'Sah-Per!' Bellowed the Commander, who's voice carried like thunder in both the small ship's cramped bridge-come-CIC and along all the ship's wiring underfoot, down to the ice-cube of a data-centre the ship's Intelligence lived in like some intrusive, but otherwise well-meaning poltergeist.
'Yes?' Stammered the CO's chair from its built-in speaker-suite while the holographical-display tank at the end of its right arm fed a grainy ghost to life, though Sapper's little light and mirror show-puppet fed to the ship's crew of fifty seemed brighter than it ever had from the ship-driver's chair, though most would readily agree with Sapper, that the root-cause was likely having several years of makeshift-ashtray droppings knocked-off by the universal turbulence.
Not that Tilden let that stop her. There was already fresh Woodbine out already that she muttered around while she struck a lucifer on the chair's worn arm. 'India-Four-Nineteen. It's here? Better be.'
'Yes.' Blurted the Intelligence, who didn't really know what else to say now that the potential-reality of having the evil spirits or whatever might run into them of the Slipspace demons or whatnot crawl in through their ears to blow their brains down their noses was on the table or whatever passed for normal around these parts.
The eleventh-dimension that Human starships ripped holes in the very fabric of the universe to hitch a ride through for faster-than-light voyages was an interesting, scary, though quite mundane place, but sailors prattled like fishmongers at the market, and it didn't take long for new spectres of dark places to be invented to terrify a fresh generation of squirts. But then again, they hadn't found anything out there yet, despite tearing so many holes into reality itself that they might as well have installed a revolving-door.
'And our orbit's been captured by the Anomaly? We picked-up a decent burst of speed there, I can tell you.'
'Yes?'
'Good…' She grumbled and sighed, thinking the order through her command neural-interface to launch the rinky-dink shuttle normal line-corvettes came packed with for a recovery-job rather than saying the words aloud and felt only a moment later the hull shudder a little as the hangar doors reopened again to let what was effectively an upscaled lifeboat tootle-away.
Damage-reports she went over – feeling deep in her subconscious the raw code being fed through her cyberware's brain-computer-interface – rather than watching actual statistics on her optics. But all in all, the Saturday Night Special was mostly-unscathed – having gotten away with no casualties apart from one man in the gym who'd dropped a dumbbell on his nuts and only minor and superficial damage, save for the long-range RADAR/LIDAR-suite domed over the ship's roof for early-warning.
'Have the drones repair our sensory-equipment first, then worry about hull-breaches. We're zipped-tight in uniforms, so that's not a problem – though I want to see where we are exactly… sure-shit looks familiar… that's Orion over there… and Big Dipper there…' She remembered what little briefing the commanding officers of the task force's ships had gotten. 'Well… I think we can confirm that this is likely another Oort. Look, there's Sol.'
"Sure, boss – but maybe we didn't have to confirm it by endangering the ship's crew in the process, y'know? Science is cool and all, but so's not getting filleted inside-out by space-time wizardry." Wasn't something that Sapper bothered to remark. Data-centres usually looked quite nice when your CO didn't take a sledgehammer to them for cheek, so the machine-mind nodded on Mx. Bum-licker-mode and agreed wholeheartedly.
Of course, this was a sentiment that wasn't shared with the Revolutionary Nation, who's ruling-cadre guiding the Two Peoples to a better future had the general approach to matters of advanced physics and science of any field in general, really – usually tended to involve giving something or someone a whack with the idiot stick a couple of times and seeing what shouted "yowzah!" back at them. Because even now – over busy, busy Heimat not that far away by Earth's lightspeed-standards, they had cobbled-together what could effectively only be described as an interplanetary ballistic missile, only minus the actual warhead-banger inside the tip's cowling – where now a tiny, two-Gestalt capsule had been bolted-down tight.
Now it'd been given a promotion to a one-Falcon capsule, for the machine itself housed only two very small Gestalts who didn't step a millimetre over the Nation's strict height-line – and someone tall enough to universally be the first to know when it was raining, or how many cobwebs have grown on the top-shelf needed to be crushed-in sideways, with the two small chairs cut into a single big one to make-up for time.
A shame that they hadn't made the door any bigger, it would've made the Revolutionaries' final goodbyes and well-wishes, blessings and general conversation a little less awkward as they watched the Falcon climbing it headfirst, getting stuck and needing to spend the next five minutes working her legs back out before trying it hooves-first.
Still, both had given each other the sororal Revolutionary Kiss and bade their goodbyes after the hatch was slammed-closed by the on-site technicians who worked the great orbital mass-driver up to snuff as they ran the FLKR down the checklist of pre-(kamikaze)-flight checks.
Engines?
Good.
RCS?
Working.
Communications?
Operational.
Fuel?
Still there.
Radiators?
Mostly-working.
Keenness to explore?
In my other suit.
Positive-attitude?
The hell is that?
Roger-dodger, all ready to go!
The Falcon-unit closed her eyes, matched herself to the subliminal tunes of the universe, and tuned-in on Radio Bioresonance FM while the tinny speakers ticked-down on their seconds, from ten, all the way down to zero.
And off she went with a force that'd lay most normal people out like a light, down and down the massive tube of covered scaffolding and monster death-magnets until glorious it was, Heimat appeared under her hooves – beautiful and glowing against the gas-giant it orbited. Just a moment or two of serene beauty until yet another eye-crusher whammy hit her when the rocket and its payload had gotten clear of the nuclear-propulsion-free altitude-zone over Heimat.
Faster and faster and faster the vessel accelerated until the Revolutionary homeworld had no more say on the machine's orbit and it broke free into interplanetary space and the Falcon felt every atom of her being hum in-tune with the universe.
Not of course that much of this was either known to or would bother overly much the apprentice sailor over a lightyear away who'd been saddled with cleaning-up the debris in the hangar after both Pelican and shuttle had docked externally to the hull for easier sweep-up. To him it was just another day at the office of getting the shit-tier jobs passed-on by the elder-sailors who'd been on the pay long enough for influence to let them escape the menial tasks of ship-life.
Unfortunately for him, right at the moment that he'd brought the hangar to as much of a shine as was humanly-possible out here on the other-end of fuck-knows-where with only a broom and some detergent – and took a moment to bask in the warm-bubbliness of a job well-done, a black-red and white capsule slammed into the ship with enough force that small area the hangar-crew kept their dartboard was crushed to atoms as the capsule went completely-through it – and the deck below – and the deck below that one too, leaving in its wake a long tunnel that went through the side of the ship and all the way down into its heart.
He sidled-over, face of a child who's just had his ten-storey, five-star sandcastle he's spent the last few hours building flattened by a football game trampling through it – and looked down through the newly-excavated deck-sunroof, dropping his broom weakly.
Not that the concerns of mere swabbies had much say in the Nation's glorious arrival to the people of Earth – or at least its first officially-sanctioned, though wholly-unintended arrival – not now that its best, hottest and brightest sparks were on the case between all the debris they'd brought with them all the way down into the ship's reactor, where one of the two fusion-engines had been crushed by the impact died with a little puff of its plasma-field collapsing.
The Falcon's eyes opened.
Opened with the monumental weight of small stars going supernova as the dim infrareds shone back to life after her brain's hard-drive had kicked the stunned operating-system back to life again with a fresh-reset.
Falcon, who's secret-name was unknown to the universe sat up as best as she could in the small space of dark, cramped interior that stank of melting plastics and burned electronics. VEB Robotron's best machines might've been slagged, but ӔON's flagship-demigod wasn't – which was why the fused door exploded clean-out of the craft with but the work of a casual wave.
Light poured-in and so did sound. Alarms of security and calls for all hands to lay to the reactor space – not that the Falcon bothered to heed the unimportant tripe as she planted a hand to each side of the hatch and left hideous dents of dripping, half-melted steel where she'd hauled on to shoulder her way out of the tiny capsule into the warm but dark emergency redlights that bathed her like some demon from old Vineta, back when people used to believe in such things. Back when there were still people to believe in such things.
Proud and tall such an elegant specimen stood, gorgeous, frightful, hair flowing, spears glowing to life behind her and halo here and there coming from nowhere – a war-creature that could lay waste to entire brigades held out a hand and sealed its fingers shut over a rod of universal-gold that grew into the world.
No cameras where under her, back inside of the craft, looking out through the mangled and scrapped doorway, otherwise it would have seen a truly frightful thing coming into the world – something that outshone even the Nation's best moral-improvement clips.
This might have been for the best, when this frame – with a Falcon at its centre, bathed in red and glowing in evil gold – caught a blow over the back of the head by an aluminium broom.
'Bastard!' The apprentice, who'd come running down the stairwell shrieked as Falcon copped another wallop over the back of her bonce that sounded with a big clang!
'Do – you – know – how – long – it – took – to – clean – that – up?' Came maddened keening between each batting through spittle-frothing teeth. 'Have – you – any – idea – of – how – long – it – took – me – to – find – Kleenex – for – that – inner – barrier?'
Stunned senseless more by astronomical audacity rather than any might of broomly-arms, she shrunk under the Austrian's hammer-hits, vainly holding up her free arm to ward the cleaning-utensil off.
The newly-arrived scratch security-force of sailors in flak-jackets and toting carbines and pistols didn't know what to do either as they spilled-out of the airlock and onto the catwalk above the not-particularly epic gladiatorial combat between Man and Falcon, so they huddled between the wall and railing as the apprentice who's bunghole had been charged with more red-pepper than there was in this part of the universe ran rings around the battle-machine, hollering and wailing about getting snubbed on bunk-choice and who got the shittiest jobs, though by then his mask had muffled him too much for much comprehension by any party.
'Chief, why the fuck is some squirrelly cunt beating ten kinds of shit out of an alien with a fucking broom?' Barked the small radio strapped to the ad hoc task-force's leader.
The woman in charge goggled for a moment, unsure of whether a carbine was going to be of much use. 'Uh-yuh… what… what… yeah, uh… what are we supposed to do?' Blurted the woman who understood the organisation of the corvette's engineering-division like the back of her hand but hadn't the slightest iota of training for fight-diffusion beyond complaining to Sapper at the end-of-week staff-meeting.
The Saturday Night had always been a happy ship and a happy crew. And it hadn't ever been privy to this kind of truck before – apart from the unfortunate incident when Seaman Mahaj had opened a takeaway Cobra-pint and one-pot prawn-curry shop in storage – and they'd only ever found a toes and an ear – his kidneys, too – but that was donkey's years ago.
'Oh… for fucksake, the fuck do you get paid for? Go and tell that cunt she's under arrest! Oooooh! Fuck it!' Shrieked the radio as the Commander's temper flared before they heard thumping.
So the leader of the five-man team swallowed, nodded at her posse and led them clattering down the stairs with their geriatric arsenal that wound-about the dead fusion-reactor and onto the sinister and rubble-strewn floor, where they sort of fanned-out over the little clearing of debris the two combatants were dancing around in and tried inching closer in a ring to intervene – but when the Falcon managed to rebound one of the few blows she could, it knocked one of the gang senseless when it gave him a ding along the earhole, so they backed-off with their shooters pointed this way and that.
There's a lot of us and just one of you… so let someone else get there first – I don't get paid nearly enough to sort this mess out, they thought as they watched this impromptu-match. So let someone else get there first…
But only a moment later, came chuntering down the hall, through the door and down the catwalk and its steps with crashing fury and all the force of an enraged hippo with dysentery, ran the Commander, charging a stainless-steel baseball swatter over her head that came down with the greatest beating this side of the universe had ever seen with a 34-inch Louisville Slugger.
The Falcon dropped like a bag of potatoes when she got creamed from both the crotch and noggin by both broom and bat and the Chief skipped forward and clapped the invading loon in irons, so nervous that not only was she revolving a gigawatt-generator speeds, but too shaky to actually do it properly. She missed the FLKR-unit's slack forearms entirely and swung the legs out from under her when the prehensile wrist-collars snapped-shut over her ankles.
The Commander straightened, pulled the handcuffs off and tossed them at the apprentice. The neurotic fury was gone when she sighed: 'Go drag her over to an airlock or something. We don't have a cell, so it'll have to do us 'till we get word out. Sapper, probe – get it through the Anomaly. My compliments to the Admiral, we're all safe and sound and we have a prisoner, maybe an android – maybe not. Reactor number-two busted, can't go anywhere unless with RCS.'
A moment later, a small panel slid back over the hull, exposing something like a maritime torpedo tube that a small, grey cylinder shot out of at the head of a rooster-tail of compressed-air propellant before it drifted clear of the ship in parallel, flipped over and made a reverse-burn to put it back through the other end of the Rift, where Stanforth and Empire-ACTUAL were discussing on how to proceed.
The Intelligence-triumvirate listened along with the Admiral in charge of the force to the message relayed by the destroyer's Intelligence, before sighing: 'I should very much like a ship. A frigate, I prefer – one with a good wardroom and some Marines.'
'You can't seriously consider going yourself?' He spluttered.
'Oh, I won't go alone. I have an entourage. I shall be quite safe, I think.'
Stanforth pursed his lips, chewed on them for a moment and wondered how else he could convince his superior that going through a tear in the fabric of reality might perhaps not be the greatest of ideas that had been deployed in their tenure as so far – but gave up and waved. 'Frigate. Light one. Chiropractic Accidents recently came out of a refurbishing with a nice officer's club. I'll send you some Marines from other ships.'
'I am quite grateful to you, Admiral.' The AI said and left without much further ado while not too far away the Falcon had been tied-down to a steel deckchair with a couple of flimsy bungie-cables in one of the cargo holds, with her back to an open airlock.
One of the posse struggled to catch a dry Zippo for the Commander's next nico-stick of the hour. Eventually it caught, lit a nice cherry Tilden tendered to life, before the flame was plopped in front of the Falcon in the dark hold, only lit by the dimmest of red-bulbs overhead now that the ship was struggling to maintain even partial-gravity, let alone lighting.
'Shine a candle in her eyes!' Snapped the Commander as she jostled the FLKR awake by bapping her in the face a couple of times with the end of her banana-bent baseball bat.
'You awake, buster?'
The Falcon blinked as her OS once again did a hard-reboot to get her bearings back in order once again.
Who are you? The small gang felt in their flesh and sinews rather than heard.
'That's Commander Tilden t'you, missy.' Muttered the smoker, who brought the bat down from her shoulder to lean on. She was tired, stripped of her tunic and sweating a little. Dragging her through half of the ship with no gravity hadn't been a fun jungle-gym exercise of cursing, zero-G and "will this bugger fit through that bugger?".
'And.' She said evilly in the cherry's dim light that made her pale, angular face more of an exercise of disruptive ship-camouflage with all its hard edges casting shadows. 'I wanna know why you poked another fuckin' hole through my ship.'
The Falcon looked about her at the now quite worried force of the Saturday Night's finest impromptu space-coppers. All of them were trying to wheedle their way into a huddle behind the Commander, who was entirely unfazed that the person held down the industrial-equivalent of an elastic-band could probably just stand up and spit-roast everyone in the room on just one spear.
So far it had been audacity alone that had kept the FLKR-unit where she was. Audacity and absurdity. Both of her knees came up to her chin and her knuckles reached the deck in chairs for normal people.
You dare? You dare take a Falcon who is divine-made-flesh captive? Came the thoughts rumbling-up their collective spines now that the defensive battle-box went from an infantry-square to more of a Purple Heart-column, with half a dozen faces looming around the tall Ganymedean's shoulderless tanktop like harvest moons.
'Fuckin' scuuuuuuze, me!' Tilden hollered sarcastically with a bang of the bat against the deck's plating while the last in the column was testing to see if the door out would still open. 'You have the fuckin' co-hon-naise t'come in here and criticise my balls?'
Only the skipper didn't go jelly-kneed and putty-legged when with a grunt the plastic demigod stood and flexed her muscles to burst the cords at the seams. Her spine sounded like a bursting peppermill as her wide shoulders flexed and sent the volley-crackle running the length of her vertebrae.
Once again she held out for a spear and once more it appeared and hit the deck with a thunder when she put the butt of the shining gold to the deck.
She loomed over them all like some battle-creature about to become a slaughterman. They wondered why a bunch of red boxes had appeared over their reflections in her eyes that burned with infrared fury. Her scowl alone could've glassed small planets.
I am Falcon. I am the Nation-made-manifest. Their bones rattled as the Falcon's teeth bared into a snarl that glinted the light of her ceramic teeth.
I am bedrock. I am steel, iron. I am muscle and sinew. I am God. I am the embodiment of the Revolution. I am unbreakable.
'And I've got myself six hardcore motherfuckers here with guns!' Tilden barked, by which she probably didn't mean the six hardcore motherfuckers fighting silently, but furiously to be the first through the door. 'And you bet-'
'I think!' Spoke a voice of command as its owner spread the tide of crewmen out of its owner's way. 'That I might want to take over from this point of the negotiations – thank you, Commander.'
The sweaty, grimy Commander and the tall, proud, beautiful personification of the Nation both turned, confused at what had now interrupted their diss-off.
Completely-kitted troopers in black, with supressed Commando rifles, no more than four in number quietly spread themselves across the room as Empire-ACTUAL held out both hands ahead of them like Moses parting the Red Sea, only this sea was one made-up by placid people who couldn't be roused to anger unless the very gates of hell opened-up to take the ship's Greggs pastry-vending machine away.
The highest Chief on-deck (so high in fact, that the actual chief Petty Officer in charge of the engineering-shift had her own rank-title's Chief-part demoted by downgrading to a lowercase "chief") stopped beside the grimy, smoking skipper and looked into a once again stunned face of a National Falcon.
'My name is Empire-Actual, and I have much I wish to discuss with you. Commander Tilden, I assume that your vessel still has an intact wardroom?'
Tilden stared for a moment now that the wind had been nuked out of her sails. 'Ugh… no? But we have a few nice chairs we keep for birthdays on the ship?'
'Splendid, take us there, please do – for I think that me and this Falcon have much we ought to discuss in a more civil-setting.' She took the three-metre giant at the elbow gently and led her, asking to the Commander who started and barged her way briskly through the engineers-come-badass troopers (who now tried to at least stop flagging each other with loaded weapons as they tagged-along behind the secret-service guards).
'Commander, would it be too much to also request refreshments? Personally, I am not at all bothered by eating, but occasionally I do crave a Vienna whirl.'
Tilden chuntered to keep-up with the President of Earth's little confederation-club otherwise known as the central-government. 'We have a Greggs pastry-dispenser on deck-H that does decent sausage-ro… wait! You can't be serious!' She snapped and chucked the bat over her shoulder, where it hit someone in the head, who shouted.
'Hmmm?' Queried the President, who kept the pace before the Falcon took offense to being led about like a child into the little canteen. 'Oh, no I am truly quite sincere in my request. Please have you Intelligence bring us some of these rolls.'
A moment of silence passed. 'Do you have a Viennese whirl?'
'Uhm… no?'
'Ah! A shame, shame – no matter. I can live without. Here we are. Please, do be seated.' Soothed the President who pulled out a chair with their free hand and more encouraged rather than pulled the stunned FLKR into it, while one of the personal-guards pulled a nicely-upholstered, though old and worn-out chair of a stack of them and plopped it down facing their new embassy as a second set a small table between them.
Tilden stared at the little show. Now as lost as the Falcon with the sweat on her back going frightfully cold. She leaned out of the way for the vending machine repair-swabby to come through with a small tray of cheese and onion pasties and two cans of diet Coca-Cola.
Empire-ACTUAL almost smiled at her, though not quite. 'Commander, I do think you should join us for this discussion, seeing as it is your ship that we are on. I would not have it any other way, lest we snub you.'
Tilden looked over at what had nudged her arm and took her tunic from a service drone. 'Thank you, Sapper…' She muttered and shouldered into it before being effectively Shanghaied into the literal negotiations table made of creaky old wooden chairs with paint-faded crowns at their tops that'd been on the ship since time immemorial. A string of tinsel and a flag was still hung over her own chair while she took a Coke and pasty.
Empire-ACTUAL looked at the Falcon earnestly in her tailcoat and shoulder-sash. 'As I have already told you before, my name is Empire-Actual, and I am the President of the Unified Earth Government. This is Commander Tilden, who is the shipmaster of this vessel, and I believe that you referred to yourself as Falcon – is this correct?'
The Replika nodded faintly, looking around at the gaggle of sailors playing stoic honour-guards with the actual "look at me in the wrong way and I will kill you with a rifle worth more than your mortgage"-sort of guards with no sense of humour and a gaggle of diplomatic corps veterans, who held about half a dozen cases between them.
'Good. Well, Falcon. I believe that you and I have come from entirely-different planes of existence separated only by the anomaly in space and time that we now orbit. As such that should I believe – mean that the UEG and Nation are two separate governments. This being the case – and here I hope that you should agree with me-'
Or else, was what the silent-killer guards and their heavy-ordinance said without words.
'That we should establish with one and other, formal relations. Here, I have brought with me already many papers and documents that I should wish to pass to your government representatives – however, seeing as that they are not around us at the moment and you have been kind enough to present yourself to ourselves, I shall pass this formal-declaration of meeting to you now instead.'
And here, the President handed-over yet another one of the tens-of-billions of C leatherbound folders the government got cheap on bulk-contracts, and it didn't say much beyond the diplomatic equivalent of "Hello, yes I see you. Goodbye."
Empire-ACTUAL's perfect, block-lettered signature had already been scratched at the bottom of the paper and the President held up a freshly-topped Parker rollerball out for the Falcon unit, who signed dumbly:
Falke
Tilden almost jumped when the Replika, who was completely lost as anyone would be on what next to do, passed the pen to the wrong person and the Commander took it with oily fingers and signed:
Donna Tilden, CMDR UNSCN
Her finger-knuckles left a couple of greasy splodges as she finished. And so informal-relations had been established between Earth and Heimat, signed on paper and coated by a patch of pastry oil and a message was sent back to Heimat.