Taking Space

TRAGEDY

A drone floated in front of the ancient secret Lionhearted star way. The giant metal ring was old and honestly looked like you could fall apart if anything even bumped it.

“Dang that thing’s old. Do you even think it’ll work?” Daniel asked.

“Well, we’re about ready to find out,” Steven said as he reached out and firmly pushed the button that told the drone to send the coded information to the ring.

The ring lit up, acknowledging the code, then red lights ran along its outer edge in a circular motion as he tried to connect to the other requested ring to form the star way.

Stephanie watched for a bit and said, “What’s it doing?”

“It’s a directional star way, and it’s connecting to the requested route,” Catherine answered. “I’ve seen a few of them in my trek across the galaxy.”

The red lights disappeared and were replaced by solid green lights on all four sides of the ring. Through the drone’s camera, they could see the space in the middle of the ring slightly changing as if you were looking through binoculars.

“Well, it works,” Daniel said as he pushed the drone into the star way.

Through the drone’s view, it looked like it sped up to hundreds of times the speed of light, but in reality, though they all knew that the drone was still traveling at its normal speed. The rift it was now traveling through just made it seem like it was going faster.

“Hey, the rift in this star way seems a lot faster than our current Starways,” Daniel observed.

Steven began to reply, but a giant asteroid appeared in the way of the drone. Michael shouted, “Daniel!”

But it was too late. The drone slammed right into the asteroid, or rather, it passed straight through it.

Everyone’s eyes swung to the sensors that indicated the drone’s current condition and were utterly shocked to find that it was completely unharmed.

Daniel scratched the back of his head. “What in the galaxy just happened?”

“The star way you are currently viewing utilizes the technology Soul Knight used to make his dimensional doors. Sadly at the time, we were not able to fully close the rift and make instant transportation as he can now. However, we were able to close it down to point zero, zero two one five percent. So what you see now is just a ghost of the rift, not exactly reality. Though if you had been traveling directly across that space as normal star ways do, the collision with the asteroid would have been unavoidable.” The AI explained.

The drone came out of the star way on the other end. Daniel spun it around and overloaded its thrusters into a charged burst, bringing it to an abrupt stop.

Stephanie was appalled. “I’m glad I wasn’t in that thing. If we had been, you would’ve broken all of our necks!”

“Well, we weren’t. In fact, no one was.” Daniel said smugly.

“Still, that doesn’t give you the right to be so abusive with the equipment. There is no reason for you to stop that fast.” Michael commented.

Daniel looked for a way to get out of the current conversation and found one almost instantly. “Whoa! Look at all the star ways,” he exclaimed.

Everyone’s eyes turned towards the drone’s viewport to see a giant spherical structure made out of hundreds of star way rings, each big enough to let two capital ships through at a time.

Steven brought up his hand and began to do a quick count. “Man! It looks like they have enough star way rings out here to have one going to each sector of the galaxy.”

“That’s because there probably is,” Catherine said. “Remember the Lionhearted enforced the three Great Laws across the entire galaxy for almost two hundred years.”

“Sir, I am highlighting on your drone’s HUD the starring it needs to take to reach the prison worlds,” Alf said.

A small ring amongst the much larger rings around it lit up in a gold highlight on the HUD.

“See it,” Daniel said and guided the drone over towards the small ring. “Wow, the rim’s thickness on this thing is massive.”

Steven got up and walked over to the viewport to get a better view. “Yes, they are, and it has four dynovamators on each side!”

“That’s not surprising, if it really is leaving the galaxy into another one it has to punch through two gravity barriers,” Catherine noted.

“Gravity barriers?” Daniel asked as Steven pushed another button, telling the drone to send the coded information to the Starway ring.

Steven smiled to himself as he watched the ring began to power up. “Think of it like this Daniel, planets revolve around a star, and a star revolves around its sector, and that sector revolves around the galaxy. So if you were to look from the outside of the galaxy you would see what closely resembles a spinning pile of dirt blown by the wind but just a lot more beautiful. As a result every galaxy is surrounded by a chaotic barrier of gravity making it impossible to leave or enter a galaxy. Or at least it was thought impossible...”

Steven turned to the image of the computer-generated lion. “How the How in the backside of an asteroid did the Lionhearted have such advanced technology?!”

“Why Soul Knight Sir, you should know that. It was part of your orientation almost three hundred and fifty years ago,” the reprogrammed AI said wryly.

Steven rolled his eyes. “Humor me.”

The star way came online, and Daniel flew the drone into it.

“Well, as you well know, and should remember, it all began with the creation of the graviton weapon. Just in case you forgot, a graviton weapon refers to any device capable of generating a gravitational pull that’s powerful enough to pull a planet out of orbit. The gravitational pull usually only lasts for a few seconds, but the result is always catastrophic. When the first graviton weapon was used on Dolos, it sent most of the galaxy into chaos, because no matter how powerful the shields were around your planet or the size of your fleet, all it took was one man with this weapon to destroy your planet. Anyone with this technology could crumple empires. As such, over sixty-five percent of the survivors of the planet Dolos banded together and declared they were going to make it their life’s mission to make sure that such a tragedy never happened again. They were joined by more than half of the scientists who originally designed the weapon and the organization they created together grew by leaps and bounds as sympathetic people from all around the galaxy joined their cause. Their one goal was to develop a defense against graviton-based weapons; however, it was not as easy as they first thought and they ended up having to come at it from hundreds of different ways to no avail. Their work though was not fruitless, for thousands of secret technologies were developed. In fact, you will be surprised to know that the Lionhearted are the ones that originally created the dynovamator. I know the history says Dale Arkin invented it, but it was Fallon Knox who was the lead researcher behind it and betrayed the Lionhearted, giving it to Arkin.”

The viewport displaying the image from the drone lit up as brilliant lights began to play along the rift.

“Wow,” Daniel muttered.

“It’s more beautiful than any northern lights that I’ve ever seen,” Catherine exclaimed.

Michael maximized the view, and they all watched the cascading lights in amazement.

Steven broke the silence. “Alf, you’re saying that the Lionhearted was originally a research group? How did they end up being the law for over two hundred years?”

“Surprisingly that all has to do with the betrayer Fallon Knox. In his trial when he was asked why he did what he did, he said, ‘This galaxy is held in b*****e by those who control the gas and radioactive resources. My invention will break that hold. Brothers and sisters, we have been trying to create technology to stop the tragedy that has befallen us from ever happening again. When the real problem is the corruptness of our own hearts and that of the galaxy’s leaders, we should use the knowledge and technology we have gained to rip out and tear down that corruptness wherever it is found and in whoever it is found regardless of status.’ He was found guilty and put to death. However, his words rang true and eventually he was seen as a martyr. Even the jury, or rather, especially the jury, that sentenced him to death came to the conclusion that he was right and in only a few short years the Lionhearted reformed itself into the law swearing to let no corruptness stand no matter its perpetrator.”

“Wow, I’ve never heard that stor -” Daniel was cut off by a loud beeping sound coming from Steven’s console.

“The ship is entering the ambush zone,” Michael said.

Steven hurriedly brought up a screen and turned on all seven remaining Starfighters, then flipped them over to Daniel’s control. “Surround the ship. Make sure they surrender, and whatever you do don’t destroy the ship. For Pete's sake, try not to damage it even.”

Daniel took control of the Starfighters and lined them up in a straight line as he flew them towards the dimensional door Steven was opening up. “I’ll try, but if they decide to go down in a blaze of glory, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Well hopefully the sight of seven heavy Starfighters bearing down on them is enough to scare the snockers out of them, and they’d surrender right off the bat,” Steven replied. “Catherine, Stephanie, Michael you three get David Kell and as many of the training bots as you can control to the airlock and take a dimensional door with you.”

They nodded and ran off towards the training room.

The dimensional door opened, and Daniel killed the power on the Starfighters, letting them drift through. As soon as the last fighter flew through Steven collapsed the dimensional door.

Daniel let the Starfighters continue to float unpowered towards the oncoming unaware ship. Because the Starfighters had no dynovamator or detectable energy source, the small ship never saw or detected them until it was too late.

Daniel powered up the Starfighters less than three hundred SU away from the ship and instantly whipped them into fighting formation firing all seven particle beam cannons in short burst over the ship bow as warning shots.

The ship screamed to a halt, and Steven used the probe to project a giant hologram of David Kell sending a message to the ship. At the same time he used his earlier hack to jam any signals they might try to send.

“I am David Kell of the Lionhearted. Your ship is believed to be harboring dangerous criminals. Power down and prepare to be boarded. If you do not comply, you will be destroyed.”

Both Daniel and Steven found themselves whispering small prayers as they waited for the ship’s reply.

“Yes! They’re powering down!” Daniel exclaimed.

“Good.” Steven reached over and activated the ship’s communication. “They powered down are you guys ready?”

Stephanie’s voice answered, “Yes, David Kell, Zephyr, and the other android... What did you say his name was?”

“Harold the Hammer of Righteousness or some such,” Steven replied.

“The Hammer of Justice!” Daniel corrected. “Remember? He’s the one that got himself captured by slavers just so he could find their base of operation, and then he single-handedly took out their entire corporation.”

“Oh yeah, I remember some story like that. Well we have him and the others, along with six training bots in the hatch.” Mike answered. “The dimensional door is already unfolded as well just waiting for your end.”

“Good, make sure you put space shields on all three of the androids they can survive in space, but the frigid cold will damage their synthetic skin if you don’t,” Steven reminded.

“Okay.”

Steven drew the drone close to the ship and unfolded the metal tubing to the dimensional door, reprogrammed it to connect to Stephanie’s, then opened it.

Steven and Daniel watched as David Kell and his party appeared through the dimensional door and latched onto the small ship, opening its access hatch.

***

David Kell turned to Zephyr as they crawled into the ship. “They will likely try to ambush us as soon as we open the compressed door.”

“Well then let’s make it so they can’t.” She grabbed hold of the railing on the side of the ship and swung her fist into the compression door, punching straight through it.

With the exterior door open to the vacuum of space and a fist-sized hole straight through the inner hatch, the compressed air inside raced to escape. As Zephyr pulled her hand back the deafening sound of hissing air reached their ears shortly followed by two, door shaking thuds. “Ouch, that looks painful,” Stephanie said, as a man’s face was sucked hard against the hole Zephyr had created. “Here let me help,” So saying using the three extra bots she controlled combined strength to close the door behind them then Zephyr quickly grab the latch slamming open the compression door and smashing the two hapless guys on the other side against the wall.

She let the door swing back, and the two unconscious men fell to the ground.

Michael put his hand over his eyes. “I guess that works.”

Stephanie gave him a humongous grin as she controlled Zephyr and guided her towards the cockpit of the small ship.

Harold, who was controlled by Catherine, said, “At this rate, you won’t even need me here.”

Steven and Daniel ran into the training room. “How did it go?”

Michael threw them two hats and released control over two of the bots he was directing. “Look for yourselves.”

Daniel and Steven put on the hats and used the bots to look at Stephanie’s aftermath.

Daniel’s droid looked at the hole in the door. “Well, that looks effective.”

“Catherine can I control Harold for a bit I want to see if I can find out who these two people are and to do that I need his advanced systems.” Steven asked.

Catherine nodded and released her control over Harold.

Harold knelt down and examined the two unconscious and rather bruised men.

The ship jolted as it began to move. Daniel ran his robot towards the cockpit. “Oh no, she doesn’t, I’m the pilot.”

***

The ship began docking with the small mobile space station. “Okay, they have no clue that we have taken over this ship, and we have their men locked up in the cargo hold. So there won’t be any resistance. When we first walk onto the station though they will probably realize it pretty quick and we will have a real fight on our hands. If possible, we need to get to here. “Steven pointed at a small engineering maintenance hatch on the layout of the mobile station. “From there we can shuttle one of the androids up to here allowing us to take over the gravity systems and hopefully instantly putting an end to the rest of fighting. I tried to do it with one of the nanobots, but I quickly found out why the Lionhearted only had them program to splice the air vent speed control when the anti-nanobot systems activated and fried every last one of the poor things.”

“Alright, let’s do this,” Daniel's robot exclaimed as the hatch turned from red to green.

Zephyr crouched and looked back over her shoulder. “This is not one of your games.”

David Kell walked to the hatch and stood off to the side. “Opening it on three; One. Two. Three.”

David Kell pushed the door open, and Zephyr launched from her crouch flying through it like a speeding bullet.

The poor nervous man standing on the other side never expected anything to come flying out, much less as fast as Zephyr did. He was slammed hard in the chest by one of her shoulders then rebounded off the wall lapsing into unconsciousness.

The two men behind him did see her coming, but they were helpless to do anything about it as she clotheslined one of them, then grabbed the last man by the face and slammed him into the ground so hard he was lucky to be still living even if he was knocked into oblivion.

With the three men down, she pounded down the hallway so fast that when she turned, she had to push her right arm out and steadied herself off the far wall putting a rather large dent in it. Two droids ran after her leaving the other standing there in complete shock.

“Well so much for not being a game.” Daniel huffed.

Stephanie kept her eyes closed and didn’t say anything, but the grin on her face somehow seemed to be the actual size of the cat that ate the canary.

Steven groaned. “Mike Dan, go after her try to make sure she doesn’t get the android destroyed. It would take the factory a week to build all the delicate parts for another one, and I already have an arm’s length of list of things I needed to build. I can’t afford to be building another android right now.”

David Kell and Daniel’s droid took off after her.

***

“Sir, we have a problem! Someone hijacked Arlin’s ship and used it to get on board. Crillon and his men are down!”

“Oh, crud!” Said Allen who was already nervous enough about losing such a large stock of supplies and having Arlin himself coming aboard. Even Crillon seemed jittery at the thought of having Arlin on board, and he was a cold-blooded killer. The thought of someone skilled enough to take down both Crillon and Arlin made the very blood inside him turn to ice.

“How many are there? And what weapons do they have?”

“Three with six droids and they don’t seem to have any weapon at all.” The man flicked three images up onto the main viewports.

Allen watched the images a second then shouted, “Lock it down, all the bulkheads and blast doors. We will seal them in then eliminate them one by one.”

***

A bulkhead slammed shut in front of Zephyr.

Stephanie couldn’t help but grin to herself. Bulkheads had been one of the most annoying things in her training game, especially because the game insisted on only allowing you to carry a small sidearm into every mission. But she eventually realized the game was trying to break her of the mental block that she was human. Now, however, she fully understood that she was controlling one of the most powerful pound for pound machines ever created, and was even more powerful with Steven’s dimensional door technology to tie it to an infinite overabundant energy source.

Zephyr didn’t slow down. Instead, she leaped into the air and jabbed forward with her hand smashing through the metal that formed the bulkhead, then she rotated her hands and pushed to the side with all her machine might.

Metal groaned, and sparks flew as the door was forcefully pulled back like a tin can.

The short delay enabled David Kell to catch up with her. He saw what she was doing and through his hands into the mess as well ripping what was left of the bulkhead to shreds.

***

Everyone on the bridge sat in stunned silence as they watched the two humans demolish the bulkhead as their droids try to catch up with them.

Allen’s mouth dropped open. He had to blink three times before he managed to wheeze, “Who the mejin are these people?!”

The man controlling the cameras zoomed in on their faces

Jeremiah shot to his feet. “By the Great White Center that’s David Kell!”

Allen glared at him. “No, that can’t be possible; he is nothing more than a legend.”

“A legend that just last week wiped out half of an armada with sixteen Starfighters and a bunch of rocks,” one of the men shot back.

Panic and terror flooded onto Jeremiah’s face. “We’re dead. He’ll kill every last one of us once he finds out what we have on this station!”

“Not if I can help it,” Allen retorted. “Everyone strap yourself in if you don’t want to die.”

Everyone on the command deck instantly realized what he was planning and scrambled for their seats.

“What about the slaves and the other crew?! If you do this, they will die!” one of the men asked as he hurriedly strapped himself in.

“Who cares,” Allen replied as he grabbed hold of the gravity controls.

***

Zephyr and David Kell were rounding the last turn to the engineering maintenance access point when gravity reversed itself.

Stephanie, being used to this type of tactic, easily flipped Zephyr in midair and landed lightly on the roof. Michael, however, was not, and David Kell slammed headfirst into the roof, punching a hole in the thin metal.

Gravity switched again but this time with much more dramatic force, slamming them to the floor so fast Stephanie barely was able to flip Zephyr and landed on her knees, punching deep grooves into the flooring.

David Kell’s slammed through the flooring to his armpits.

The increased gravity lasted for a little bit more than subsided, and Zephyr quickly grabbed David Kell and pulled him out of the floor.

“Ouch, that actually really, really hurt,” Michael complained.

“You’re telling me,” Daniel moaned as his own droid laid in a pile of uselessness.

Catherine looked over at them. “Thankfully Steven and I had our units on the commandeered ship securing the three prisoners Zephyr disabled.”

“What’s our status?” Steven asked.

“My droid’s toast,” Daniel said

Stephanie closed her eyes. “Zephyr is fine and so are both of my droids. There’s a gash in David Kell’s synthetic skin, and there is fake blood pouring from it. Other than that, I think he is still completely operable, though we should be careful. It’ll take them only a few seconds more to recover from the effects themselves and try again.”

At hearing this, Michael pulled off the hat and said, “I am not being the one controlling David Kell when that happens again!”

Daniel grabbed his hat and put it on his head.

David Kell stood up straight and nodded at Zephyr just as the gravity reversed.

This time knowing what was coming, both Zephyr and David Kell made perfect flips and landed lightly on the roof.

Once again the gravity switched violently to the side, but both of them easily slid down the side of the ceiling and landed on their feet. A millisecond later gravity switched again, this time with all the force Allen dared to use.

Zephyr easily rolled and landed on her hands and knees. Daniel came down in the push-up position with both of his hands bending the metal in the floor to its breaking point. But just as it started to rip, he rolled to his back and let it take the rest of the impact.

***

Men were throwing up all over the bridge, even Allen himself felt like something in his head had broken loose. It took all the focus he had left to force his hand up enough to disable the gravity altogether.

From the ship’s cameras, he could see that he had killed everyone else on board the station, that was not on the bridge, and the factories were a disaster, but still the two intruders remained alive; one of them coming out without even a scratch.

***

As soon as the gravity disappeared, Zephyr pushed off the wall and floor, shooting down the hallway and into the maintenance hatch. Then she shuttled her way up through to the internal wires.

Steven started to run for the bridge. “As soon as you see where those wires connect give me control of her.”

Stephanie nodded as Steven disappeared through the door.

***

Steven arrived at the bridge just as Stephanie over the communication system said, “She’s there.”

Steven jumped into his seat and grabbed a cord connecting it to the hat he was wearing then used one of Zephyr’s fingernails to cut the synthetic skin that was covering her palm to reveal a multi-phase access port. Using Zephyr’s other arm he yanked one of the cords from its connection and connected it into her palm.

Gravity on the space station came back on and slowly increased to five times of the normal amount, permanently pinning everyone that was not Zephyr, David Kell or Harold in place.

Everyone else came onto the bridge just as Steven was finishing taking control of the ship and bringing up screens so he could flip through the station’s cameras. “The ship is ours all we have to do now is drag the disabled crew members to the hold and keep them there until we are ready to send them to the prison planets.”

The connection to the cameras came online, and Steven began to flip through them as he displayed them on the main view screen.

The station’s bridge came up first.

“Well, would you look at that. They made themselves throw up all over the place.” Daniel laughed.

Catherine, on the other hand, wasn’t so jovial. “What about the slaves they supposedly have in the factories?”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re fine. No one would be stupid enough to use gravity like that without securing everything first.” Steven said reassuringly.

“Well, let’s just make sure then to be safe,” Michael said.

Steven nodded and hurriedly flipped through the cameras until he came to one displaying the drone factory.

They all stared at the image on display, in complete incomprehension. Then as realization of what they were seeing hit them, Steven threw up all over his console and Michael shouted, “Close all tabs!”

The screens faded away. Stephanie fell to her knees. “All those people!