The Trinity Sitch – Book 1: They Say Everyone Has a Twin
Chapter 13
Two sets of green, slitted eyes observed the craft sitting in the hidden hanger with the sort of calm disinterest only attainable by the those of the feline persuasion. The roar of the ship did not bother them, as they were used to it considering the lives their humans led. The ship not only looked familiar, it sounded familiar. There was nothing there to key their interest except that the humans that fed them usually arrived that way. Food was not yet an issue since they had eaten their fill from the dispenser on the other ship before they got out. Their only complaint at the moment was the temperature, which had fallen precipitously since a hole was blasted in the roof. They simply curled together, pooling their warmth.
Something tickled their keen animal senses. It was a scent that stirred their instincts. Cute cuddly purr machines they might have been, but they still were predators. An enticingly familiar aroma reached their sensitive noses, familiar, but with the edge of the exotic!
Gossamer and Widget streaked from their hiding place. Cats did not hunt by scent, so they were unable to isolated the source. It seemed to be coming from one of the humans. Not one of theirs, but the smaller male with lighter colored fur (as cats, they could not distinguish actual color but they did know light from dark.) Their eyes were attuned to movement and they noted the activity in the male's pocket.
A tiny, hairless head popped out of that pocket, leaning back with a yawn.
Target acquired!
Tinker closed the access panel on the spacecraft's console, his minor repairs and modifications completed for the time being. "It's not the same ship at all." He told them. The ship now rested in Drakken's old mountaintop lair – the only place they could think of nearby to hide a ship of that size. Even then, it barely fit through the access tunnel. It was a testament to Murky's skill that he was able to guide the sleek craft down the tube shaped passageway without bumping the sides. He turned the ship on its axis, pointing the nose back out the tunnel. They still had to leave it on the upper levels, the only elevator to the main hanger was only large enough for a small aircraft.
Then again, it might have been a waste of time hiding it anyway. Any number of Middletonians might have seen it earlier when Murky had simply piloted it back to Middleton – landing right in the open field near Kim's house in order to pick everyone else up.
"Are you sure about this?" He said as they dropped out of the clouds. "All we need is for some nutcase to start snapping pictures of a two hundred fifty foot long spaceship landing on your lawn." He said to Kim as he extended the lower ramp.
"It's no big. There's stuff landing here all the time to pick Ron and me up for our missions. The neighbors are used to it. This thing doesn't look any more strange than a GJ Hoverjet or a blimp shaped like a giant mini-corn dog."
"Mini-corn dog? Never mind, I don't want to know."
Tinker was at the Possible's home, along with Justine Flanner ready to depart, heading to their new base of operations. Once the ship was down and secure he went to work making sure it wasn't about to launch into a time warp, attempting to return to the era that had produced it.
"I could have told you that from the paint job." Murky said. "The original Phantasm was red, black, gray and yellow. This one is greenish turquoise and tan."
"It's a whole lot more than just that, Murky. It's not just paint, it's the construction of the ship, it's the outer skin. The red parts on the Phantasm were pentronium armor. This ship just has a titanium and duralloy skin with ceramic heat shielding in the proper places. It also doesn't have the armament the other ship has either, just a couple light laser turrets. No ship-to-ship missiles, no heavy laser cannons, no particle accelerators…and especially no ion lock-in cannons. They might have built it out of a Hendrickson class corvette but this particular ship is most definitely not a warship any more."
"It sure looks like the same otherwise." He waved his hand at the brushed metal and teak comprising the main control suite on the bridge.
"Yes, except for the color scheme it looks like the fundamental space-frame is the same, and the exact same thing was wrong with the computer core and if you had just powered up the ship to launch without disconnecting the automation system, you would have ended up headed to the future of this world."
"I still don't understand how the ship would be so different." Murky said. "I about dropped my jaw when I got out and got a really good look at it without being covered in dirt and overgrowth, even the name plate was different." In place of the expected X.S.S. Phantasm it read X.S.S. Trinity.
That in itself was extraordinary. Neither men were ready to mention to their new friends just what the name Trinity meant to them.
Further back in the ship Dona was rummaging through storage lockers. Frustration was setting in. "Where the hell is it!"
A white case marked with a red cross sat open on the floor behind her. It contained all the familiar supplies for a first aid kit, but one thing in particular was missing. Thirty eight years earlier it had been right there, in the box!
She couldn't find the Med+Foam. It was an invention of her time, a special agent that served as temporary bandage and healing gel. It was developed as a battlefield dressing, but it had evolved into something else as medical science progressed. It allows cells to temporarily break their cohesion to each other, then reforming in health patterns. That was a vast over-simplification of what it did but in effect is was able to heal many injuries, right down to simple broken bones. It was what was needed to heal Jimmy!
But it wasn't here!
Jimmy sat in a nearby chair, holding his head. "Maybe they never invented it in this world. Look at this ship, it's not a warship disguised as a yacht, it's just a plain pleasure craft. No armor, no heavy weapons. Maybe there was no Arkonian War. If there wasn't, there wouldn't have been the need to develop Med+Foam."
"I hope you're wrong." She said, digging through the locker. Without thinking about it, she gripped the ring once more through her top.
Rufus screamed again as he bolted across the floor, heading for a crack in the wall. Two wraiths were in hot pursuit, one in a cloud of gray and off-white fur, the other a riot of black orange and white. Just as the two felines pounced he made it into the hole. He breathed a sigh of relief
Not long after landing, Ron went to find a kitchen. There wasn't anything edible left, of course, considering the months it had been since Drakken had abandoned the lair and Global Justice had searched it for weapons stashes and evidence. Ron wasn't about to open the dusty fridge. There was, however, a microwave there, perfect for reheating the Bueno Nacho Chimiritos he brought with him.
His snack ready (only Ron would consider half a dozen Grande-sized Chimiritos a snack) he sat down to share with Rufus. Just as he was about to bring it to his lips, his cell phone beeped, playing the Mole Rat's verse from The Naked Mole Rap.
"On my way, KP" he said, leaving his little buddy to enjoy the entire repast. Rufus licked his lips and dug into the nearest bit of Tex-Mex heaven. He almost didn't see the shadow cross him until it was almost too late!
He had dealt with cats before, and there wasn't one in his neighborhood who would come after him any more. At first they were just like his current attackers, after the Rat in Naked Mole Rat. But, then again, most rats hadn't been exposed to Mystical Monkey Power.
He spread himself flat, causing the cat to misjudge her leap. Widget passed right over him, giving him a chance to scramble away…
…right into Gossamer's approach! With nowhere to run h went on the offensive, dropping into a fighting stance and attacking. He popped her on her nose, confusing the hungry cat just long enough for him to head for the crack in the cavern wall. It was just deep enough they could not reach him with their extended claws, though they spent the next few minutes trying. Widget was by far the smaller of the two, but her legs were somewhat shorter as well.
They didn't keep that tactic up long. Since they weren't desperately hungry, they put their slightly enhanced intelligence to work. The two cats simply set up camp, sitting down Sphinx style, their tails swishing back and forth on the dust covered floor, content to wait their tasty morsel out.
Rufus was trapped, with no way to call for help.
Shego stretched out on one of the bunk alcoves in the Valkyrie's passenger cabin, watching the video playback she had downloaded from the computer onto a clipboard sized data pad. Her mouth was still agape after watching it for several hours. Drakken, frustrated at being unable to work the heavy weapons, had retired to one of his semi-finished labs in the lair, leaving her on the ship.
This was just TOO MUCH!
She had been randomly searching for stuff in the computer when an idea struck her. If this ship was from the future, why not see if it had any information about them! Gleefully she punched in 'Shego.' Even the fast AI of the ship took a few moments to bring back and answer. Finally, it said 'See Kim Possible.' That elicited a growl from her, so she tried something else. She typed in "Doctor Drakken"
Same result.
Have we been reduced to a footnote about the Princess? She asked herself angrily. Frustrated, she punched up her foe's name. She was half expecting a glowing ten page article about her.
Instead there was just a list. Huh? "Crush," "Blush," "Go Team Go," "Emotion Sickness?" What were these? Curiosity peaked, she selected the largest file titled "So the Drama."
The screen switched to video. Something, like a little green fairy flew across the screen, touching something with a magic wand. There was a shower of magical sparks, then a shot of a cartoon figure beating a drum. Moments later a green and black fighter jet screamed out of the sky.
OH…MY…GOD! She watched as the fight unfolded. It was just like it had happened, right down to the moment when Kimmie's little sidekick managed to wrest them all from the clutches of her grappling hook!
The rest of the cartoon was, from her perspective, gut wrenching. With a combination of shock and fury she downloaded everything onto the large PDA. Then the ending clicked.
If that thing is as accurate as it looked, that means…the Princess and the Buffoon hooked up? Gah! That was sick and wrong on so many levels! She may have hated Kim but she had to admit she was very pretty, in a teenage princess sort of way. Pairing off with Stoppable? The kid wasn't heinous but couldn't she do better?
But what about the file as a whole? Why portray a historical document as a cartoon? That didn't make sense.
What Shego didn't know was that some things that occur in one universe don't actually happen in another. Instead, they manifested themselves as a sort of echo, forming in the imaginations of certain unconsciously enlightened people, in this case, the people who created the cartoon she was looking at.
She wouldn't have cared about that, she set to watching as much of it as she could. Cartoon or no, there might be very important information here. She selected the second largest file; "A Sitch in Time" and settled in to watch.
Drakken hooked the power leads up to the device he had just assembled. Goggles in place, he turned the yellow lensed object toward a target. Everything was ready. All he had to do was test it. If this worked, he could have many more ready to go, very, very quickly. He had learned much over the last few years, and this time he would apply what he learned. The automation technology of the Japanese toymaker, the cybertronic technology of Dr Possible's Hephaestus project and some of his other, finer creations would be combined with the might of twenty-fifth century weapons. He touched the button.
Blue-white light leapt from the projector. There was a thunderous boom, shaking the whole cavern. The brilliant light dissipated and he pulled off his goggles.
The target had been hit. He was sure of that. He had seen the beam hit it dead center! Only, now there was no target! There wasn't even any dust left! It had been utterly and totally obliterated! He looked at the wall. Even it had been blasted through, and the next wall, and the next.
What did it matter if they had done something to keep their own weapons from working? Not when a genius like himself could copy them!
The mad laughter rocked the cavern just as his new Ion Lock-In cannon had.
Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney. All Intergalax Characters © Nelson Binch
A/N Revised 2-26-06