Chapter One
Place: The Alternity Council Briefing Room
Time: 8:30 AM
"Gentlemen and ladies." The man standing in the middle of the room rose. He was wearing a business suit with a bright crimson tie, accentuated by the bleakness of his white undershirt. Perched on the bridge of his nose were his signature sunglasses, hiding his eyes behind the heavily tinted lenses. His brown tapered hair was neatly combed backwards, glistening with an unnatural sheen. "We have a problem. A problem so pertinent, it could ruin our lives as we know them." The man's voice was calm, despite the subject matter of his address.
He pulled down a hook from the ceiling, which carried along with it a blank white cloth. "Passcode: Hijack-12" As he uttered the code, the cloth turned from the stark white to a mess of randomly colored polygons of varying shapes, sides and colors. Then, the colored shapes split, moved and rotated in an immediate manner, forming a prison-style mugshot.
The face in the picture had a certain charm to it, what with the young, enthusiastic smile, rustled hair, spatter of freckles on each cheek and deep green eyes giving life to the young man's face. A feminine voice came from one of the chairs arranged around the room. "Who is that young lad?" The man in the spotlight of attention spoke in his calmest, most serious voice he could muster. "This 'young lad' is Tomar 78, a recently awakened 18-year old male recruited by Scout Team 9. He recently did something no newly-awakened Tomar has ever done before." The female voice spoke again. "That being?" The man in the center stood tall, sighed and spoke with the utmost importance, as if what he said next would impact the fate of a nation.
"He stole Scout Team 9's experimental lineship. He left Scout Team 9 stranded in a foreign timeline with no equipment or way to get back to Headquarters."
The room fell into an eerie silence. The man wearing the sunglasses put on a disgruntled frown that perfectly complemented his business-like demeanor. A gruff voice from the corner of the room spoke up, cutting through the silence like a butter knife. "Do we know what he is planning to do with the ship?" The suited man responded with a simple follow-up for the simple question. "We have no official reports, but we can assume he is going to do what any teen with a new ride is going to do." The female voice cut into the discussion. "Being?" She made a circular motion with her hand, showing she wanted to "move it along". The suited man turned to face her, and responded with the same tone he had carried throughout the entire briefing.
"Take it for a joy ride, of course."
Place: Scout Team 9's (formerly) Lineship
Time: ?
"Tomar 78", as he was called by the group of suited men who had ambushed him, was having the time of his life. Tomar had taken 'em out real easy. All it took was a couple of hits at a couple of crucial of pressure points, and they went down like Old Man Tim after a couple shots of whiskey. Tomar was currently sitting in the captain's seat, watching the planets and stars pass by him in blurs of color and light through the windows. Wonder what I should do now, he thought to himself. "I wonder if this thing has an instruction manual?" He spoke aloud in a moment of curiosity. He suddenly heard a soft 'poof' from the other side of the room. He turned around to see a bookcase, stuffed to the brim with books and scrolls. "Wow." Tomar strolled over to the newly materialized bookshelf, hands in pocket. "Quite a collection we have here!" Tomar grabbed a book off the shelf, Lineship Maintenance for Dummies, and began to skim through it. As he fingered through the pages, he began to understand what kind of situation he was in. Timeline hopping, sectional multiverses, the Alternity Council. Whatever it meant, Tomar felt uneased at every mention of the Alternity Council, whatever that was. After he had read about the Council, Tomar was about to quit reading. All these rules and regulations were making his head hurt. Tomar skipped to the back of the book out of curiosity, and read the text on the final page aloud. "If anyone not authorized by the Alternity Council to pilot a lineship sits in the captain's chair, the lineship will deem that person a Class-A Biohazard." Tomar hastily turned his head to look at the chair in which he was just sitting. And at that moment, he knew what was going on. Several gatling guns emerged from the walls, all pointed in the direction of the venturesome vagabond.
"Ah, fudge grahams."
To Be Continued...