Garuda
888
A grumbling filled his ears. It wasn't grumbling as he listened, his eyes closed, too composed, too back and forth, a conversation maybe. Far away a conversation just on the edge of hearing was being had. His head hurt spiking with pain that clouded the sounds of the conversation. A piercing ring cut through the jumble of pain and grumbles and then both with a pop and a mental flick of a switch the aural world snapped into focus.
"The biology is very strange…" came a voice, male maybe, warbly. "It is superficially human, but, once one does the bio-scans, well you can see for yourself, captain."
"Yes, I can tell." A second voice, definitely male, masculine gruff but tempered with age. "Any idea how he survived in the vacuum though? His fluids should've boiled."
"I, presume, captain," the first voice warbled, "that it had to do with the deflector emitter he was floating near."
"Where am I?" he asked, opening his eyes slowly. The light burned so he squinted. His gray-blue irises adjusted, pupils contracted, the world came into focus as the blaring lights faded down.
He sat up and looked at the two people in the room with him. One was an earth reptile, in a white gown; the other was a middle aged, bald man, presumably the captain, in a red uniform. Both looked shocked as he shifted his legs around to the edge of the bed he was laying on. Bits of things were attached to him and they pulled as he tried to stand up.
"Sir," the captain said, putting his hands up.
"I'm sorry, yes, didn't introduce myself, I'm…." The man stopped and thought right in the middle of him pulling sensors off of his body and scanned around for something to wear that wasn't a hospital gown, he didn't trust hospital gowns they gave him the heebie-jeebies.
"You are, who, again?" asked the reptile in a warbling voice. It scanned the man with a third rhyno-cephalic eye located equidistantly and slightly up from the main optical orbits.
"No...I'm, no one of consequence" The man said, he stood up, and then tumbled forward. The earth reptile snagged him as his knees buckled. "Must've been out longer than I expected." The man smiled and then frowned. "Haven't used the respiratory bypass in a long time…must be getting rusty."
"Your body was severely traumatized; we believed you were dead, until I detected a single neuro-muscular signature in your thoracic cavity." The earth reptile said as he helped the man to his feet. "In all my years as chief medical officer I have never seen such a deep unconscious state."
"You've never been to Tibet." The man said in a grumble; he stood up as he put his weight on the earth reptile, and then tested his legs again slowly. He stopped and looked at the earth reptile. "You're the chief medical officer?"
"Yes, have been since the ship has been commissioned." The Earth reptile replied. "I graduated from the xeno-biological medical school on Neo-Pacifica. I have done sixteen stints on four different worlds as head medical administrator to twelve different species' consolates. I was on a taskforce to discover a cure for Havrid's syndrome issued by the Galactic Federation…before I took this position to do field medicine…"
He turned and looked at the captain. "Havrid's syndrome? What's the year? Where am I?"
"I'm sorry? The year?" the captain said, he looked to the earth reptile. The earth reptile nodded and the captain seemed to break from his quizzicalness and replied. "3732, you are on the Galactic Federation Starship Endeavor. I am Captain John…"
The man looked around and pushed off of the earth reptile and staggered forward. On a desk in a separate room he found his clothes folded in a neat pile. He quickly disrobed, much to the embarrassment of the captain and threw on his gray shirt and rust red double-breasted vest, and slid into his gray corduroy pants. He quickly slid his socks over his feet and his feet into his boots and with a flourish tied a frayed red silken around his neck. Then he slowly slid into a long, brown leather jacket.
The man looked into a small reflective screen, and tussled his grayish-white hair, and then ran his hand over his face in one long stroke of his white beard and moustache. He turned to the two gentlemen in the other room. "Apologies, I feel much better now, if you would direct me to my ship, so I may be on my way."
The captain looked to the earth reptile and then back to the man. The captain walked forward. "That's the problem; it seems your ship exploded. We found you in the vacuum of space."
The man furrowed his eyebrows and pursed his lips. Memories filled his head. The captain was right, that Dalek blaster had hit a critical area of the vessel he was piloting. The systems had been crashing, the ship was going to explode, and then he did something clever. That was the last he remembered.
"Yes, that's correct." The man said almost to himself, as he stared into the mid-distance. He then looked up at the captain. "Then maybe I could ask for a lift then."
"We have many questions, to ask you." The captain said as he stared at the man.
"Ah." The man said quietly.
"And I am very interested in your biology. I have never met a species like you in my entire career." The earth reptile said.
"Yes, Dr. Yxar, that is quite enough." The captain said looking to the man. "As I was saying I am Captain John Renard, and this is the GFS Endeavor, we're only a mission of exploration…"
"No you aren't." The man said quietly as he walked past them.
"I'm sorry?" The captain said clearly flustered by the man's response.
"Garuda class isn't it?" The man said as he walked around the medical bay. "Second refit, you can tell by the seams on the wall, they used micro-riveting to reinforce the structural integrity. The computers are crystal-transfer micro-neurons. These monitors are Deluxian…no mistaking it."
"Well…yes…but…" The captain blinked in surprise. "How do you…"
"Know?" The man turned and looked at the captain. "When I was younger, I took a very deep interest in the Galactic Federation starship fleet, bit of a gear head, not proud of myself for it really. Did a dissertation on the Garuda class on Corvax colony…never got published, you know, academic politics. And I know for a fact there was no GFS Endeavor, nor was it commissioned under the command of a Captain John Renard."
"Well, I'm sorry to question your encyclopedic knowledge," the captain said, straightening up and tugging at his uniform to straighten any creases, "but unfortunately you are standing in front of Captain John Renard, and you are in the GFS Endeavor. Perhaps your dissertation is out of date…"
"Impossible, it won't be written for another twelve hundred years…" The man said waving his hand absent-mindedly at the captain, "after the Galactic Federation collapses during the resurg…." The man silenced himself. "The dissertation isn't out of date."
"If you will come with me, I will take you to our executive conference room, and we can have a conversation." The captain said as he walked up and put his hands on the man's shoulders, and led him out of the medical bay.
The man knew how these tended to go. You show up unexpected and get picked up by a military band, or a ship or convoy, inevitably they want to vet you, or at least get a name out of you. This of course was problematic for the man, as he tended not to announce himself, nor really tell anyone anything he didn't think they needed to know, like, 'how did you get here' or 'why are you here' or 'what happened to your space craft' and 'why were you floating around in space without an environmental suit'. These things were trivial and the answers were more likely to get the person asking them blown up than if they were just happy to be ignorant. Never the less, he was sitting at a table and across the table was the captain, and next to the captain was an attractive, young woman. She had long brown hair and wore a blue uniform. She had doe-like eyes and, though she tried to conceal it with her hair, small, pointed ears.
"May I begin by asking your name, sir?" The captain said quietly.
"You may." The man said quietly.
"Well…"
"I will begin by not giving it." The man replied quietly, he looked to the woman. She was staring intently at him.
"There really is no need to be…"
"There is a lot of need to be many things, my name is not important; it will provide you with no new information that is of value to you." The man said quietly, staring at the woman.
"Fine then, may I at least address you as John Doe, then?" the captain asked.
"If you must."
"John Doe, how was it that you came to be in the position that the Endeavor found you?" the captain asked, as he wrote in his file.
"You won't believe me if I told you." The man said, still staring at the woman.
"I can be quite open…."
"I was shot by a Dalek war saucer, while I was attempting to extract myself from a combat zone." The man said plainly.
"If you're going to be that flippant…" The captain started.
"Ask your Zetazoan if I'm lying, that's why she's here isn't she?" the man said, for the first time breaking eye contact with the woman and looking to the captain. "The ears always give it away…plus, she's been probing my mind since she entered the room. I wouldn't suggest she succeed, if I was her."
The captain looked to the woman. "Well, then?"
"He's…not lying, sir, as far as I can tell," the woman said, she had an accent in her voice, "but he's being very elusive, and I cannot get past his defenses…"
"Well then." The captain wrote into his file. "If I may be so bold as to ask where you found Daleks? There hasn't been a Dalek in…" the captain did some mental math, "…a thousand years. I never expected we'd find them just sitting in our backyard shooting at old men after all this time."
"The Daleks are busy…fighting a war." The man replied quietly. He turned his eyes back to the Zetazoan woman. "You said you were on an exploration mission. May I ask what it is?"
"Mr. Doe, I am the one asking the questions…"
"Yes, and you are doing it poorly, now, what is your exploration mission?" the man said sternly, maintaining eye contact with the woman.
"That information is…"
The girl stiffened, and whimpered slightly.
"Why are you here, captain?" the man said quietly.
"What are you doing?" the captain growled as he watched the girl curl her fingers into the table, the nails on her finger tips biting into the surface of the table.
"You wanted her to probe my mind." The man said, intently staring at the woman. "I'm letting her in. I told you she shouldn't continue to push…I've experienced and seen quite horrible things in my life, in fact most people would go catatonic just from what I've seen." The man took a deep breath through his nose. The girl whimpered quietly as she tried hold back a primal scream of pain. The man stared intently at her. "Captain, I can stop it, but I need to know why you are here, and what you are exploring."
"Captain…" the woman winced, her eyes squinted under some unseen pressure.
"We are exploring a region of space near Paswall's Folly with an intense chronion emission. The region seems to flash with visible light but no photometers can detect the light and no telescopes can discern the origin of the light." The captain said, sharply and quickly. "Ships have been disappearing in the region and it is believed to be some kind of privateering ring subsidized by Galaxy Five agents to lure us into civil conflict. As to what is the purpose of the piracy; that is unknown."
The Zetazoan gasped and then relaxed against the back of her chair.
"It's not Galaxy Five." The man said as he looked to the captain. "I suggest if you value your life, or existence that you turn this vessel around and leave. I furthermore would request you drop me off, preferably at the Colony of New Portugal. I have an alternative mode of transport waiting for me there. I mean since the ship I was piloting blew up."
"If you think after that I'm just going to…" the captain started.
"I know why I've never heard of you." The man said quietly. The captain looked at him. The man folded his hands together and looked at the table. "You poked something with a stick that you shouldn't have. This vessel, its crew, everything on it, will very soon never have existed. You won't just be destroyed, not just killed. You will be erased, every strip, every sinew, every memory, of you deleted from history. John Renard, Dr. Yxar, pretty Zetazoan girl, all of you will never have been born, never had lived, never have loved." The man looked up at the captain. "I'm giving you an undeniable opportunity. If I was the sort of person to say this sort of thing, I'd say it was an offer you couldn't refuse." He turned his gaze back to the girl and then back to the captain. "I'm giving you the option to have existed."
"This makes no sense, I am here right now." The captain growled.
"And in the future you will have never been there, this conversation would have never happened, the alloys of this ship will have been repurposed for some other engineering feat." The man said calmly. "You're nothing more than imprints of events that never have occurred. It's just that the universe hasn't noticed yet, it's very busy you see, but in not too much time it will notice your presence's glaring error in its great shape and you will simply never have been."
The captain reached over and touched a button on the table, some sort of comm. device. "Commander Zazxl, would come to the executive conference room please."
"Affirmative Captain, I'll be there in a few minutessss." Hissed the voice. A few minutes later a Martian in green armor lumbered into the room.
"Take this man down to a holding area." The captain said sharply, glaring at the man. "Firmly lock him inside."
"Yesss, sssir." Hissed the Martian. A clawed hand lifted up and gripped the man's arm. "You will come with me, and if you try any funny bizzznessss I will ussse my sssonic dissssruptor on you. It hasss one ssssetting."
"I have no doubt of that." The man said looking into the red visor of the Ice Warrior helmet. "From Mars? Or from New Mars?"
"What differensssce isss it to you?" the Martian hissed and pulled the man to his feet.
"None, just making conversation." The man said almost jovially as he jerked to his feet and walked in front of the Martian.
"Prossssceed in front of me, do not make any ssssudden movesss." The Martian instructed, and then it added. "And keep ssssilent."
888
The man sat on his bench, which was also his bed and stared at the floor. He'd been there about an hour. He mulled over a plan of escape. The problem was that if this was a Garuda class ship, then none of the escape pods were capable of rapid velocities and had no manual controls. There were no faster than light shuttles. It was a very well made holding cell. No ludicrously large vents, or easily kicked in pipes. Not only did it have physical bars but there was a high energy distortion field in front of the opening as well. It was one of the few things humans were good at, redundancy, that and conspiracies.
"You know, this is wholly unnecessary." The man said to the jailor he knew was just around the corner.
"Captain's orders." The man shouted from around the corner.
"Aren't I entitled to…I don't know a magazine or something. Maybe some knitting? A chess board? You wouldn't happen to have an Etch-a-Sketch on board would you?" The man asked, standing up and walking to the bars of his holding cell.
"Sorry, no Etch-a-Sketches." The jailor said. The man could just barely make out the jailor out of the corner of his eye, seemed short, and young. He was sitting behind a desk with his feet up, reading something, the man couldn't tell what.
"I get a meal right?" the man asked. "It's just the last time I ate was…before my ship blew up…and I'm not sure how long ago that was but I have a feeling it was a long time ago."
"At Eighteen hundred." The jailor replied in a bored fashion, they'd gone over this all before, possibly a dozen times.
"What time is it?"
"Approximately six minutes since you last asked." The jailor replied, he rustled whatever it was he was reading. "Just go sit down."
"What's your name?" the man asked quietly.
"Lieutenant Alfred Jorgenson, GFS Endeavor serial number 44383321." The jailor said from rote.
"Where are you from?"
"Lieutenant Alfred Jorgenson petty security officer…"
"I'm not a spy; you don't need to act so defensive." The man grumbled as he turned and put his back against the jail's bars.
"You assaulted a Galactic Federation officer…"
"I did no such thing; she succeeded in probing my mind, the consequences of that are on, and in, her own head. I gave her fair warning." The man crossed his arms over his chest. "Plus she was assaulting me first; unauthorized mental probing by trained empathics is against the Galactic Federation charter…I never signed a release." The man pushed off of the bars and paced in his cell. "Al, may I call you Al?"
"No, you mayn't."
"Al, what do suppose will happen? I mean surely the captain won't be taking us into Paswell's Folly, still." The man said quietly.
"It's above my pay grade." The jailor replied. This too had been gone over several times.
"This could be a chronic hysteresis." The man said quietly. "The exploding ship I came from could be/have been the Endeavor…I don't remember."
"I couldn't possibly comment." The jailor said, quietly.
The man knelt down and looked at the floor. The plating was loose.
"Well, there's only one way to break a chronic hysteresis. You've gotta play the loop backwards on itself…" The man said as he wiggled the screws on the plating very carefully. The security officer had confiscated everything in his pocket including the screwdriver he always carried. "This plating on the floor, it's a Tanderium alloy is it not? Harder than diamond, natural room-temperature superconductor right?"
"Federation only pays for the best." The jailor said, his tone suggesting he wasn't even listening anymore.
"Yes, I thought so, did a dissertation once about the Garuda class ships, at Corvax university sort of a post-doc thing…bloody Professor Argerix was a strick anti-human…rejected the publication in history journal Quantas." The man said as he carefully freed the piece of plating. "Gotta say, I was a bit disappointed about that. I'd spent literally decades doing research only for Argerix to stop it with a simple veto. I mean she didn't even study Federation military history."
"Is that so…"
"Yes, but then you guys did blow up her home planet during the rise of the Second…." The man started.
There was a loud pow. The lights in the brig flickered and then went dark before red emergency lights came on. The jailor jumped to his feet, but it was too late, a combination of high energy and ingenuity had melted the lock of the cell door which swung open. The distortion field had been shorted out, and the man was in front of Lieutenant Alfred Jorgenson GFS Endeavor serial number 44383321. Alfred reached for his side arm, but it was too late, and within seconds a piece of brutally hot Tanderium floor plating was smashing into the side of his head.
"…Earth Empire." The man finished. "Sorry, Al, no hard feelings, I just don't want to go back into a Time War hot zone just yet."
Within seconds he had his confiscated tools and was out of the brig.
888
"GONE!?" Captain Renard roared at the Martian titan in front of him.
The Martian did his best to look like a small terrified rabbit in the face of his commanding officer.
"Jorgenssssen was knocked out when we found him, ssssir." The Martian hissed looking to the ground. "The prissssoner was gone….there'ssss only one conclussssion."
"Well he has to be on this ship somewhere!" Captain Renard growled. "Find him! He's at the very least dangerous and at the very most exceptionally dangerous. I want him secured and under lock and key before we get to the edge of Paswell's Folly!"
"But…that'ssss only in a few hourssss." The chief security officer hissed.
"Then what the hell are you doing here?" the captain fumed glaring at the Martian. "YOU'RE DISMISSED, GET GOING! LEAVE MY SIGHT!"
"Yessss, sssir!" The Martian fumbled staggering backward and lumbering out of the captain's office.
"Sir," there was another man in the room with the captain. A younger man with a beard and a classically handsome look, "it wasn't Zazxl's fault. Jorgensen has always been questionable with responsibility. The vid shows that he was basically not paying attention."
"It doesn't matter, he's responsible for the men that serve under him, you know that William. You weren't there; you didn't see the look on Trianna's face when that man did what he did to her." The captain was still fuming. "He knows something. I know he knows something, something about this business at Paswell's Folly. I want to know before we get there."
"I'll round up some more men and we'll start a deck by deck search." The other man said.
"William, find him." The captain said, with a stern look as the other man nodded curtly and left.
888
"No, no, no, you aren't calibrating it right!" the fluty voice of the hermaphroditic hexapod was directed a comm. box above a console. "We need to get the shield calibrations to an axial deformation of three point six eight Beta. You've got them all over the place!"
"That's the trouble with ensigns…they never listen, am I correct?" a voice came from behind the hexapod.
The green alien swiveled around and its large occulo-cephalis widened in shock. "Who are you!?"
"No one of consequence." The man said with a smile. "Alpha Centuari?"
"You're the escaped prisoner!" the creature hissed as well as its high-pitched voice would allow.
"Well, not really a prisoner if I have escaped." The man said as he lifted his hand, pointing an object at the hexapod. "Now, I really would like some cooperation."
"You will not harm me with a sonic probe." The hexapod said; its eye narrowing.
"Well, A: it's a screwdriver and B:-," the man lifted his other hand and pointed a disruptor at the hexapod, "-I can be pretty persuasive when I want help." He slipped the screwdriver into his coat pocket and then shifted his body letting a loop of rope slide off his shoulder into his hand. "Now, do be a dear and help me tie you up."
"You shan't get away with this!" the hexapod fluted in aggravation as the man looped rope around all six of its clawed appendages and then knotted it off behind the chair the creature was sitting in.
"Yes, well I have a plan." The man said as he pulled another chair up to the console and started flicking his hands over the interface.
"It won't work, you don't have authority codes; you won't be able to do more than change the thermostat settings and even then…"
The man put the disruptor on the console and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. The device whirred angrily at the console and the hexapod's eye widened as the screens and console command programs spread open for the man as if any password protection had never been installed.
"Egads, your lot is still using Imaginary field drives; I'd thought for sure the Galactic Federation would be using Tru-warp drives by now…maybe Argerix was right, I never even consider drive capacity..." The man grumbled, and fussed. "No wonder the Earth Empire…" The man stopped himself and swept through the interface. "First things first, altering the atmospheric composition."
"You can't you'll kill us…all of us." The hexapod struggled against its bindings.
"Just enough oxygen depletion to knock out the majority of the crew." The man said quietly as he turned a digital dial that was labeled O2 far into the red line. He then pressed another button to shut off the warning message. "Now, to raise the environmental temperature enough to put our Aresian friend out of commission."
Fans across the ship turned on, heating coils turned red. Scrubbers were reversing replacing oxygen with carbon dioxide. Federation ships were highly modifiable as they often had multiple species living in one ship, many of which had different atmospheric needs. This of course wasn't true of the Endeavor which largely had a crew whose species came from Earth. The Alpha Centaurans also required an oxygen rich atmosphere, with only the Martian chief of security being only mildly tolerant of an oxygen rich atmosphere and preferring a much more comforting and cooler Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen atmosphere.
The man looked at the hexapod. The atmosphere was already changing quite dramatically. A raspy wood-wind like gasp was coming from the hexapod as it struggled with the small amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere. The man knew that across the ship the human crew were quickly finding themselves exhausted, if not falling over unconscious. He'd set the atmospheric transition too high for anyone to have time to put on an environmental suit before they were disabled. The temperature was already up ten degrees and he was sure that the chief of security was feeling it.
The man turned back to the console and started re-rigging the drive system.
"Trust me guys, you're going to appreciate this." The man said quietly as he hacked into the navigation systems of the ship and plotted a new course.
888
Conversation, that's what he heard. At first he thought it was grumbling. However, now as things started to come into more focus, he could hear them talking.
"I think he's starting to come to." The warbling voice of Dr. Yxar said.
"Will there be any long term affect?" the second voice said. This was his second in command William.
"No, I shouldn't think so." Yxar responded.
"What the hell happened?" Captain Renard asked as he opened his eyes. The light blared into his retinas, and he winced as he put his hand up to block the glare.
"The ship's atmospheric systems were tampered with." Yxar said, as he put his clawed reptilian hand behind the captain's back and helped him to an upright position.
"The prisoner?" Renard asked.
"Gone, I think we've been out for a while." William said with a slight frown.
"What do you mean?" Renard moved to stand up and braced himself on the medi-bed.
"We're in orbit above New Portugal, sir." William replied, handing over a small piece of electro-paper. "According to flight control we showed up about fifteen hours ago. We didn't respond to hails, engines nearly burnt out. And then a single transmat signal was detected going down to the surface."
"The bastard…" The captain growled.
"Zazxl has completed a full sweep of the ship; if he's here he's invisible." William said. "We've turned everything over twice. We can only assume he's on New Portugal."
"Then he's gone, son of a…" The captain shook his head.
"Admiral Clark wants a full report." William said.
"Tell him we got hijacked by a hitchhiker." The captain said tugging at his uniform. "Take images off of the CTV…start a wanted poster."
"Umm…actually…" William took a deep breath. "All logs, reports and video from since we picked up our John Doe…"
"Of course they have…why wouldn't they be." Captain Renard said, and proceeded to walk towards the medical bay exit. "I'll be in my office, trying to explain how an entire Federation Starship got our collective backsides slapped by an old man we found floating, mostly dead in the vacuum of space. I fully expect that our next mission will be escorting pensioners to New Nevada, on casino pleasure ships."
888
The man flicked switches on the TARDIS console and the vessel grumbled to life. Groaning and wheezing as it oared through reality. He mumbled quietly to himself as he turned dials. Being satisfied with his work at the console he turned and left the console room and walked slowly through the labyrinthine corridors and found a small writing office. A lamp was already on, and a book was open.
"Page 146; ship inventory Galactic Federation Fleet, Garuda Class…." The man read allowed to himself. His lips moved as his finger slid down the list and then stopped. "GFS Endeavor,Commanding officer: Captain John Renard."
There was a small flicker a glint in the old man's eyes, the corners of his lips turned upwards slightly. The man closed the book; there was a waft of dust swirling around. And the man got up and turned. The lamp was still on, the light pooling on the cover of the book. It was titled 'The Efficacy and Richness of the Galactic Federation Fleet, Re-Appraising the Garuda Class' below that in golden print it said 'Written by….The Doctor'."