Telling the Tale
After coming up from the cave, Bruce and Selina headed for the couch and Alfred headed for the kitchen to make some sandwiches for the story the kids were going to tell.
Bruce put the photo album he got from the other dimension on the coffee table then picked up a remote to put the fireplace back in front of the entrance.
Selina laid back on the couch and took a deep breath.
"As fun as our adventure on the other side of that portal was, it's good to be back in Gotham."
"I agree," Bruce replied then sat down and opened the photo album. "There's two disk in here too. One is of the footage form your helmet cam and the second one is from our flight in the Space Hornet."
"Our ground op and joyride were both equally awesome. Even now I still feel the sensation from the acceleration of the rocket booster."
"Escaping the atmosphere and seeing those stars, beautiful sight. I'll never forget it."
"Neither will I, B," Selina replied.
The next few minutes were passed with small talk about other things. More like Bruce trying to make small talk and Selina just looking up at the ceiling.
"Master Bruce, Ms. Kyle, lunch is ready," Alfred said as he entered the study with a tray full of sandwiches and two cups of fruit juice.
"Thank you, Alfred," Bruce replied then he and Selina grabbed a sandwich from the tray.
"So what kind of misadventure did you drag Master Bruce off to this time, Ms. Kyle?" Alfred asked.
"Actually Alfred, it was my fault this time around. I was going to take a break from exploring a new section of the cave downstairs when Selina arrived. I told her about the mirror I found and asked if she wanted to see it."
"And you took her down there to show it to her and discovered it was some sort of bloody portal?"
"Yes. It went active after I touched it and started pulling me in. Selina tried to pull me away but the gravitational pull was too strong and sucked us both in."
"And ended up landing where?"
Bruce was about to answer, but Selina cut him off.
"On the USS Beowulf, an intergalactic battlecruiser belonging to the United States Navy. Our first meeting was a little tense at first because some of their marines had their guns aimed at us, but the ships weapons officer, Commander Shelly Womack told them to stand down and took us to the infirmary for a blood test to make sure we weren't sick or martians in rubber suits."
"We tested negative on both fronts and then Commander Womack took us to the bridge to meet the commander."
"And who was he?"
"Rear Admiral Andy Roberts. He was very friendly and prior to getting command of the ship, he commanded a squadron of Super Hornets," Bruce replied.
"And the most interesting part about how he got command of the ship was that he was on the verge retiring when he got the offer."
"If I was given an offer like that when I was on the verge of leaving Her Majesty's service, I would've changed my mind too," Alfred commented.
"Then who would've been Bruce's butler if you stayed? This will be one and only time you'll ever hear me say this out loud Alfred, but I highly doubt that any other butler can make the same impression on Bruce as you have."
"Why… thank you for the compliment Ms. Kyle," Alfred replied then Bruce continued.
"The Beowulf was traveling through hyperspace on a mission to a planet designated as MW-877 to locate the point of origin of a virus that infected the crew of an exploration ship called the Ethel Marie. It caused infected crewmembers to turn into monsters and the Navy had no choice but to scuttle it with a Space Hornet from another battlecruiser known as the USS Hades."
"You mean the Beowulf wasn't the only ship of its class?" Alfred asked.
"No. The Navy had twelve of them in service and eight more were being constructed and other countries were full fledged military space powers too such as-."
"You can get to that part later, Bruce. But we can tell him what we did during our flight to the planet," Selina said.
"After meeting Admiral Roberts, I went down to the conference room to learn more about the universe we were in and the state of affairs on Earth while Selina engaged in a more hands on activity."
"Commander Womack let me run several combat simulations on her weapons console and as a result of my performance, I was certified to operate it if necessary. After that, I went to the Hall of the Kings."
"The Hall of the Kings?" Alfred asked.
"Yeah, it was the briefing room for their fighter pilots. The ship has two squadrons on it, the Spacekings and the Longbows. While I was in there, I met the Spaceking leader Captain Erin Steinbeck. We had a nice little chat and then I gave him my very own Bruce Wayne 101 course as we headed for the conference room where Bruce was. Some of his fellow Spacekings overheard my lecture and joined us along the way."
"Did you learn anything interesting, Master Bruce?"
"Yes. Interstate conflicts were a thing of the past and after two invasion attempts by hostile alien race called the Borgans in 2095, some of the nations decided to become full-fledged military space powers which was how ships like the battlecruisers came about. It started out with America, Russia, England, France, and China having them back in 2100 and then a year or so after that, the United Republic of Korea, Japan, Sweden, and Germany joined the club followed by India, Italy, Spain, and Greece."
"And what year did you and Ms. Kyle fine yourselves in?"
"2106 and by then the list of military space powers expanded to include Denmark, Norway, Turkey, and Vietnam.
"Oh my, seventeen countries with intergalactic battlecruisers flying about the stars."
"There were other assets geared towards Earth's defense too, Alfred. An early warning satellite network, numerous space fighter squadrons possessed by the air forces of the countries that were part of the Earth Defense Alliance, Intergalactic space destroyers, attack satellites, orbital fire bases, and surface to space missile systems. And the United States Air Force also had a small fleet of super carriers in addition to their twenty-seven Earth based F-28 Squadrons divided amongst nine space fighter wings. Each wing had three squadrons of sixty jets ready to go at a moment's notice."
"Considering that hostile aliens sound like the main threat in that realm, they bloody better be. Were there any friendly alien races by any chance?"
"Yes. The Earth on the other side had diplomatic relations with the Tulanians, the Sathians, the Shataris, and the Keldans."
"But anyway after picking up Bruce from the conference room, we went down to one of the hangar bays and checked out the Space Hornets, the fighters Steinbeck's squadron flew. He told me that their official name was F/A-18S but they just call them Space Hornets because it sounds better and I agree," Selina said.
"How many other them did you see?"
"Just forty in that bay, a Beowulf ship carries a total of eighty Space Hornets and sixteen Sawsharks. The Longbow Squadron on the Beowulf flew those," Bruce replied."
"What were the Sawsharks like?"
"They were lean mean fighting machines like the Space Hornet but they have AI copilots and four afterburners. I wouldn't bother challenging one to a race, let alone a fight. But after that, we arrived at the planet and joined a team of marines led by Major William Gordon for the mission on the surface. We got some gear and I even got to pack an AA-22 shotgun after demonstrating how good I was with it. I wanted to give Bruce some extra protection."
"I appreciate that Ms. Kyle, but I'm pretty sure those marines you were with could've kept Bruce covered just fine."
"It never hurts to have an extra gun in your corner Jeeves. Especially on an alien planet," Selina replied.
"We had air and orbital cover too, but we didn't get into any combat. In fact the only things we saw on our way to the facility the Ethel Marie's crew found were buildings overtaken by undergrowth. Evidence that the place was once home to a civilization thousands if not millions of years ago."
"Any idea what happened to them?"
"Best case scenario, they probably left for another world."
"But not before locking up an entire buildings worth of nasty stuff," Selina interjected. "We got to the objective and found a room with six-hundred sealed chambers but one of them was breached and its contents were missing."
"I take it the science crew you mentioned earlier were the culprits?"
"Unfortunately yes, and they ended up paying for their error with their lives. We were beamed back up to the Beowulf and the Selina got to level the building with a nuclear tipped cruise missile," Bruce said then Alfred gave Selina a look.
"Don't look at me like that. Admiral Roberts told us that he had orders from the Pentagon to sanitize the point of origin of the virus with a nuke if he found it. They wanted maximum assurance that it would never pop up again."
"And they sure as hell got it, thanks to you Ms."
"Yep, and I got to make some history to by being the first teenage girl to fire one off. We saw a video feed of the missile's flight from orbit to the target and it went right through the front door. That was really awesome."
"I certainly hope that launching off nukes doesn't become a new habit of yours."
"Anything is possible, Alfred. But the coolest thing that happened on our adventure was being given a joyride in a Space Hornet by Bruce."
"I wanted to do something special for Selina and after hearing of my flight experience with my private jet in this realm. I was given the go ahead. Captain Steinbeck and his copilot, Commander Emerson were with us too."
"We flew around the surrounding space for bit, did some real stargazing and flew down to the planet where we did some cloud surfing."
"Real cloud surfing," Selina added.
"That's all?" Alfred asked.
"We flew over the blast site and told our friends about the Indian Hill incident. Captain Steinbeck said it was the most interesting in-flight story he ever heard."
"I'm pretty sure it was, Master Bruce."
"When we decided to head back up into space, we climbed up to ninety-thousand feet and ignited the rocket boosters. We went up so fast, we ended up blowing past the Beowulf, that experience alone made it the best adventure ever. I wanted us to do it again, but we got called back to the ship because NASA found a way for us to get back home. Something about finding an anomaly in the fabric of space."
"Like a rift to other dimensions?"
"Or we went forward in time and got a glimpse of the future," Bruce replied.
"And before we left, they made Bruce an honorary Spaceking member due to his outstanding flying in the jet and the simulator and they gave me this," Selina said then pulled out a squadron patch from her pocket and give it to Alfred.
"The Hellcats. Sounds like the name of a gang you would fit in with if they actually existed, given your love of cats and all."
"They're the Space Hornet Squadron assigned to the Hades. There's another battlecruiser called the USS Selene, but I proposed changing it to USS Selina since it sounds better but my proposal got rejected by their Chief of Naval Operations."
"I'm sure he or she had their reasons for it. But I'm glad you two are back safe. But what are we gonna do about the portal?"
"Turning it over to the government would be a bad idea. They might tinker around with it and connect with a bad dimension. The best thing we should do is leave it where it is and keep it existence to ourselves."
"I don't have a problem with that, B. It just means I that I wont be able to show anybody the patches or photos we got. But that is a small lost. You don't have to share everything with everybody."
"I agree, Selina," Bruce replied.
As the kids began eating, Alfred picked up the photo album and sat in a nearby chair to look through it.
The first photo he saw was of Bruce sitting in the Beowulf's conference room with the ships emblem shinning bright on the screen behind him and the photo next to that was of Bruce and Selina sitting in the cockpit of a space Hornet.
He noticed the two DVDs too, but he decided that he would watch them later on.
Fin.