Galactic Eds
Chapter 1
Double D was furious. Eddy had- yet again- put his own plans before Double D's.
"Eddy, please! This is important!"
The shorter boy snort in contempt. "Please, Double D. This science shmuck can't get you cash."
Double D fumed silently, holding back his speech on how a scientific discovery could, in fact, lead to massive profits. Eddy wouldn't have listened- or cared much- anyways. For Eddy, it was always about the fast buck. Never any long view.
"Now come on, Sockhead! We need to make cash now! Before the Candy Store closes!" Eddy tried to shove Double D out of the garage door.
It was an action that Eddy would later reflect as being the last straw where Edd was concerned.
"Oh, certainly, Eddy! I'll act with no regards as to my own feelings! Maybe I should just turn everything on!" Double D hit every switch on his jury-rigged diagnostic gear. The lights flickered, and Edd blinked as though coming out of a trance.
"Oh, dear."
Eddy was about to ask what happened when there was a high-pitched whine. In the accoustics of a garage, the noise was enough to cause both boys to cringe and flee.
"Oh, dear, I didn't caculate for this..." Double D muttered as the whine reached ultrasonic levels. Ed, who'd been standing outside the garage, blinked.
"I feel tickly, guys," Ed commented. Eddy looked around.
"Sockhead, what's goin' on? What did you do?"
Double D grimaced as the trio of fillings in his back teeth began to ache. "Some sort of molecular vibration, I thin-" The hat wearing boy's voice faltered, and his finger came up. Eddy frowned as Edd's voice returned with a force of gibberish.
"What?" Eddy whirled, noticing the sudden bright blue, semi-distorted wall approaching him fast. The rest of the cul-de-sac behind it had vanished, apparently consumed by whatever the wall was.
Ed didn't notice, or care.
Eddy began to scream as the wall washed over him.
The rest of the cul-de-sac and lane had instants to notice as the wall plowed through them, and then collapsed.
---
Deep, deep space.
The kind of quiet that reigns throughout most of the galaxy was disturbed as the wall opened, and the cul-de-sac was spit out. whatever wasn't nailed down, or securely locked to something floated away.
This would have ended the story, if not for a certain fact and two small miracles.
The certain fact consists of hard vaccuum- dispite what TV and movies have shown- not being instantly fatal.
The first of the two miracles was that the kids had passed out at the sight of the wall.
The second was that help was, conviently enough, in the general area.
"Ah, control? There's something out here you won't believe."
---
Double D woke up with a gasp. Shapes blurred together, but he could hear people talking clearly enough.
"Aleks, take it easy! You'll give him nitrogen poisoning!" A girl's voice, young. Sounded around his age.
"Just give me the oxygen mask, Lilandra." Male. Somewhat older, rather haughty. It reminded him of Kevin.
He felt soft plastic over his nose and mouth, and he breathed deeply. Things began coming into focus.
His guess had been right. One girl, one boy.
The girl was pretty enough. A little taller than him, maybe, with pink hair. He vaugely wondered what her natural hair color was.
"He's awake." Edd's eyes flicked to the other speaker. He was a boy, about Rolf's age, not much older. His face was hawkish, well lined. Deep green eyes probed his.
"Who...?" Double D said, trying to sit up as the duo forced him back down.
"Rest. You and your friends are suffering from light vaccuum exposure."
The girl knelt down next to him. "Go help the others, Aleks. I can handle him."
The older boy snorted briefly and nodded. "Very well."
"Who...are you?" Double D managed. His throat was dry, which- assuming her claim had been true- made sense.
"Lilandra. Lilandra Sjet." She smiled, a small, somewhat shy smile. Edd found his lips twisting into a matching smile.
"So, where are...?" He let the question trail off.
"Third Creche. It's...a long story, and I probably couldn't explain it to you. Karan's reasoning didn't make sense to me." Lilandra sighed, and looked him over.
"I...I think it's one of those things that's better off shown to you." Edd's brow furrowed at that comment, when the boy called over. "Looks like these two are okay."
Double D glanced over. Ed had sat up, apparently with no ill effect. 'Although,' he mused silently, 'it's hard to tell with Ed what an "ill effect" would be.'
Eddy pulled himself to his feet and glanced around. "Sockhead, what did you get us into?"
Double D puffed up indignantly. "I'm as clueless as you, Eddy," he grated out, climbing tenderly to his feet, "but I'm sure we'll find out."
Lilandra frowned, and the boy chuckled. "Lily, I'm gonna go check on the other groups."
"All right, Aleks." Lilandra looked at them. "Come on, you three. There's something you need to see."
---
It was breathtaking. Edd was at a loss for words, and he blinked in nothing short of amazment.
Eddy broked the silence in less than ten seconds. "Space."
A pause, then: "Space?"
Lilandra and Double D looked at the shorter boy as he finally finished processing this.
"SPACE! Double D, you...what did you do? How are we gonna get home? WHERE ARE WE?!?"
Lilandra took a deep breath, and looked at her feet. "Well..."
Ed broke in as his mind finally grasped the truth. "Oh, no! Eddy, we're in space! We could be attack by evil Coalition Warp Gates, like in the movie StarLancer! Or, or the mutants of the AI Shodan from the movie System Shock, or The Many from System Shock 2! Or-"
"Shut UP, furhead." Eddy rubbed his temples in aggrivation. Double D managed a chuckle when he caught Eddy's muttered "Nobody here but us space rednecks."
Lilandra looked completely bewildered, but Edd managed a non-chalant shrug. "That's Ed for you."
"Ah...Anyways...what I was going to say is..." Lilandra paused and looked a little helpless. "From what we were able to pick up off the scanners...you guys are a long, long way from home."
"Meaning?" Eddy asked impatiently.
"Meaning the amount of energy from the dissapation of your hyperspace wave form indicated that you'd crossed the spiral arm and the galactic core before dropping out."
Double D blinked. "Beg your pardon? Which arm?"
Lilandra locked eyes with him, mostly to avoid the near-panic painted on Eddy's face. "You're almost clear across the galaxy."
Eddy fainted at that comment, and Edd managed a horrified gasp. Ed smiled broadly. "Cool," the tall boy said.
Edd processed this, forcing himself to calm down and think. Well, he'd always wanted to travel. He just hadn't meant for it to happen in such a way. Or, for that matter, for such a distance.
He was vaugely aware of Lilandra saying something. "Hm? I'm sorry, I was processing what you'd said earlier."
She smiled, a warmer smile this time. "I was saying that was also got a fair fix on the vector you'd jumped in on. I was also wondering how you managed to jump a piece of a planet like that without killing yourselves in the process."
Double D shrugged helplessly, and a familiar voice came from behind him.
"Think I know, Lily."
The kids spun around, and the older boy from earlier stood there, hand out. "Aleks Soban." Double D shook his hand firmly, and looked at him.
"Well, Aleks, I hope you can answer that. I was starting to wonder myself."
Aleks gestured back to the bay they'd come from.
"To put it simply, you somehow managed to turn the entire hunk of land into a single hyperdrive core." Aleks spoke, as the large double doors slid open. Other kids were helping the various cul-de-sac dwellers out. Double D frowned as he watched one group run Jimmy out on a streacher.
"That little one got beat up pretty bad." Aleks looked back at Edd. Edd shook his head and felt the smile he'd been wearing tighten into a grim mask.
"If only you knew." Edd looked at Aleks, who snorted in understanding. Lilandra glared at Aleks, then looked around. "So, Aleks," Edd said after a moment, "Everybody survive?"
"Nearly as far as we can tell. Of course, we're not exactly...trained, but still." Aleks looked a little sheepish. Edd grimaced.
"We're gonna have to fill them in, of course." Eddy spoke up, looking around, and apparently resisting the urge to run as Kevin strode up to him.
"I know you dorks have something to do with this. Start talking." Kevin had one finger aimed at Eddy, and Double D tapped his shoulder.
"Kevin, I'm at fault. Eddy managed to fray my temper, and when I lost it...well, I apparently caused the entire cul-de-sac to...jump to hyperspace, was that it?" Lilandra and Aleks nodded. "At any rate, we've apparently crossed most of the galaxy, and should rightly be dead."
Kevin blinked. "Yeah, right."
Aleks sighed and made to intervene, stopping when Double D held his hand up. "Kevin, you know how I get when I'm required to be dishonest?"
Kevin nodded. That was something pretty much every kid on the cul-de-sac knew. Edd was almost completely incapable of telling a lie. He usually would start by squeaking, then moving rapidly into nervous shudders and sweating. Nazz had- on more than one occasion- expressed concern that eventually Eddy's scams and dishonesty would reach a point where the hat-clad boy would likely die of an apolexic fit.
"Do you see any one of those signs?"
Kevin frowned. "So, if we're not in Peach Creek, where are we?" he demanded.
"I believe it's called Creche Three. Why, I don't know." Double D sighed.
"Because the woman that named it- my almighty cousin Karan- has no sense of humor, and a machine's sense of order and logic." Lilandra piped up angrily, and the rest of the group spared a suprised look at her.
"That's something else that needs explaining. Probably best done in the infrimary..." Aleks said softly, following another group that was attempting to herd Sara.
---
"Everyone here?" Lilandra asked. Kevin and Aleks nodded, and she smiled. "All right. Lights."
The room dimmed, and a hologram shimmered in the air.
"I'll skip the history lesson. Anybody who's interested can read and watch docs another time. Our subject today-" and with this, the image stabilized- "is Current Events on Higaara."
The holo was a shot of a major war zone. It wasn't pleasent, and Jimmy's sudden retching was audible in the otherwise silent room.
"In...oh, about the last standard year, a group of otherwise scattered raiders, known as the Vaygr, were united, and mounted attacks against the Homeworld, and various Higaaran naval outposts."
The holo shimmered again, and a man-large, with a shaven head and dark eyes- appeared.
"This is the unifier of the Vaygr, Makaan. He's-"
"He looks like the fallen Captain William Bradford Diego in System Shock 2!" Ed piped up, followed by a near-deafing snap of "Shut UP, Ed!"
Lilandra chuckled, and looked around. "As I was saying, Makaan is a former member of the fallen Taiidani Empire, from the outer holdings of the Imperium Remnants. His father joined a Vaygr crusade, and he took it over when his old man died."
"Roughly four months ago, it became apparent that Makaan had managed to unify his own crusade, but all the crusades under his command. It also became apparent- to Karan, at least- that his target was the Higaara system."
The image changed again, and the kids looked at it. It was a series of asteroids, hooked together to form a large base or structure of some kind.
"So, in her infinite wisdom, Karan decided that the children should be moved off Higaara for safety's sake. And here we are."
Lilandra sighed, and looked around her. "Any questions?"
The roar that filled the room was deafening.