain!”

“Contact, contact, conta—aaaugh!”

Geoff heard weapons open up, but none of the rounds were flying toward him. He gritted his teeth and grabbed the thing inside his leg and attempted to crush it in his hand. The suit’s servomotors whined as they added their strength, but it was like he was grabbing a titanium bar.

It did get the thing’s attention, though. He stopped moving and the thing turned, its claw pivoting inside his leg. Geoff screamed against the pain and fought to stay conscious.

Suddenly it was in his face, talons scratching at his helmet. The visor cracked and he swung out a fist where he thought the monster’s head was. A sharp crack sounded and he felt his hand cave in the thing’s skull, but more pain ran down his arm.

When he pulled his hand back, he could see scratches rent into his forearm, some of them bleeding. That was when he realized someone was yelling in his ear.

“Captain!” Ferreira’s voice came through the comms. “Shit, Gaz, shoot it!”

Geoff turned toward the direction the shotgun blasts were coming from and immediately regretted it when his leg spasmed. He turned back and grabbed the claw. After taking several deep breaths, he ripped it out and his suit automatically began pumping him full of a chemical cocktail to dull the pain.

He threw the body away and realized he’d dropped his gun in the scramble, but there was no time to look for it.

“Mitch, report!”

“You’re alive!” The relief was palpable in Ferreira’s voice. “Sir, two contacts down, but Stephens is in a bad way. The thing took her arm before Gaz could kill it. She’s bleeding heavily, but the suit’s already cutting circulation. I’m laying synthflesh over it now.”

He limped his way to the center of lights, keeping his eye out for both his gun and anymore aliens. “Any other casualties?”

“Negative,” Gascon put in. “Sir, with all due respect, we should get the fuck out of here.”

Anger flared in Geoff’s stomach. “We’re not leaving. Stephens lost an arm for this, Staff Sergeant! We’re moving forward.”

“Sir!”

“That is an order, soldier,” Geoff bit out, finally regrouping. Stephens was leaning against the column with her machine gun cradled in her remaining arm. The right side of her suit was stained crimson. “Mitch, is the sergeant stabilized?”

The team medic looked up at him and her eyes widened when she saw the gash in his leg. “Yes, sir. Your leg...”

“Suit’s holding me together. We’ll worry about it later,” he replied. “Stephens, are you good?”

She glared up at him. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go, then.” Motion appeared on his sensors. “Shit, there’s more of them.”

A bullet whizzed past his head. For a second, Geoff thought the Sergeant had gone insane and taken a potshot at him. It wasn’t until another round slammed into the pillar above Stephens’ head that he realized they were being fired upon.

“Shit, they’ve got weapons!” Gascon yelled and returned fire from behind an overturned cafeteria table.

Geoff ran forward to help Ferreira grab Stephens. “To the bridge! Hurry!”

Stephens and Ferreira ran toward the other end of the mess hall, where another door lay open. Geoff could see the lizard pacing back and forth in front of it before he turned back to take cover behind another pillar.

“Gaz, move back. I’ll cover,” Geoff yelled. He pulled out his sidearm and aimed for the muzzle flashes. The weapon bucked in his hand, but the exo-suit kept his aim steady.

Gascon took the opportunity to run. The big man lumbered toward the other two, hunched over to avoid fire. Geoff turned back to fire another burst when a round of fire came from the left. He turned to shoot when he saw Gascon stumble in the corner of his eye.

The demo-man crumpled to the ground.

Geoff’s heart skipped a beat. “Gaz!”

Ferreira returned fire in the direction the bullets had come from. “Sir, come on!”

Bullets zinged through the air around him. Rage filled him and he reloaded his pistol just as one of the aliens ran forward with a screech.

Geoff pulled the trigger and watched as the monster staggered under the sidearm’s slugs. It stumbled to the side and fell away, behind cover.

“Captain!”

A tremor rips through the ship, sending Geoff sprawling to the ground. He cursed when he landed on his injured leg and winced against the deafening wail. This time, though, an explosion ripped from further in the ship, causing the deck to buck underneath him. The aliens stopped firing their stolen weapons.

The captain holstered his sidearm and crawled in Gascon’s direction. He made it just as the deck stopped rocking and checked for a pulse.

Nothing.

Geoff clenched his teeth and cursed himself. It was his fault the man had died. If he hadn’t have forced them to continue and left, they’d all be okay.

His comm crackled on and Cossey’s voice filled his helmet. “Captain, the planet reappeared again, but it stayed a lot longer. The ship is already just outside where the atmosphere would be. You need to get out of there.”

The aliens started firing again and one of the bullets came dangerously close to his head. “We can’t. We’re going to have to drive the ship out ourselves. Airlocks are blocked off.”

“Sir, that explosion came from the engines. I don’t know if it’s going to be able to move under its own power,” the Lieutenant replied.

Geoff pounded the deck with his fist and pressed his back against a nearby column. “We don’t have a lot of fucking options, Lieutenant.”

“Captain, we’re covering you in three seconds. Run to us,” Ferreira said. “Copy?”

“Copy,” he replied, closing his eyes. He counted to three and then burst from cover. His team opened fire, Ferreira on one knee taking surgical shots while Stephens held her machine gun one handed, hosing the cafeteria in slow arcs. Her mouth was open in a feral scream, but he couldn’t hear it over the comms.

Somehow, he made it.

They fled down the hallway, ducking under the fire coming from behind them. The lizard skittered across the floor in front of them, moving faster than any living lizard would be able to. Geoff was breathing heavily by the time they reached the bridge doors.

“Stephens, get the door,” Geoff said between breaths.

“Copy.” The woman’s voice was high with pain, but she complied and moved to the button. She dropped her weapon and pressed it, but nothing happened. A bullet pinged against the bulkhead doors.

Geoff turned around and raised his pistol to fire off a couple of rounds. Ferreira was doing the same beside him with her rifle. “Stephens?”

“The door’s not opening! There’s nothing I can do!”

Two of the aliens took cover behind the bulkhead further down the hallway and were returning fire. Their shots were inaccurate, but they were getting closer every second. He squeeze off the last rounds in his pistol mag and tried to make himself a smaller target while he reloaded. A sphere on his belt caught his eye.

“Ferreira, how close are we to open space?”

The woman looked over at him for a second before returning her attention to the battle. “I’d say, six meters of plating between us and space.”

“Good enough,” Geoff muttered and pulled a grenade from his belt. “Frag out!”

He tossed the frag in a smooth underhand. It clattered across the metal floor and landed behind the two aliens. They glanced down at it for a second before continuing their fire, ignoring it as if it wasn’t a threat. Their mistake.

It exploded and both of them screeched as they were set ablaze. They immolated quickly and fell to the ground, their guns falling silent.

Geoff turned around and pounded on the door. “If anyone’s in there, open the goddamned door!”

The lizard underneath him hissed. A bullet slapped against his armor, but it deflected off and hit the door. He cursed and turned back to the hallway, where more of the aliens were skittering toward them. They fired again and he took another hit, this one puncturing his already injured leg.

Just before he resigned himself to die, a thunk sounded from behind him. He turned around in bewilderment. The door was opening!

“Hold ‘em off for just a little longer,” Geoff yelled as he reloaded his pistol.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” Stephens screamed back, her weapon filling the air with a wall of slugs. She ran dry and dropped her weapon to the ground to reload it one-handed.

The bulkhead behind them finally opened enough to admit even his armor-clad body. “Stephens, pull back! Ferreira, cover and retreat.”

He followed his own advice, backing through the door. His pistol clicked and he cursed. There weren’t that many mags left.

Once all three of them were through, Geoff yelled, “Close the door! Suppress ‘em!”

The doors grinded to a halt and then slowly began shutting. The aliens swarmed forward, heedless of the team’s fire. One fell, only to be trampled by the one behind it. It screeched and flung itself through the doors to slash at Ferreira.

The woman dodged to the side and slammed the butt of her weapon into it’s claw, knocking it off balance and causing it to fall in between the doors. The bulkhead clenched around the alien and it screamed in pain as it was sawn in half.

Finally, they were safe.

“Watch the door, Mitch,” Geoff said and turned around, taking in the bridge.

Bodies of men and women were strewn about with little care for respect or decency. Blood flaked on the floor and walls around the corpses. But there was no sign of someone living.

“Hello?” he called.

“You’re a soldier?” a woman’s voice called out from behind the wall-column that took up the center of the bridge.

Geoff walked around it and saw her. It was the same woman from the recordings, the old doctor. She held the iguana in her arms and her lab coat was splattered with old blood. He sighed with relief, and then anger filled him. He stuck a finger in her face.

“Why didn’t you open the doors? What the hell is going on here? Why did you lead us to the labs? Why didn’t you warn us?”

The doctor trembled underneath his scrutiny. “I-I tried! I had to let you know what these... specimens were capable of. The comms were down and... I could only see you through my mechanoid.”

Stephens clunked up beside him and threw her machine gun on the ground. “This is the fucking reason we came here? For a fucking civilian? I lost my arm for her?”

“Shut the hell up, Stephens!” Geoff yelled at her, letting all his pent-up anger out. “She knows what’s going on. She knows everything. We had to save her.”

The sergeant turned toward him in disbelief. “A lot of good that did us! We have no way out of here and a bunch of fucking aliens beating at the doors!” She laughed hysterically. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“We’re going to pilot ourselves out of orbit,” Geoff replied through clenched teeth. “Doctor, can you fly this thing?”

Dr. Quinn shook her head. “I don’t know how. I just came here and locked the doors so they couldn’t take over the ship. They can’t be allowed to leave this ship, or the world down there. If they do, they will aggressively expand and adapt to anything we throw at them. That’s why the world has the tower! It keeps them in the pocket and forces them to return to the pods to survive. But now...”

“You fucked with it and now we’re the ones who get to deal with it,” Stephens supplied and raised her arm to the ceiling. “Great. Fucking fantastic.”

Geoff clicked his comm on. “Lieutenant, we’re on the bridge. Can you tell me how to pilot this thing?”

“Yes, sir. Go to the console now and I’ll talk you through it,” she paused. “Is everyone...”

“We lost Gaz.” Guilt stormed in his chest. “Stephens and I are injured. Ferreira’s alright.”

Cossey didn’t speak for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well we’re all dead if we don’t get out of here before the planet comes back,” Geoff replied and sat at the helm. “Alright, I’m here. Tell me what to do.”

“Check the status of the engines first. If you have at least one, you may be able to nudge yourself away from the planet. The menus should be simple. Just click on the blinking tab that says ‘engines’.”

Geoff pressed the button and an outline of the ship came up. Two of the engines were red, one was yellow and the last one was green. He relayed that information to Cossey.

“That’s better than I thought you’d get. Alright, now...” she talked him through the engine start process, then told him how to set a course manually. “Now you just have to wait until the engines spool up. There should be a timer on the top left corner. See it?”

“Yeah. It says 3 minutes,” he replied and then looked at his watch. “What’s the estimate on the next reappearance?”

“Could be five minutes, could be thirty. It’s too unpredictable to say.”

“We’re screwed,” Stephens said with resignation. She was sitting slumped against the wall with her head cradled in her hand. Her machine gun lay beside her, its magazine open and empty.

Geoff sat in his chair and waited. Dr. Quinn continued to stroke her lizard nearby and Ferreira watched the door. There was no more noise coming from the hallway. Maybe they had given up.

“Doctor, is there any cams outside the bridge doors?” Geoff asked curiously.

“No, but I can send Lector outside,” she replied.

He nodded. “Do it. It’s too quiet out there.”

The doctor set the lizard on the ground and pulled a small device out of her pocket. It was almost like a VR controller. When touched it, the lizard responded, marching off into the vents.

Stephens stared at where it had gone. “Handy.”

“Pfft,” Ferreira snickered before regaining her control. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no.” Doctor Quinn gasped. “Is that thermal tape?”

Alarm bells rang in Geoff’s head. “What?”

He got up and looked at the doctor’s controller. His veins turned to ice at what he saw. The aliens were placing thermal tape on the bulkhead doors. But where— Gaz.

“Shit.” Geoff pulled his pistol out and reloaded it with his second to last magazine. “Prepare for a door breach, people. They took Gaz’ tape.”

“What?” Stephens looked up. “Do they have enough to get through the doors?”

Geoff nodded grimly. “They do.”

“What are we going to do?” Dr. Quinn wailed.

Ferreira’s private channel clicked on. “Captain, there’s no way out of this.”

“What? We’re going to fight and buy time for—,” he stopped and realized what he was saying.

“Exactly,” the other said bitterly. “We have to keep them from gaining control of the ship. And there’s at least fifteen more of them out there. We just don’t have the ammo.”

Geoff stared at the floor and tried to think of a way out. There had to be something he missed, some last minute plan to get his team out alive. But he couldn’t think of anything. He’d had his chance to turn around.

The door hissed and burned. Stephens had reloaded her weapon and now propped herself against a console. Ferreira did the same, ever steady, ever ready. There was no way out.

He opened a circuit. “Cossey?”

“I copy, Captain. Go ahead,” she said, all business.

“We’re not going to make it.”

*****

Second Lieutenant Cossey stared at her console, unable to process those words.

“What?”

The captain’s voice was gruff. “We’re about to be overrun. We have to crash the ship before they seize it.”

“What! No, you musn’t!” Cossey didn’t recognize that voice.

“Lieutenant, there’s some things you need to know. This planet, it’s a... prison. The things the science team found down there are aggressive and adapt to situations faster than anything I’ve seen. They can’t be allowed to leave the planet.”

Cossey looked up at the ship and saw the engines kick on. The frigate turned ponderously toward where the planet would reappear at any moment. Wreckage from its stressed hull floated aimlessly around it.

“Lieutenant, I need you to warn the fleet. Make them come here and nuke the planet. Destroy everything. These things can’t be studied safely and they can’t be allowed to leave,” the Captain said. Something crashed in the background and guns began to fire.

“Captain!” Cossey hated feeling helpless.

“Get out of here, Lieutenant. Bring the fleet back and stop these things for good.”

The channel cut off.

She watched the Hawking continue to burn toward the planet’s. It was in the atmosphere now.

Planet 452 reappeared.

The gravity pulled on her ship, rocking her against her restraints. The planet floated in the middle of space, serene, as if it had never been gone, beautiful and dangerous.

The Lieutenant checked her sensors when her ship settled, already knowing what she’d find.

Nothing. There was no sign of the Hawking. Even the wreckage was burning up in the atmosphere like so many meteorites.

Eventually, Cossey plotted a course back to the fleet. The captain’s last orders resounded in her mind.

She felt cold.

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

Entry Two

A wobble. That’s how Ensign Reinhart described the odd winking light of planet 452. The probe data was unlike any other report the young ensign had ever seen. The mass of an entire planet would appear and disappear at random intervals. At first Reinhart assumed the probe was on the fritz. He sent out two more and they also returned with the same information.

Knowing his superiors would next ask if he had verified visually, Reinhart hopped aboard the astral viewer to see it with his own eyes. A natural projector, the young ensign skipped easily through the solar systems until he came upon the coordinates of planet 452. Once there his eyes confirmed the probe data. The entire planet would wink into existence and then wink into nothingness once more. There was definitely a wobble.

Reinhart leaned backward, frowning thoughtfully at the unusual circumstances of planet 452. Despite the wobbling there had been some info returned. Planet 452 was an ice world, and was not the only planet in the system designated by the members of both the Ossuary and the Ecclesiarchy as the Hel System. The other three worlds, save one, all seemed relatively stable (no wobble) but were for the most part deathly.

Planet 451 was eclipsed by planet 450, and as such it was completely barren of all but the oddest of planet life – though was generally rocky and only useful in the various mineral samples brought back from the surface. Planet 450 seemed to be covered in thick foliage – the entirety of the planet, save a few massive mountains, covered in thick greens and blues – a place not all that different from Earth as judged by preliminary scans. Then finally planet 449 was a hell-ball, too close to the massive sun the system surrounded, planet 449 was a molten ball of slag and both the Ossuary and Ecclesiarchy had deemed it to be unworthy of investigation.

But it was planet 452 that was the mystery – it hadn’t even been discovered on the first entry of humanity into this new system, and it had only appeared after four months of studying its two sister planets. Reinhart moved to leave his chair before a sharp burst of static alerted him to a new anomaly. One of the probes had gone offline, peering through the astral viewer to see what could have caused the sudden crash of one of the sturdy probes he was instead treated to a shock.

Planet 452 had stabilized. The ice-ball clearly in view, its massive white-blue surface surrounded by massive warships, each easily dwarfing the largest battleship in the imperial fleet in size and firepower. They were brute things, inelegant and looking akin to something from the early ages of humanity’s attempts to colonize the stars. He stumbled away from the astral viewer, looking at the mechanism as if it were a venomous serpent.

The young man rushed out of the room, stumbling and staggering his way through the halls – shoving men and women of equal or higher rank out of his way. He had to tell his superiors what he saw, had to make them warn the colonization fleet away from the Hel system.

Of course, if he had stayed a moment longer he’d see just how much his warning would be in vain. The colony ships and just translated into the Hel system as he’d fled the viewer – and the massive alien ships had moved to intercept. Deceptively fast for their bulkiness and sheer size, the ring of steel surrounding planet 452 broke from the atmosphere of the planet – barrages of bright blue lasers arced from the prow of the alien ships to connect, briefly, to the pilgrim ships. Fire jettisoned into the void before dying as oxygen left the defenseless civilian ships.

Not a single ship escaped the barrage from the alien vessels – the void surrounding the white and black dwarf stars of the Hel system were littered with human and metallic wreckage.

~~~

As Reinhart stumbled into the command center he was forcefully brought up short. Gathered in the center, glaring angrily at a viewing screen, were four titans of humanity. The Lord High Militant Erica Strengberg had her arms folded beneath her chest, the silver of her brocade vest polished and gleaming to match the golden frogging and the chest full of medals awarded for her service. Her short red hair fell down with bangs hanging over her right eye, thick scar tissue barely hidden by the stylistic choice. Her left eye was hard, the purple iris near hidden by her narrowed eyelids. Strengberg’s jaw was locked, her teeth showing like two rows of white shields through her dark lips.

Beside her, towering and rail thin, was a nearly completely mechanical man. A long cloak of shimmering metal seemed to move and flow across his body, limbs of a strange silvery ore reached out to lightly tap talon-fingers onto keys and adjust dials with practiced care. A whip-like tendril slid from beneath the mechanical-robes of the sorcerer, clutching a long staff fairly humming with power. Thaumaturge Viktor von Teng pursed what remained of his lips, hissed words leaving his mouth as he canted at the machines to have them work.

Pacing behind Viktor was a figure in bulky golden armour, a wizened head peering from the above the lip of the chest armour to glower at the sorcerer. “Is your heretical prattling getting you anywhere, magus? Or shall we do as I said and call upon the blessings of the gods?” His words were a slobbery rasp, his lips were pulled back in a snarl showing yellowed teeth and mottled black-and-green gums. Demagogue Ernst Heilwig resumed his pacing – obscuring the appearance of the Thaumaturge with his sheer bulk and suit-enhanced size. He was also the only other one armed, a massive sword sheathed across his back and a similarly large mace held at a thong on his belt, clanging lightly against his hip.

“Silence! I must have silence!” Viktor snarled in a voice more mechanical than flesh, he didn’t turn away from his task, lapsing once more into his strange babbling.

“Ernst, I believe it best if we allow dear Viktor to practice his craft in peace. We need his expertise in this.” The voice that spoke was soft; it was a figure that only drew the eye at the last moment. She was small, only standing at around four feet in height, and slight to the point of seeming unhealthiness. Void Baron Layla Menger had her hands folded at her waist, her violet robes hugging her body. She offered a soothing smile to the glowering Demagogue. “I am as impatient as you to find out why we lost contact with nearly thirty colony ships.”

Ernst seemed about to speak, until he met the eyes of Menger. Ernst’s protests slowly died on his lips, and he resumed his pacing in sullen silence. All eyes were focused on these four figures; none had paid attention to the panting Reinhart as he stumbled into the center. “A… Aliens…” he gasped out, despite the hubbub in the center. That one word was enough to cause everyone to freeze. Reinhart suddenly found nine eyes focusing on his doubled over form.

It was the Void Baron who broke away from the group, walking toward him unhurriedly to say softly in a voice that echoed through the room. “Aliens, young man? What about aliens?” Reinhart looked down into her eyes and staggered as he felt something there.

“Aliens. Alien ships. Thousands of them, maybe more. Huge. They were ringed around planet 452.” His words came out in a jumbled rush.

“Impossible!” That was Viktor, he didn’t stride so much as glide forward – a mechanical talon reaching down to easily pluck Reinhart from the ground, hauling him four feet into the air to stare eye-to-eye with the skeletal Thaumaturge. “There were no signs of intelligent life detected in the entire system! My calculations were-.”

“Wrong, Viktor. They were wrong.” Strengberg strode forward, arms folded behind her back now. “Place the young man down and go back to your machines.” She waited two seconds before speaking in an iron hard voice. “Now.”

Reinhart was slowly lowered to the ground, the massive sorcerer swirling about and hurrying back to his machines. The young man was relieved until Strengberg turned her eye onto him, the man’s back stiffening. She eyed the ensign quietly, he was a foot taller than Menger, his brown hair was kept short in a military cut and he was whiter than the snow of an ice world. “I don’t see a reason why anyone would lie about such a thing. These alien ships – were they ones we’ve encountered before?”

Reinhart swallowed hard. “N-No ma’am. They don’t match any other type of vessel we’ve previously encountered.”

Strengberg nodded slowly, opening her mouth to continue when the rasping voice of Ernst called out. “Erica, Layla – you’ll both want to see what our warlock has discovered.” Heads turned to stare at an image capture from one of the colonist ships, one of the last to be destroyed. A massive figure held a human in one giant hand – the blurred image depicted a seemingly fur-coated creature with blue skin and great tusks curling from its mouth.

“By the gods – what is it?” Layla murmured, starring at a creature that must nearly be twenty feet in height.

Erica’s lips formed a hard line as she spoke. “Dead.” Without looking she addressed her highest subordinate within the command center. “Lord Admiral Peck – I want imperial naval and army elements to translate into the Hel system immediately. I want twenty ships of the Einherjar and Valkyries to accompany them. I want this demon-spawned race to be eradicated immediately.”

“Jötnar.” Viktor breathed the word softly, and surprisingly enough Ernst was nodding in agreement with the sorcerer. “They are, were, beings of myth. They were the ones who are to do battle with the gods at the end of days.”

“Well then, let’s see how they deal with our demigods.” Erica turned, striding out of the command center. Layla hesitated before following out her counterpart, running to catch up and talk with the other woman in low voices.

“We’ll need your heretics for this foe, sorcerer. I’ll let my bishops know to not trouble your witches when the time comes.” Ernst’s voice was filled with tight anger – hatred at the thought of needing the members of the Ossuary. “These creatures will know their end well before they meet the gods.”

Viktor gave a slow nod, before turning and departing – Ernst moving to walk with him. One-by-one the command center slowly emptied until only Reinhart was left. He looked around quietly, feeling alone and confused. With hesitancy he left the command center and returned to the astral viewer.

There was an armada in the Hel system. From ships similar in design to the Massives, to ones that looked patched together with vicious prows for ramming and ones that were artfully crafted and blocky, and darting between the ships were smaller vessels, moving together in large shoals like fish around sharks.

Suddenly, Reinhart felt like they weren’t going to be sending enough.

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

Entry Three

A wobble. That's how Ensign Reinhart described the odd winking light of planet 452. The probe data was unlike any other report the young ensign had ever seen. The mass of an entire planet would appear and disappear at random intervals. At first Reinhart assumed the probe was on the fritz. He sent out two more and they also returned with the same information.

Knowing his superiors would next ask if he had verified visually, Reinhart hopped aboard the astral viewer to see it with his own eyes. A natural projector, the young ensign skipped easily through the solar systems until he came upon the coordinates of planet 452. Once there his eyes confirmed the probe data. The entire planet would wink into existence and then wink into nothingness once more. There was definitely a wobble.

"A wobble?" Captain Lake asked. "How can a planet wobble?"

The senior staff of the ASV Herakles sat around a conference table abutting the officer's lounge. Each one carried a data pad detailing the specifics of Ensign Reinhart's report, and a larger version of the same graphics were displayed on a screen at the head of the table, next to the Reinhart himself. In answer to the Captain's question, Chief Science Office Montescue leaned forward slightly, and politely cut in.

"I believe that the young Ensign is not intimating a literal wobble, Captain." He said, in the soft, velvety tone with which he said everything. "Rather, he appears to be drawing allusions between the planet's appearance, and that of a rotating pulsar. Isn't that right, Ensign?" The science chief nodded encouragingly towards Reinhart, like nothing so much as a kindly old grandfather, complete with curly grey hair and bifocals.

"Uh, yes sir, that is correct," Reinhart replied. "A pulsar is brightest at the poles, and it's only visible at any distance when it "wobbles" those poles towards the viewer. 452's appearance is very similar: it pulses in and out of visibility. However, if I may sir, I believe that the, ah, wobble metaphor can be carried further."

Montescue allowed his glasses to slip down his nose, and peered over them intently. "By all means, Ensign. Enlighten us."

"Uh, yes sir. First of all, I've tracked the periodicity of the object and noticed a clear precession--"

"Good God man, speak English!" cut in Tactical Officer DeFranco. "Some of us were too busy learning spacecraft at the Academy to take an English credit."

"DeFranco!" snapped Captain Lake angrily, and the young Lieutenant subsided with a muttered apology. The Captain turned back to Reinhart. "Continue, Ensign. Though a clarification would be appreciated."

"Of course sir. A precession is a ... wobble," Reinhart shifted uncomfortably, quietly aware that he wouldn't be winning any awards for his public speaking anytime soon. "It's like when you spin a top!" he hazarded desperately. "When the spin starts to break down and it eventually falls over: that's a precession. 452's pulsing isn't stable, it's slowing at a measurable rate. Eventually it will cease altogether."

"Then what's the problem here, exactly?" asked DeFranco. "The planet will save itself. Good job everyone! I'm going back to bed."

"There isn't any problem, Lieutenant," said Reinhart. "452 is uninhabited, there's nothing there to "save" in the first place. It's just that ... planets aren't supposed to disappear. Even if they show up again later. It's my hypothesis--and I'm hoping that Commander Montescue can support me here--that the "wobble" 452 is experiencing ... is a wobble between universes."

There was an extended, pregnant silence before Captain Lake finally spoke.

"Come again, Ensign?"

Reinhart squirmed, and shot a pleading glance at Commander Montescue, but the older scientist merely steepled his fingers and furrowed his brow in silence. Reinhart cleared his throat and pressed on alone.

"Well sir, as the probe data clearly shows, 452's disappearances are instantaneous and absolute. There is no mass or energy left behind, and no measurable outside impulse to effect the change. Now, as far as we know, there is no process in our universe that would allow for such an event. But if more than merely our universe were involved ..."

"The probes must have been defective," said DeFranco dismissively. "Mass can't just vanish."

"I'm well aware of that, sir," Ensign Reinhart replied, with a note of irritation in his voice. "That fact is the entire foundation of my alternate universe hypothesis. And if you would simply read the report I've submitted, you would see that I confirmed with the astral viewer."

Lieutenant DeFranco straightened in his seat, and began to reply angrily. "Damn your spooky alien crystal ball! Planets don't disappear! And furthermore, Ensign, that is no way to address an--"

Commander Montescue leaned forward again and hurriedly addressed the Captain, cutting off DeFranco before his tirade could gain any momentum.

"Sir, by all accounts, Ensign Reinhart is a naturally gifted Projectionist. Admittedly, there is a great deal about the device--and Founder technology in general--that we don't understand, but the results of a skilled operator can usually be trusted. At the very least, sir, it certainly warrants a closer look."

At the mention of investigating 452 more closely, something in Captain Lake's demeanour seemed to change. He stood up, and the sudden confidence and magnetism of his aura drew every eye in the room towards him. He paced around the room for a moment, appearing deeply thoughtful, and ended up at the head of the table seemingly by happenstance.

"Very well Ensign," the Captain said. He clapped a hand congenially to Reinhart's shoulder, and used the motion to absentmindedly shove the young Ensign off to one side. "We will go to see your disappearing planet. Not for wealth or war; not for power or prosperity; not even to help those in need, as is so often our purview. No, we will go to this planet because it lies in the realm of the unknown. A mystery waiting to be discovered, a riddle waiting to be solved."

Captain Lake began to pace again, and drummed his fist dramatically against his open palm. Reinhart stood slightly obscured by a fern, well out of the spotlight.

"We go as explorers, ready to brave new horizons and distant shores. For is that not what this ship is for? Is that not what Humanity is for?"

Captain Lake halted at the opposite end of the table, and stared piercingly off into the distance. Although, since the conference room had no windows, he actually stared piercingly into the wall. His eyes actually seemed to sparkle.

"Lieutenant DeFranco," he said. "Lay in a course for planet 452. Let's see what's out there."

***************

"Everyone on this ship is douchebags."

Junior Ensign O'Grady's eyes slowly crossed over the rim of his beer.

"Are douchebags? Am douchebags? Hang on ... Every-- ... Wait! I got this. Everybody on this ship--"

"We get the idea, Greg," said Reinhart. "We all love you too."

Jeffrey's Tub was the Herakles' crew bar, wedged in a steamy cubby under one of the warp rotors, where senior officers were unlikely to go. The bar wasn't strictly unauthorized, but it also wasn't strictly by the book, and the operators did everything they could to keep inspections to a minimum. Ensign Reinhart and his friends sat at their usual table, underneath a string of blinking Christmas lights, and a few battered trophies from the Unifaction War. Most of them had just arrived and were still fairly fresh, but Greg O'Grady had obviously been waiting for a while, and had not been idle in the meantime.

"Nah, nah, nah, Hart!" he slurred. "I don't mean you guys! I'm talking about Mr. and Mrs. Shiny Shoes from up in Flower ... Perfume ... Silverware Land! Think they're so great."

"This is like watching my granddad talk about Rigellian immigrants," said Corporal Sharon Malik. "If you ever want a laugh or a cry, ask him what the two extra arms are for. His theories are ... illuminating."

"They're actually for grooming," said Ensign Liam Matthews. "Rigellians are arboreal, but the planet is tectonically unstable. They always use at least three of the bigger limbs to hold on to something in case of an earthquake, so the smaller arms get the job of grooming their partner. This is from back before they made it to space, obviously."

"Congratulations, you're still boring, I'll alert the media."

O'Grady gesticulated wildly to bring attention back to him.

"Look, the point is that all of the bridge crew are douchebags. I know it. You know it. Hart here sure as hell knows it, since he spent all morning with the douchey ... douches."

Reinhart winced and nodded. "I hate to say it, but Greg's kind of right. About this; not about his opinions on what to do with the homeless."

"Intodasun!" O'Grady gurbled happily, as he slid forward to lie in a puddle of spilled booze.

"Aw, come on," said Matthews, as he gently moved his glass away from O'Grady's arms, which were gyrating about like seaweed at high tide. "Montescue isn't so bad. I work under him in the Astrobiology lab sometimes."

"You feel like rephrasing that?" asked Malik.

"What? Why?"

Malik sighed. "Never mind."

Reinhart continued, ignoring them. "Montescue is nice as long as it makes him look smart. He only gambles effort on people who look like they're going to be proved right, so he can join in the gloating. They're all like that: self-involved. Lake is a glory hound, and DeFranco only cares about blowing stuff up and banging alien squid ladies."

"Lucky squid ladies," muttered Malik. 'What? He's gorgeous!"

"Forget Punchy McGunDick," said O'Grady with his face still flat on the table. "What about Tech Lieutenant Rashida? I'd let her defrag my hard drive, if you know what I mean."

"I don't, thank Christ," replied Reinhart. "And she didn't say a word, or look up from her pad for the entire meeting! I swear to God she was playing Discoes & Dragons on mute."

"Love that game," said Matthews. I'm a level 27 Funkomancer."

"Congratulations, you're still lonely, I'll alert my vagina."

Matthews cleared his throat nervously, and rapidly changed the subject.

"So did any of them actually buy your alternate universe theory?"

Reinhart shook his head and took a long draught from his glass. "I doubt it. Like I said, Montescue had my back just enough that he'll get credit if I'm right, but not so much that he'll take any flak if I'm wrong."

"You think he understand how big a deal this would be?"

Reinhart put his glass down. "Oh yeah. He's an ass, not an idiot. He knows the physics inside and out."

"Why do we care about a blinky planet again?" asked Malik. Unlike the science-oriented Reinhart and Matthews, she was assigned to the ship's Space Marine contingent.

"Not blinky," moaned O'Grady. "Hart said it's wobbly. Like boobs." He giggled. "Boobs."

"Jesus fuck you're stupid," said Malik. "Are they seriously trusting you to work on the ship's new stealth shuttle? How are you ever going to pull that off?"

"I could do a lot of things if I had some money," said O'Grady, then bumbled into unconsciousness.

Malik just shook her head. "Seriously Hart, unless it reappears carrying a bunch of goateed versions of us, what's the big deal?"

"Because it would let us break the rules without breaking the rules," said Matthews.

"Congratulations, you're a cryptic dick, I'll alert my fist."

"Seriously Sharon," said Reinhart. "That's what it would mean. Most of thermodynamics is predicated on the universe being a closed system. If you could get outside that system ..."

"You could do anything," Matthews continued. "Conservation laws, entropy; they go right out the window. You could whip up a perpetual motion machine. Or escape the end of the universe, by jumping into a new one."

"Maybe you could even borrow new laws of physics. There's an ancient sci-fi book about exploiting another universe's slight decrease in the strong nuclear force to generate infinite energy. I looked it up. There's other ones about finding the "perfect" alternate universe, and living in paradise forever."

"Congratulations, you're ... studious? I guess sincere congratulations on that one."

"Seriously Sharon," said Matthews. "Is this is for real, Hart may have found the thing that will turn us all into gods."

He took a long pull from his beer.

"I just really hope that we get to it first."

"... Boobs."

***************

The Herakles arrived at Planet 452 a week after Ensign Reinhart's initial discovery. It was present and accounted for at the time, and optics revealed it to be a rocky, barren world, of the sort that nobody usually cared about. Captain Lake put the ship into a fast, low orbit, and was just putting together one of his trademark landing parties when the planet performed its first wobble.

One second it was there, and the next it was gone, without a trace of debris or a whisper of turbulence. Herakles fell into a wider orbit around the system's star, but Captain Lake ordered it be kept in geostationary position of where 452 would have been, if it continued on its course unaided. He also, against all recommendations to the contrary, fired a volley of antimatter warheads through the phantom spot, "just to be sure."

The warheads passed through the area unimpeded, and Lieutenant DeFranco gleefully exploded them by remote, rather than let them wander free.

In light of the confirmation of 452's peculiarity, Commander Montescue suddenly became vastly interested in the mission, and recommended Captain Lake to send a battery of science probes in place of a landing party to start with. The Captain agreed, although he seemed somewhat put out, and the cluster of baseball-sized probes dispersed themselves across the planet's atmosphere and surface.

During the next wobble, 452 was absent for six hours, and the crew waited tensely for its return. When it finally arrived, all of the probes were still intact, but the telemetry they transmitted was absolute gibberish. Montescue put the ship's entire considerable science staff to the task of analyzing the data, but none of them were able to extract anything useful.

None of them, that is, except for Ensign Reinhart, and only because he had been looking for it specifically. In the first seven milliseconds of the probes' recording, before they washed to random static, Reinhart extracted very subtle, but very definitive evidence of a slight increase in the strong nuclear force.

Montescue lost his mind, Captain Lake exchanged a flurry of coded transmissions with Allied Fleet Command, and Reinhart was promoted to the bridge, against his protestations.

It was around this time that the enemy warship appeared.

Although "enemy" may actually have been slightly too strong a word, "warship" was certainly justified. The G'Keen Incorporation were a techno-Darwinian hive meritocracy native to the Eagle Nebula, and one of the dominant powers in the galaxy. They believed in rapid speciation through conflict, down to the level of their very cells. Their society was founded on principles of competition and natural selection, to the point that they pitted genetic mutations and cybernetic enhancements against one another inside their own bodies, to see which would become dominant. As a result, no two individuals of the species looked remotely alike, and most of them were inhumanly strong and brilliant, right up to the point where they collapsed under the weight of bionic cancers.

The G'Keen maintained an uneasy truce with the Alliance and the other galactic superpowers, due mainly to the belief that none of them were formidable enough to represent a new challenge in their evolution. As a result, the G'Keen captain merely issued a warning to the Herakles not to interfere with 452, before cutting off communication and settling into an antipodal orbit.

Captain Lake was conferring feverishly with Allied Command on what actions to take when a third ship arrived in the vicinity. Less militant, but equally dangerous and unfriendly.

The Founded were a race of quadrupedal archaeologists who possessed an unrivalled understanding of The Founders: an extinct empire that had left their vastly advanced technology scattered across three galaxies. As near as anyone could tell, the Founded had picked their own name, and shared no actual connection with the Founders beyond their study of them. It was difficult to argue this point, however, as the technological treasure trove the Founded had accumulated included some of the most unreasonably large guns in known space.

The leader of the Founded ship--Captain-Doctor Faleng'Ghenal'Narap haj Jenteer (whose names denoted his alma mater, and the topic of his doctoral thesis)--engaged in a far more lengthy and civilized exchange with Captain Lake, which nevertheless conveyed the message that any interaction with 452 would constitute an act of war.

The three ships settled into an uneasy stalemate, with none yet willing to draw the wrath of the others.

***************

"We are fuuuuuuucked," said Junior Ensign O'Grady.

"It's not that bad," said Reinhart.

"Have you ever seen a G'Keen up close?" Malik exclaimed. "In a border skirmish, I saw one rip off its own arm and use it to bash a combat mech into scrap. It was a gene chaplain, and it never stopped reciting nucleotide psalms the whole time."

She picked up a breadstick and started whacking it against Matthews' head. "ATCG clang! CGTACA bonk! GATCGGTC oh god, somebody shoot it! Somebody shoot me!" She looked around at blank faces. "That was the guy inside the mech," she explained.

"And what about the Founded?" O'Grady continued. "I heard that they literally turned a whole planet into gold, just so that they could run experiments on giant semiconducting circuits."

"That would never work," said Matthews. "At that size, gold would deform and melt under its own gravity. It would never be able to hold a shape."

O'Grady seemed momentarily comforted.

"Now, diamond on the other hand. Diamond is a different story. You could pull some crazy bullshit with a planet made of diamond."

".... We are fuuucked."

"What's the news from the bridge, Hart?" asked Malik. "Are the douche brigade handling this mess?"

O'Grady held up a finger. "It's 'is the douche brigade handling'--OW!" he cut off as Malik tossed a breadstick into his eye. "That fucking hurt!"

"Sorry," said Malik. "I really should have more respect for the guy who's learned to conjugate 'douche' in seventeen different languages. Little does he know that he long ago became one himself."

O'Grady snorted into his beer. "How about it Hart? Have they made you into one of them yet? Invasion of the douche snatchers! Ew. That's gross for some reason."

"And nonsensical," added Reinhart, then answered Malik. "Honestly, I don't know that much. They're all hush hush in the back most of the time, chatting with Command on the coded channels. Montescue only brought me up there because he thought I'd have some insights on 452, and now we're not even allowed to study it."

"What about the astral viewer?" Matthews asked. "Maybe we could examine the planet that way."

"Nah, I suggested the same thing, but the viewer is Founder tech. Montescue thinks the Founded might be able to detect it in use, and then we really would be fucked. It's not like there's anything to see on this side of the wobble anyway. Any answers are in the other universe."

"And we're not going to be getting there any time soon," said Malik. "Marine units are on double active shifts in case they need to deploy us in a hurry. The Captain says we're going to stay the way indefinitely, too."

"Not that indefinitely," said Matthews. "Hart, what's the time limit on this shit fest?"

"The precession, right," said Hart. "It's still spooling down, the wobbles are getting shorter and shorter. I'd guess we don't have more than a week or two left. DeFranco was right, if we don't get our acts together soon, this problem is going to solve itself."

***************

The Herakles was soon joined by the Attribution and the Rhododendron, diverted from their own missions to bolster its position. Unfortunately, the G'Keen and Founded ships attracted reinforcements of their own, and there was soon a small fleet artificially "orbiting" the perennially absent epicenter of planet 452.

Captain Lake organized an impromptu summit to diffuse tensions between the three sides, after a brazenly launched G'Keen probe was shot down by Founded interceptors. However, talks broke down in the fourteenth hour after the main G'Keen envoy abruptly self-impregnated, gave birth, and died of an embolism, all within a four minute period. Captain Lake was unexpectedly named the child's godparent, but declined the honour when he learned that he would be required to fight it to the death when it reached puberty.

The Founded likewise attempted a diplomatic solution, wherein they flash cloned diplomats using human and G'Keen DNA, and sent them to attempt a common-ground appeal. The diplomats, though socially and biologically perfect, failed at their mission in both cases. The human envoy unexpectedly fell in love with the first woman he met, and they eloped only four hours later, while what was left of the G'Keen envoy was returned in a bucket simply labeled "Defective. Please try again."

All the while, the gaps between 452's disappearances continued to grow shorter and shorter, until soon they were only minutes apart. With the stalemate seeming unlikely to end, and all the secrets of the universe lying only just out of reach, Ensign Reinhart finally decided that the future was too important to be left in the hands of douchebags anymore.

***************

"What about the stealth shuttle?" he asked.

The four of them were sitting in Jeffrey's Tub once again, but this time it was in the wee hours between shift changes, and they had the bar mostly to themselves. Corporal Malik peered at Reinhart owlishly through the suds at the bottom of her glass.

"You mean the one that the engineering team has been building? The team that O'Grady is on? The O'Grady that shaved all his pubes off because he thought he had space crabs?"

"In my defense," O'Grady exclaimed. "I'm pretty sure that that hooker's species is literally part crab. Having said that, there is no way I would get in that shuttle. We cut corners."

"I saw the safety checklist," said Reinhart. "Your section chief signed off on it."

"No, I mean we literally cut corners. The stealth design called for no right angles; we had to sand some of them down. Didn't tell the section chief about that part."

"Ignore these idiots. Why would we need the stealth shuttle?" Matthews asked.

Reinhart looked around conspiratorially, then leaned in close.

"We steal the shuttle, we land it on 452 without anyone noticing, we ride the wobble to the other side, and we see what's there."

Matthews paused for a moment. "Okay, never mind, I agree with the idiots."

"Ride the wobble to the other side is going to be my band name," said O'Grady cheerfully."

"God help me."

Reinhart banged his fist on the table, and his friends jumped in surprise.

"Look," he hissed. "Captain Lake may be a glory mongering douchebag, but maybe he's not wrong about the spirit of exploration crap. Whether or not the secrets on that planet can turn us all into immortal ubermensch who make fun of Rudolf Clausius is irrelevant. The simple fact is that we are motherfucking astronauts, and that planet is begging for a flag to be planted on it. Now we can either wait for it to turn into a boring lump of rock again, and regret it all our lives, or we can do what we were born to do, and go discover something incredible. What's stopping us, really?"

"The fact that when we get back, we'll be responsible for starting a war, maybe?" said Malik.

"No we won't!" exclaimed Reinhart. "If we don't find anything useful, then no one will care anymore. And if we do find something useful, then nobody wants to fuck with Prometheus."

"Never mind," said O'Grady. "My band name is 'Nobody Wants to Fuck with Prometheus.'"

"Jesus, Greg," said Matthews. "Are you even listening to what we're talking about here?"

O'Grady's face grew slowly solemn, and he carefully put down his unfinished beer.

"Nobody remembers the mistakes you don't make. Everybody remembers the risks you don't take. That's the way I've lived my entire life. It's why I've broken seventeen bones, it's why my retirement fund is at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and it's why I'm legally married to a diseased hooker who's half crab. But it's also why I have a cushy job on a trillion dollar starship, a batch of some of the best friends a guy could ask for, and memories of the freakiest underwater honeymoon you can possibly imagine.

"I say that if it's a choice between stealing an experimental stealth ship, and flying it across no man's land into another universe, and not doing that ... then it's no choice at all."

O'Grady looked around at the faces of his flabbergasted friends.

"Are we retarded," Matthews asked. "Or did that make sense."

O'Grady put a hand on his shoulder and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye.

"Both."

***************

Between Reinhart's bridge-level access codes, O'Grady's inside knowledge, and Malik's commando training, stealing the experimental shuttle was almost hilariously easy.

The streamlined craft was coated in a layer of bleeding-edge meta materials that bent the entire electromagnetic spectrum around it without the slightest ripple. Happily, this made it completely invisible to all conventional instruments. Unhappily, it left those inside completely blind, except for a narrow porthole on the vessel's front.

Even more unhappily, the instruments onboard the Founded university-ship Reclamation were far from conventional. Lieutenant-Graduate Seepham'Ghenal'Chikraat jeg Waras picked up the stealth shuttle on a gravity foam interferometer that he had been using to scan 452, and quickly informed his Captain-Doctor of the human duplicity.

Reclamation went weapons hot and jumped into highspace in expectation of an extended battle. Its Founder AI core computed half a billion six-dimensional target vectors on the Herakles before Captain Lake had time to realize that his own ship's computer was already taking defensive manoeuvres. Meanwhile, the G'Keen fleet had been waiting for just such an action, and its omnimind carried out a vicious six year argument in quicktime, before arriving at the ideal plan of attack.

As the stealth shuttle landed in blissful ignorance on planet 452, the first shots were already being fired.

***************

"This was a really fucking bad idea," said O'Grady.

"It was mostly yours," pointed out Matthews.

"I think we all know that that only strengthens my point," O'Grady replied.

The inside of the shuttle was fairly cramped, but no one felt much like moving around anyway. They sat motionless in anticipation of the wobble, which Reinhart had calculated was only a minute away. Though the window they could glimpse a thin slice of 452's chalky soil, and a patch of yellowish sky.

"Something tells me our postcards are going to be pretty boring," said Malik. "I bet we won't even see a difference when we get to the other side."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Reinhart. He reached into a duffel at his feet and pulled out a crystalline manifold that looked like it belonged in a modern art museum.

"You stole the astral viewer too!" Matthews exclaimed.

"Yeah, because I'm sure that's what's going to get us in trouble," said Malik. "Good idea, Hart."

"Seriously," said O'Grady. "Man, we are good at this thieving crap. When this is over we should heist a casino. We can be, like, gentleman burglars."

He glanced at Malik. "You can be our maid."

A clock on the shuttle's dashboard chirped, announcing the ten second mark.

"If we weren't about to make history and probably die, I would kick seven shades of shit out of you, Greg."

The clock chirped again, and there was an almost imperceptible subsonic rumble, accompanied by a slight darkening in the sky.

"Is that ... it?" Malik asked.

"I think ... yes." Matthews replied. "And our atomic nuclei didn't explode or anything, so that's a plus."

"Was that a real danger?" asked O'Grady.

"Oh hell yes," said Matthews. "Slightly different laws of physics, remember? We'll probably die if we stay here too long."

Reinhart stayed silent, holding tightly to the astral viewer in his lap. After a brief spell, Malik coughed politely.

"Should we ... take a look?" she asked.

Reinhart looked up, took a deep breath, then looked back down at the alien device. He focused his will in the familiar patterns, and the walls of the shuttle slowly began to fade away. Nobody really understood the viewers--even the Founded--but their results could not be ignored. Reinhart allowed the viewer's images to spill out into his friends' minds as well, and soon they were all sharing the same projection.

With delicate concentration, Reinhart pulled the image back, away from the dust and rock of 452's surface and up through its muddy atmosphere. As the bland sky began to be replaced by vacuum, the four adventurers caught their collective breath. Beyond lay space, but not as they had ever seen it. Vast swaths lay utterly and perfectly dark, but brilliant mandalas of light appeared at random. Rather than a multitude of tiny stars and nebulae, this universe seemed to favour a handful of massive ones; impossibly big and impossibly bright. They lived quick, hot lives, and exploded into clouds the size of galaxies

But there was something else as well. Something far closer afield, but difficult to focus on. Reinhart furrowed his brow. Sometimes the astral viewer could get lost in weird patterns of mass or radiation, and it never conveyed depth well in any case. Untangling images could be tricky, and he was having a hard time getting a full picture of the nearby object. It was big, certainly. Or maybe it simply cast a long shadow. Could it be the machine that pulled 452 between universes?

Fragmented pictures started to come together. Long plains of solidity, wispy oceans of gas and magnetism, tangled warrens of corrugation, and ... and emptiness? He focused on the empty space; it was vast--bigger than 452 itself, and somehow emptier than the space around it. Was that an empirical projection, or an inferential one? Why would the viewer read something as being emptier than emp--

A mouth

"Ahhhhhhh! We are fuuuuuuuuuu"

"GO! Gogogogogo!"

"Go where!?"

"Go anywhere!"

"Go to hell! Shit! Ass! Fuck! Crap! Boobs!"

"uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

"No no no no no no no no no!"

"Of course we would end up in the goddam Cthulhu dimension. That is just typical!"

"Why won't I wake up? Why won't I wake up?"

"uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

"I've always loved you!"

"I hate your guts!"

"I wet my pants!"

"uuuuuuuuuuuuuucked."

The clock on the dashboard chirped, and there was a slight rumble as 452 fell back into the home universe.

There was a long, perfect silence.

Reinhart cleared his throat.

"So. Apparently the other universe is home to hungry angler fish the size of solar systems, and this planet is a giant lure."

"It would appear that way. Yes."

"Okey dokey," said Reinhart. "My bad."

O'Grady slammed the engines on the shuttle into full burn, and the shuttle's meta material shell tore away under the ferocity of their sudden ascent. Unimpeded, the craft's sensors spotted the battle now raging around the planet.

"Again," said Reinhart. "My bad."

He held up the astral viewer, and sent something amounting to a plea for help into its depth. The strange artefact responded, pulsing the images still burned in Reinhart's mind to every ship in the area. There was a momentary delay where missiles and lasers still zipped through hyperspace, as tiny minds inched across the understanding of a gargantuan truth. Then, as one, the fighting stopped, and ships turned to flee as fast as their engines would carry them. The Herakles delayed just long enough for the shuttle to make it on board, then exploded away like a gazelle in front of a lion.

The four would-be adventurers sat quietly in the shuttle for a while, as they waited for someone to show up and arrest them. Eventually, Reinhart turned slowly to face O'Grady, who continued staring hauntedly ahead.

"What does this mean for your life philosophy?" he asked. "Mistakes. Risks. Memories of what was and what could be? How do you go forward from here? How do any of us go forward from here?"

O'Grady ratcheted woodenly about to face Ensign Reinhart.

"I need a new pair of pants."

END

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

Reviews

Entry One

As is so often the case with the better entries in these competitions, I must rely on the word “solid” to describe this one. Really solid. This story wasn’t flashy, but it got the job done. For the simple criterion of clearly and concisely describing a series of events, it gets a ten out of ten for sure. And although it was definitely paint-by-numbers, at least it wasn’t boring.

There were some nitpicky things in a few places that I definitely noticed, even if they didn’t actually ruin anything for me. For example, the way the description of the aliens was handled was kind of sloppy. You started with perfectly acceptable horror movie vagueness, where we really don’t see anything, but then moved immediately to an intimate close-up with them on a dissection table. With the opportunity for description then hanging right there, you hesitated a few paragraphs before dumping it all at once, and then you immediately repeated the same description again through the voice of the video logs. It wasn’t -wrong-, but it was definitely sloppy. You provided the same information twice, and you did so at slightly the wrong time from a pacing standpoint.

Equally nitpicky is the fact that you leaned a little heavy on the VR comparison. I know you only mentioned it twice, but that’s one too many. Hang a lantern on it once, let us acknowledge the similarities to Doom or Alien that we all already understand, and leave it. Don’t come back to the same comparison again, it just makes it stale.

The actual overarching plot was also kind of wonky, although not so much that I can definitively point to holes. It was just slightly … off. If the planet was a prison, and the dimensional pocket was the lock, how did humans discover it in the first place? The video logs imply that the “wobble” may have been a result of human tampering, so obviously it started after they arrived. How did they spot something that was “completely cut off from the rest of the universe?” And why did nobody seem to know about the Hawking’s mission? In the intro (which, obviously, you didn’t write) we see that 452 is discovered by chance, with the surprise detail that a ship is orbiting it, and a crack commando team is then immediately dispatched to investigate. The Hawking was overrun and adrift for at least a week; why did no one notice until it was “discovered” by accident? Wonky.

The touch with the iguana was really nice, though. I liked that a lot. The way you mentioned the robot offhand in the first video, and the green thing in the second, was great. It did raise some questions on why it was so bad at getting their attention, though. One would think that, if you had access to a remote control lizard, you could figure out some way of making it act out of the ordinary earlier than it did. (And why did it eat the alien’s eye? Weirdness.) Also, the scene where an iguana tracked by Aliens-esque motion sensors falls out of the ceiling is literally right out of 30 Rock. That exact scene happens.

In the end, although I liked this story fine, it also didn’t do anything remotely novel. With the meagre exception of the robot iguana (which, again, I loved), we’ve all seen everything it had to offer many times before, in terms of plot, setting, characters, and even the language that made it up. A lot of times with science fiction you can retell the same basic stories with new artistic flair applied to differentiate. Star Wars was not a new thing, but lightsabers and Jedi and Imperial Stormtroopers were. This story was very flat. If it had had something--anything--to differentiate it from the herd, I would have loved it infinitely more. A cool quirk of biology, technology, or culture; some interesting names or aesthetics; a hint at a larger history. It needed some juice! In the end, I didn’t regret reading this story, but I also probably wouldn’t have regretted missing it.

…

Hmm. This is an odd story. I got to the end of it and thought “that was a very good story”. But during the whole reading experience, I was actually having my doubts. I didn’t really enjoy myself until the story was finished and I could look back and appreciate it. I think, overall, the story ended up drawing itself together and working. If we were to look at the some of its parts, though, there are some things I think definitely needs to be looked at.

Briefly, I didn’t spot any glaring technical mistakes, which is impressive considering the length of your piece. However, I may have missed something. So, why did I have a slight struggle with something that on the surface was really well-written? And also, I want you to take to heart the fact that this is well-written. Because the next few paragraphs may seem like I’m picking on you, but I’m only going into details on the negatives because I think there was a gem hiding underneath this “very good” story.

First of all, quite frankly, at times this felt like a script. There were times where it was just too dialogue-heavy. You didn’t break it up with enough prose; it was just dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. And by having so much dialogue, by its very nature, you told us a lot of things instead of showing us it. The piece could have been wonderful with just a bit more prose and a bit less dialogue, with just a bit more description and reading between the lines and a little less exposition. However, that would lead to something else…

… the story was already too long. Doing those things would have only made it longer. I think you needed to wield the editor’s knife a bit more. I think the start was okay, there was some nice characterisation going on. But the middle was just too overindulgent. I think you probably could have combined the cafeteria and lab scene into one. An early character’s death might have tightened the tension a little as well.

I think the characterisation was mostly excellent. If you are who I think you are, then I do think sometimes your female characters could be a little more original. They tend to fit into very defined tropes. But you gave all of the characters a bit of flavour and excellently you did that by showing their personalities, as opposed to telling us of them. My only complaint is I felt a little bit of inconsistency. Stephens jumped all over the place at the mid-point, which I assume was a way to convey the shock, but it just felt a little too much of a jump. Also, while in dialogue you can call them whatever you want, when you’re writing the narrative, I would suggest trying to stay consistent with the naming. You flipped occasionally between using their first name, nicknames or surnames and I had to go back to remember who was who.

Those are the key things I’d recommend looking at: utilising narrative and description to give dialogue more flavour (what are the characters doing as they talk, what’s around them), consider length (brevity works, and so does detail, find the right balance), keep consistent characterisation. If you had those things right, then this would have been a crackerjack of a story.

On the plot and story itself, I liked it. It wasn’t that original, but it was done well. It had a nice complete ending and besides the length, the pacing was good. I have two minor complaints, though. One, the ending was glaringly obvious. I think most people would have seen it coming and therefore it lost some of its emotional punch. I’m not sure how you could remedy that. The only two things I can think of are either Geoff coming to the realisation of what they were going to have to do (and keeping it from the team, therefore providing some emotional tension), or having them fail. Then again, it’s not a massive problem. I’m just always of the field of thought that the reader shouldn’t be able to tell you –exactly- what is going to happen by the midway point. It wouldn’t be something I’d lose sleep over, just something I would consider.

The other thing I’d look at was the aliens. I think you did a good job at describing them (eventually!) and I had a pretty vivid image of them, so well done there. They were also quite original, I think anyway. And I think they were decent antagonists, definitely strong enough to make you fear for the characters (who you did a good job of making us –like-, which isn’t always easy). But I didn’t feel they matched up to the advertising you gave them. They were meant to be immensely powerful and clever, so strong they had to be hidden from the universe and imprisoned. And I just didn’t quite get that sense of power. Some of them were still using their claws, which seemed primitive. We didn’t see them do anything particularly intelligent until they used the tape to blast a new door. I think you could have toyed with maybe an ambush or a trick or something just to make them feel more like super-smart predators rather than super-strong animals.

I hope that this review has given you something to think about, while also not despairing. I’m not trying to mollycoddle you when I say that the story was a very good story. I just think that with some changes and tweaks it could have been an excellent one. And I figured, heck, you made it to the final, you probably want to know exactly what worked and what didn’t. I hope I did that.

…

There were a few mistakes that disrupted the reading of the story. It was enough to spoil the flow and make me read the sentence again. Also, if you are going to use a special character on a name you should make sure to continue using it. I saw it used only once and then not again which spoiled continuation. I loved that the iguana turned out to be a robot. It was obvious they'd find the doctor and also that they'd have to crash the ship. Still, I definitely enjoyed the story. It was probably the easiest of the three to settle into and really read. The immersion was great and it flowed.

…

I enjoyed this story. The pacing was good and the revelations were meted out in a way that didn’t feel ham-fisted or shoehorned in. There were a few spelling and grammatical errors but nothing too terrible to pull me out of the scene. The intro felt a little lacking for me when they were all coming out of cryo. You introduced a lot of people in a short amount of time and my brain just couldn’t keep track of them all. I think more description and more of a storyline other than all of them waking up together would have helped with that. That said, I know you had to introduce a lot of characters in a short-story format so there are limitations on what can be done. Overall an enjoyable read with a steady plot and good use of the starter.

Entry Two

This story was, like .... the exact opposite of entry one. My complaints are totally reversed. The language here was lush. That's not to say that it was Shakespeare, but the choice of words, and they way they were scattered throughout the text, did was good space opera should do. Especially in short fiction. We do not know anything substantial about "The Ossuary" or "The Ecclesiarchy," but their names are interesting, and meaningful, and they tantalize us with everything we don't know. That's great.

The actual worldbuilding was okay too (I really liked the appropriation of Norse mythology into the setting. That was cool), but it was also a bit cliche, and it didn't really deliver on the promises that the language made. The "Void Baron" and the "Thaumaturge" sound rad on paper, but the reality we're presented with is a bit underwhelming. Despite their powers and their physical appearance, in the end they're just dudes, and kind of petulant dudes at that. It all could have benefited from some critique during the brainstorming phase, in order to harmonize the various disparate components with one another.

And that was basically the problem with the plot as well: it was all kind of slapdash. The flow suffered at times, because the story really didn't have much of a direction, and the whole thing was stilted by its length.

Basically, it could have been a lot better than it was, without all that much extra work. Settle on a single tone, take a few risks with character and setting to capitalize on the high-concept weirdness that we are initially promised, and pad the whole thing out a bit. That turns this into a winning entry, but right now it's just not.

…

First of all, I don’t think you’re helped by the fact that your lead in was a very strong story and your follower-up was a hum-dinger. Your story was decent, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but sandwiched between the other two it couldn’t stand up to scrutiny.

I think there were some excellent descriptions littered through your piece, like describing the smaller ships as moving like fish amongst the sharks. But overall, it was just too short? Thrown together? There wasn’t really a distinctive voice to the story. I think that was probably due to the relatively dry opening you had of describing planets. I always give the advice that you shouldn’t start a story with a shopping list of descriptions to describe you’re characters (which is something you did a bit later, which I would recommend keeping an eye on), well, planets also fall under that rule.

I was thrown by the Council-thing you had going on. It just felt too unrealistic to me. It felt as if someone had just dunked their hands into a fantasy naming convention and thrown it at the wall. Also you basically introduced us to each major player one at a time, with a list of descriptions. The descriptions were well-written, but I’d recommend looking to Entry Three. While the tone was somewhat different, you can see how the writer introduced a whole host of characters at the same time, through their actions, rather than just describing them.

The main thing, though, was just that this wasn’t really a complete story. You didn’t give us much of a resolution. There was a resolution-shaped hole. I could see that you tried to round it off nicely, and indeed, the ending was well-worked. The problem was that the story before hand hadn’t given anything to be rounded off, really. Something happened. People talked about they would react. The End. You can see the problem there. There just wasn’t enough of a connection between the reader, and the story and the characters. I just didn’t care what happened.

So in summary, the writing was fine. It was well-written for the most part. But the story was lacking. I’m going to make the assumption that it may have been written in quite a rush?

…

I've been enjoying a lot of Warhammer fiction lately so it was easy for me to slip into this story and get immersed and enjoy it. An outsider might have struggled though? It wasn't the descriptions, which were pretty good, but maybe some of the terminology could have been explained? It felt a bit short as well and the translation of the aliens rushed. I wanted purple-prose there, buddy! There isn't a great deal I can say about it though and not a great deal that happened either. I believe I caught one mistake in the whole thing that could have been fixed with a read through. Enjoyable.

…

I like the turn you took with this piece it was unexpected. I also like the mixture of magical and mechanical. That said, I would have liked to have seen more meat to this piece. I was left wanting and not in a good way. All in all it was enjoyable but felt too short. Also – if you don’t do more to explore magic in space I will totally steal this from you.

…

So I'm reading through this story and I notice something. You didn't really re-read this to check the grammar did you? I imagine you were the third guy who dropped out at first but then mysteriously decided to participate. While I applaud you for that, perhaps you should have gone over the story at least one more time. There were a lot of run-on sentences and you had a problem with making new dialogue its own paragraph. As a result, it felt really stilted in some places and awkward to read in others.

Aside from that, though, I can't really call this a story, so much as an excerpt. I may have given you this criticism in a past round, but these competitions generally need to be self-contained stories, so... do that next time. Honestly, I didn't really enjoy what you gave us, anyway. We're kind of dropped right in the middle of a council of war and then... nothing. "Story" ends and we're left hanging. It felt very much unfinished. Maybe that's because you decided not to participate at first. Either way. I also didn't feel much for the characters, such as they are. They weren't really developed; not even Reinhart was interesting, though I imagine that's because he wasn't the main character and you didn't know what to do with him other than make him a messenger boy. So work on that. I will say there were ideas that intrigued me, as well, such as the aliens and this 'sorcerer' in a sci-fi setting. Wish you had done something with either of them, though, since they're kind of just there. Also, you missed the deadline. Myeh.

Entry Three

Ho. Ho. Ho.

I’m afraid your review might be the shortest of the lot, but it’s only because I really enjoyed what you wrote. There were a few little, silly mistakes like a question mark at the end of a sentence that wasn’t dialogue. But those aren’t important, to be honest, are they? What is important is that you delivered a funny, enjoyable, entertaining story for the Arena Final, which should be enough to win it.

I loved how effortlessly you floated between comedy and a hint of more seriousness. I think some of the jokes and comedy fell flat. I’d much prefer the comedy that was at the higher level, with the douchebags on the bridge and the comedy surrounding the different factions that were circling the planet. They were well-written, inventive and funny. Great fun. The Ensigns down at the pub? They worked, but not as well. Sometimes the dialogue got confusing with who was saying what (or even with who was who). As I’m writing this, I don’t actually remember any real descriptions, but I think that was acceptable. Most of them felt like unique individuals with uniques voice, the fact that I didn’t know what they looked like was fine.

I liked what the planet was, although, I think the stream of dialogue felt like a simple way to earn a cheap laugh and moved on. I think you probably could have done something more. But, to be honest, I would be willing to forgive all this piece’s flaws (and there aren’t a whole lot) due to the G’Keen Incorporation. I really liked the ideas at play with them, and the tone of humour that came from it.

I always find it hard to critique more comedic pieces, because, let’s be honest, who wants to? If you made me smile or laugh (and you did), then it’s job done. Was it flawless? No. But it was funny, entertaining and ultimately, well-written. And I wouldn’t mind reading more about the aftermath with these wonderful factions going at it.

Job well done.

…
I think the first scene could have done with some more scenery descriptions. It was a little confusing when Hart hid behind a fern? It could have been a pretty rich part of the story and was kinda a let down – even if you handled the scientific explanations very smoothly. (Those were a joy to read by the way!) I enjoyed the dry humour especially the bar scene. I think you could have used some full stops where there were commas and some of your speech quotation stuff was left open or you had too many. The warheads didn't make much sense. Unneeded and frivolous. Also, that part seemed really rushed. You had no word limit. The way you structured some of the conversations made it kinda hard to know who was talking sometimes. On the whole, reasonably enjoyable.

…

LOL. The story started a little slow for me and I was wondering if I would like it at all. Then as I felt you start to get going with your narrative I thought “this writer has a chance to make this funny and interesting at the same time.” Then you totally did! I found no major grammar or spelling errors. My only suggestion would be to go back and look at your beginning now that the whole story is done. How can you make the first section feel like the rest?

…

Well, well, if it isn't Taed, my mortal foe. I imagine you're most comfortable in the realm of science fiction, moreso than any of us, and it shows, even if you happen not to be Taed (very unlikely as that would be).

Your spelling was, regrettably for me, impeccable. I saw nothing out of the ordinary in my cursory check, nor the read-through itself. The only thing I can really get onto you for is the use of two hyphens instead of a proper em dash, but even that's nitpicking. You can get the em dash by searching 'em dash' in Google, by the by.

As for the flow, well... it read easily enough, as prose. It was also simple to follow along, even with the technobabble you spouted out at the beginning. Still, I can't help but feel that it would have been better if it had focused on the set of characters you gave us exclusively and telling us what's going on through them. But really, that's also a nitpick and a style choice, more than likely.

You chose the comic route, too, I see, something that definitely will win you more votes than you would have gotten otherwise, I think. A lot of the people who actually review enjoy such a thing, but even then yours is the superior story in general, so I can't pass it off as just the comedy that won you the competition. Blast you. Even I was reasonably entertained, enough to read through the whole story, though I have no doubt my entertainment was colored by my irritation at losing so clearly.

And now the characters. Well, they all kind of felt the same, actually, a criticism I genuinely have against you. None of them were very fleshed out, with all of them playing off the main character Reinhart. But I imagine this would have worked better as a script to something like Hitcherhiker's Guide, because it would be easy to distinguish them by sight. In fact, this whole story reminded me of Hitchhiker's Guide. Probably intentional, so absurd some of the comedy is, yet still managing to work, you arse.

So that's my review. Characters are the only thing I'd work on in prose. It very much felt like they were a bunch of talking heads spouting funny lines instead of actual characters, though I don't know how much of that feeling was intentional. The story flowed and was an absurd comedy that worked relatively well. I saw no grammatical or spelling errors,s o you checked yourself over well.

But you're still terrible for missing the deadline.

[James]

Still, I can't help but feel that it would have been better if it had focused on the set of characters you gave us exclusively and telling us what's going on through them.

... this takes the Award for Worst Advice (sorry, Tam whoever wrote it).

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2013 3:38:37 GMT -5 James said:

Still, I can't help but feel that it would have been better if it had focused on the set of characters you gave us exclusively and telling us what's going on through them.

... this takes the Award for Worst Advice (sorry, Tam whoever wrote it).

I disagree. It would be fine as a script for a video, but prose it doesn't work for me. The characters were pretty homogeneous, and focusing more on them might have given then more of a personality.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

I don't think it would have worked. The characters I was using were too irreverent. Relying on them to deliver 100% of the plot would have been very cumbersome, and I would have had to sacrifice some of the better jokes.

It also would have compromised the core of the story, wherein I was basically lampooning Star Trek and Ian M Banks' Excession by having the characters react groundedly to ridiculous situations. You needed the semi-serious moments between the character moments in order to give their reaction any impact.

That was my goal, at least. There were definitely a few points where I didn't do it well, but if I'd given the characters full control I'd barely have been able to do it at all.

[Deleted]

The first entry was mine, in case it wasn't obvious to anyone in the universe.

[James]

Feb 14, 2013 10:05:58 GMT -5 Croswynd said:

Feb 14, 2013 3:38:37 GMT -5 James said:

... this takes the Award for Worst Advice (sorry, Tam whoever wrote it).

I disagree. It would be fine as a script for a video, but prose it doesn't work for me. The characters were pretty homogeneous, and focusing more on them might have given then more of a personality.

I don't care.

It would have ruined the balance of the story and the comedy of it.

[JMDavis ((Silver))]

Yeah... my problem with my entry was I wasn't even in a writing mindset when I wrote it. I had to force myself into it, which was already a bad spot, but beyond that... if I wanted to leave it as a self-contained story it would have gone on for a lot longer.

A bit too long for someone to sit down and read in a single sitting for a writing competition.

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2013 17:21:33 GMT -5 JMDavis ((Silver)) said:

Yeah... my problem with my entry was I wasn't even in a writing mindset when I wrote it. I had to force myself into it, which was already a bad spot, but beyond that... if I wanted to leave it as a self-contained story it would have gone on for a lot longer.

A bit too long for someone to sit down and read in a single sitting for a writing competition.

Longer than my two stories? : P

[JMDavis ((Silver))]

Feb 14, 2013 17:23:16 GMT -5 Croswynd said:

Feb 14, 2013 17:21:33 GMT -5 JMDavis ((Silver)) said:

Yeah... my problem with my entry was I wasn't even in a writing mindset when I wrote it. I had to force myself into it, which was already a bad spot, but beyond that... if I wanted to leave it as a self-contained story it would have gone on for a lot longer.

A bit too long for someone to sit down and read in a single sitting for a writing competition.

Longer than my two stories? : P

I still had to go through a massive space engagement, boarding actions, descriptions for each of the different alien species, the fact one of the species has a mercury-based blood stream that was extremely toxic to humans, followed by the defeat of the human fleet and the alien imperative to desist hostilities or to suffer consequences, followed by a massive human fleet arriving to find that the aliens have destroyed their own homeworlds and left with the entirety of their populations.

[Deleted]

Well, you did have a lot more time than I did and I made a 9k word story within the deadline.

By the way, you and Taed are terrible for that. Just sayin'.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Pretty sure you missed the first deadline too, champ. None of us were on time. You're just a little less terrible than Silver and I are.

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2013 18:24:08 GMT -5 Matteo ((Taed)) said:

Pretty sure you missed the first deadline too, champ. None of us were on time. You're just a little less terrible than Silver and I are.

I didn't miss it, though. I told Dragon I was ready to post. He can back me up on this.