Galaxy of Heroes

Spade emerged from blackness and found himself alone in his cabin lying in his bunk. His torso and head were wrapped in bandages.

He sat up and groaned. The pain from the torture session on Goff was still there, now compounded by aching ribs and a pounding headache.

He opened a desk drawer and pulled out his M-2 handgun, checking to see if it was still loaded, which it was. He pulled his 8-inch combat knife from the drawer and slid it into its slot on the side of his thigh.

He opened his cabin door and looked up and down the empty transport tube with his M-2 at the ready. He pulled himself up to the galley, which was empty. He then pulled himself up to the cockpit and poked his head inside.

Brute was at the controls. Mingus, Tanaka and Professor Mahlis sat next to him staring intently forward into space.

The Red Wrath was coasting through a vast assemblage of Craaldan warships. Destroyers, cruisers, troop transports and fighters seemed to stretch endlessly across the black void of space.

Spade recognized the ships as the Craaldan 17th Expeditionary Fleet, much feared in this sector of the galaxy for its ability to destroy planets or overrun them with endless numbers of fearsome Craaldan infantry.

Spade saw a familiar sight. The fleet was orbiting the red, green and yellow planet of Roga.

Brute turned his head and looked up at Spade. “Well, well,” he said. “Our trustworthy captain is awake from his beauty sleep.”

“There is the command ship, Mr. Brute,” Professor Mahlis said. “Contact it for further instructions.”

“Roger,” Brute said.

Mingus was looking up at Spade. She reached out and took his hand. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’ve been worse,” he said.

Tanaka shook his head slowly and disapprovingly; then returned his attention outside to the Craaldan fleet.

“Captain Spade, may I have a word with you in private?” Professor Mahlis asked.

“Yeah, OK,” Spade answered. He holstered his M-2.

The professor and Spade went together into the galley.

“You and I will be boarding the 17th Fleet command ship,” the professor said. “I need to brief General Seb before we land on Naos. You will carry the crate labeled number six that is in cargo bay two. I will give you further instructions on who you will deliver it to once aboard the command ship. Do you understand?”

“What’s going on with Brute?” Spade asked. “Is he still going to kill me?”

Professor Mahlis waved his hand as if shooing the matter away. “Please proceed to cargo bay two and retrieve crate number six. Will you do that for me?”

“OK,” Spade said, “but first tell me what the situation is with Brute.”

“I spoke with Leonard and he decided that his dispute with you is over.”

“It’s over?” Spade asked.

“Yes. He came to see that his relationship with Pulchritunia was dysfunctional and that it was best for all parties to move on with their lives.”

“Pulchritunia?”

“Yes. Miss Pulchritunia Mingus,” the professor said. “She has quite the crush on you, Captain.”

“Mingus’s first name is Pulchritunia?”

“Yes. You should know these things about your own crew.”

“I’ve never known Brute to be the type to forgive and forget,” Spade said.

“Captain Spade, I am about to attempt to negotiate a peace between the two most powerful and warlike empires in the galaxy. Resolving a human love triangle is trivial in comparison, and quite frankly, the least of our concerns. Now go to the cargo bay and retrieve the crate as per my instructions. We are pressed for time.”

Spade entered the cargo bay and lifted the metal crate, steering it up the transport tube in the zero gravity. Professor Mahlis waited for him impatiently in the galley. “Hurry, hurry. We must hurry along.”

Spade unlocked the inner hatch to the decompression chamber. He pushed open the outer hatch to see the cavernous docking bay of the command ship for the 17th Fleet, in which Brute had just landed the ship.

Two armed Craaldan soldiers were standing on the deck, their magnetic boots holding them down in the zero gravity. One wore the silver rank of a lieutenant and the other wore the stripes of a Craaldan sergeant first class.

Craaldan soldiers hovered throughout the docking bay, maneuvering in the weightlessness with small air jets attached to their body armor. They supervised work crews of machines and enslaved species that were making minor repairs to the hulls of docked spacecraft. Spade thought he spotted a human or two in the work crews.

Professor Mahlis pulled himself from the hatch and the two Craaldan soldiers clicked their heels and saluted. The lieutenant addressed Professor Mahlis in the sharp, gravelly tones of the Craaldan language.

The professor responded. Spade gathered that orders were being given.

“General Seb awaits,” the professor said. “The sergeant here will escort you to storage where your delivery will be sequestered until further notice,” Mahlis said. “Then he will return you to me in General Seb’s control room.”

“Roger that,” Spade said.

The lieutenant walked off guiding Mahlis by the arm. The sergeant grabbed Spade by the back of his flight suit and pulled him along. Spade held onto the metal crate and tried to keep it from banging against the bulkheads.

They arrived at an armory. The sergeant barked out orders to a tiny clerk, who took the crate and placed it into a storage locker in the armory behind her. The clerk was a female of some conquered species. She was scaly, ashen and emaciated, but moved quickly without effort in the zero gravity.

She pushed Spade’s head into a device that quickly scanned his eyeball. She tried to remove his eye patch.

“I only have one eye,” Spade said, pointing to his eye patch.

The clerk typed into a keyboard and then a computer translator said, “To retrieve your belongings, you will need to return with the same eyeball that was scanned.”

“Roger that,” Spade said.

The Craaldan sergeant pulled Spade onto a transport car and they sped through a maze of corridors until arriving at the general’s control room.

The sergeant and Spade entered the room. General Seb and Professor Mahlis were seated across from each other at a small round table in the dark room. The only light in the darkness was a soft glow emanating upward from the table. The sergeant snapped to attention and saluted.

The general barked an order without looking up, which Spade guessed translated to, “At ease.”

General Seb was an enormous Craaldan whose gray skin looked as if it had the hardness of stone. The big general turned his yellow eyes to Spade, and then angrily addressed the Craaldan sergeant.

Spade reached into a pocket and pulled out his language translator and set it to Craaldan. He placed the device on his ear.

“You bring an unauthorized species into my command room, Sergeant?” General Seb said. “This is a serious breach of protocol.”

“Sir, I was following orders from the Noctish!” the sergeant said, standing stiffly at attention.

“It is okay, General,” Professor Mahlis said. “Captain Spade was vetted on Goff before he accepted this mission.”

“A human survived vetting?” the general asked.

“The captain has a primitive survival instinct that is quite robust,” Professor Mahlis said.

“Sergeant, I want all movements of this human tracked and reported to Goff higher command. Confirm that this human was vetted. Do you copy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is all, Sergeant,” General Seb said. “Dismissed.”

The sergeant saluted and left the room.

“Your distrust is disconcerting,” Mahlis said.

“You know the procedure, professor,” the general said.

“And we must never stray from procedure, isn’t that right, General?” Professor Mahlis said. “Captain Spade, please have a seat.”

Spade took a seat in the dark behind the professor.