In the Name of Earth

Chapter 19: Split Singularity

“The Tipsy!” Marvin bellowed upon his return to the Exile. “That’s where we’ll find the Causer pirates who have my father!”

“Sure, sure!” Reel said, once again splattered on the mess hall couch snaking on the gleaming sunlight-fish. “Right after this episode of GalacTalents.”

“Now!” Marvin kicked the lazy pilot off his seat and the short alien scurried to the cockpit.

Immediately after he had left, Lud and Jade led a squad of The Admiral’s goons into the Marvin’s personal quarters, from where they returned carrying several cardboard boxes of varied popcorn and kettle corn flavors.

“So that’s what you went to Earth for…” Jade crossed her arms as the last box was unloaded. “Smart move.”

“Did we just start a new galactic narcotic crisis?” Ludwig asked.

“Not if anyone asks,” Marvin winked to his accomplices, then started to the cockpit. “Come on, let’s see where we’re going next.”

***

“Ever heard of this place, Sarge?” Marvin asked from behind the pilot’s seat while the blue blur of space travel clouded the world beyond the windshield.

“Don’t call me that,” Reel ordered.

“Only if you stop calling us human,” Ludwig said.

“Is ‘primate’ more to your liking?”

“How about our names?”

“Yeah, right!” Reel scoffed. “Anyway, The Tipsy. One of the most popular recreational space stations in this sector. It orbits a little star with no planets. If I’m not mistaken, this means the Causers we’re looking for are the Astral Wraith crew. The Tipsy is their shore-leave spot of choice.”

“Should we expect trouble?” Jade asked. She had not bothered removing her armor.

“I mean, we are hunting down violent criminals, so even your primate brain should figure that one out… but The Tipsy itself is an upstanding establishment. Health code compliant and all that jest. Hard to maintain a pattern with the kind of business they run.”

And there it was. The catch.

“What kind of business do they run?” Marvin was already massaging his temples.

“Just your regular outer-space-club. Techno-music, crazy lights, good drinks, reproduction-prone patrons… The difference here is no gravity. Word of advice? Easy on the liquor!” Reel shivered, fins flapping. “Zero-gee’s not gentle on your stomachs. You’ll start spinning in the air and before you know you’re a floating sprinkler. That’s how I got my life-ban from there! True story!”

“Thankfully we won’t be there for fun,” Marvin said. “Get in, find their ship, get my dad and the others and get out.”

“Sure…” Jade rolled her eyes. “Because it’s always that simple.”

***

“There it is!” Reel pointed a gigantic glass tube on the distance constantly changing colors. “Good times! Good times…”

“Can we see the pirate ship?” Marvin asked, scanning the several vessels attached to the station.

“That one!” Lud pointed a ship almost half as long as the station itself. “It’s same design as the ships from Deven, just bigger. Way bigger.”

“He’s right,” Reel nodded. “Their fighters and strike-shuttles can’t go hyperlight, so they need that monstrosity to travel systems. If they sold the corn to The Admiral and then came here, I’d wager they didn’t have time to sell your friends, so they should still be onboard.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Marvin his more technically oriented friends. Infiltration was beyond his area of expertise.

“They’re docked to The Tipsy, so we should be able to access their ship through the airlock connecting the two,” Lud said. “It’ll be locked, surely, but we have the magna-crowbar from Gaia Station.”

“Too risky,” Jade shook her head as they approached. “The pirates will be all over the club. They’ll see you prying their door open.”

The four people descended into a thoughtful silence while the Exile rounded the blinking structure.

“Hey, what’s that!” Lud pointed at a spot on the pirate ship. All eyes turned to it. “A secondary airlock! If we have vacuum suits, we can try going in through that side!”

“We don’t have any of those,” Jade pondered.

“What about your armor?” Marvin asked. “Wouldn’t it do the trick.”

“It should, but I have no idea how to use that crowbar thing!” Jade said.

“Then I’ll do it!” Lud volunteered. “Your armor should fit me. I use it to get in through the hidden airlock, open the primary one to you guys and you quickly sneak in from the club.”

Biting her lips, Jade nodded. A risky plan, but a plan.

Marvin agreed too.

“Yeah, you all do that,” Reel said, bringing the ship around for another sweep. “I’ll be here watching the tapdancing triplets from Mumur Prime.”

***

Over his years in Gaia Station, Ludwig had grown very familiar with the weightlessness of space. It was inevitable for people like him. Be it on intentional drills or emergencies, if he could fix a faulty engine without the pull of gravity, he could do anything!

Or so he thought.

Lack of gravity was comfortable when you had walls to which to cling, or safety cords to pull you back to safety. Floating in the void with nothing but a suit of borrowed armor and a magna-crowbar strapped to his back was entirely different. It was terrifying.

But his leap from the Exile had been precise enough. After long dreadful seconds of floating helplessly in outer space, Ludwig crashed against the hull of the pirate ship. A muffled impact way more silent than it should have been. Ludwig hurried to grab onto the ship’s foils, fiercely clinging to it. The airlock wouldn’t be far, all he had to do was stick to the ship and remain undetected.

At least Jade’s black paintjob for her suit ensured a comfortable degree of camouflage in open space, should anyone be looking through the window!

Admittedly, opening the airlock had been more challenging than any previous use of the magna-crowbar, partially for the intricacy of the system, partially for the lack of gravity. In the end, though, it budged like every door before it, granting access to the pressurization chamber. From there, all it would take was some tinkering with the computers and the ship would be wide open for him.

Before going into the belly of the beast, though, Lud poked his head out into space one last time. The lights of The Tipsy painted the hulls of the ships attached to it, and among the many crafts he saw the Exile touching down on one of the access points.

Of course the others would come in through the front door of the neat nightclub while Lud risked his butt in the evil lair! Wunderbar!

***

“We’ll have two orbs of Split Singularity!” Marvin would have been leaning over the counter, but leaning implied having weight, which he did not. “Shaken, not stirred.”

The hovering robot behind the counter beeped an affirmative and got to work on the cocktails. The robot, like every piece of furniture, staff clothing and structural components emitted crazy lights all over the color spectrum, including some frequencies unseen by humans, always matching the rhythm of the song. It was the first extraterrestrial soundtrack that really pleased Marvin. He couldn’t make out any of the lyrics, but the melody sounded like a rebellious child between old-school swing jazz and modern day house music, raised by a rapper on caffeine.

The bot returned to Marvin and floated two plastic bubbles with straws across the counter, each orb filled with a spherical mass of deep purple liquid. Taking the two 0-G equivalent of cups, Marvin pushed against the counter and floated to where Jade was slowly drifting on the dance… floor? Floor didn’t seem like the right term.

“Split Singularity?” Jade took one of the drinks. She was wearing a sparkling silver dress that reflected all the colorful lights and hardly made her style. “I’m not drinking that during a mission, but damn fine choice, Chief. Damn fine choice!”

“A hardass drink for a hardass lady,” Marvin raised a toast.

“Word of advice, I’m probably the only gal in the galaxy that line will work on,” Jade toasted with him.

“But it will work. That’s what counts. Now, seen anything?”

Jade discreetly nodded up, past a crowd of levitating patrons engaging in mindboggling dance moves. “That airlock right there, that’s the entrance to the Causer ship. They’re also all over the place. Got some pirates drinking on that bar a hundred feet up, a group near that couple taking selfies and another pack right there by those dancers. None armed, that’s against club rules, but most are in armor.”

“Think we can sneak in unnoticed when Lud opens the airlock?”

“They’re not paying much attention, but we’ll have to be fast.”

“Better go wait close to it, then,” Marvin pulled a passing waiter-bot, slowly ascending to the higher airlock. He reached down with a hand to Jade, who grabbed it reluctant.

“We shouldn’t be too close, we’ll call attention!” she whispered as they floated up together, hands given, one facing up and the other down, depending on who one had for reference.

“We just have to blend it…” Marvin winked at his rehead companion, her curls floating free as a bonfire. “Hope your dancing moves are up to date.”

***

Lud would be his friends were drinking and dancing and having a good time while he was forced to sneak through an alien pirate ship with nothing more than two pistols and a magna-crowbar. At least he had not run into trouble so far.

The dark halls were haunting for sure, and every now and then a cacophony of horrendous yelps would erupt from somewhere down the corridors, but nothing bad had actually happened. Eventually, while passing by a communal dormitory, Lud would learn the ghastly yelps were nothing more than the shanties of drunken sailors. Now he should probably be just a few decks away from the airlock, where he would meet with Marvin and Jade, who could actually use a plasma pistol.

He was confident that he would only blow a hole on his foot if he tried.

As he approached the airlock, however, another terrifying sound would reverberate through the pirate flagship. A sound far subtler than the inebriated yelps, but one infinitely more terrifying.

The sound of engines coming to life.