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  “A little over an hour.”

  “Okay, go ahead and get us back. Fast as you can.”

  “Already on it, I started back as soon as I got the message. We should be cracking the sound barrier soon.”

  Patty knew she was supposed to wait for orders for a maneuver like that. She was prepared for another lecture from Cannon about the chain of command, but Cannon said nothing.

  Chapter Eight

  Brewskie sat at a table in the ruins of Bonner’s Hole. It had been several days since the attack and repairs were in full swing. It was going to take weeks to get the place open again.

  Brewskie had a huge problem, while he was in prison the world had shifted. You not only had to worry about the feds coming after your operation, you also had to worry about pissing off super humans.

  Luckily, Black Brewskie knew a guy.

  Brewskie looked at his assembled crew, there was Chopper and Sammy, as always, but also Froggy. Froggy was the club’s best rider. He even rode professionally for awhile in those crotch rocket races in France. Thus the nickname.

  Small crew, big job. Brewskie always preferred the smallest crew possible. To avoid notice. To fly under the radar. Just because the crew was small didn’t mean they couldn’t do a ton of damage or pull off a big job.

  Chopper lifted up the Russian made rocket propelled grenade launcher. He checked the sights and safety and gave a nod. Brewskie looked around, checking everyone else, they all gave the fist to chest salute. They were ready.

  * * *

  Brewskie was in the passenger seat of Sammy’s new truck with an AK-47 assault rifle. Not one of the newer models either, a Vietnam era weapon Brewskie’s father had come home with. It still worked just fine. Chopper lay hidden in the back of the truck under a tarp, RPG ready to fire. Froggy was on his bike outside, ready to roll.

  They all sat idling on a side road overlooking the coast highway, waiting for a bus.

  Froggy saw it first, gave a whoop, and took off at speed. Brewskie waited a moment, more to admire Froggy’s riding ability than anything. He must have took the corner getting onto the highway at 60 mph.

  Brewskie said, “Go Sammy.” Sammy spun the tires following after.

  Froggy’s job was simple. Close on the bus, pass it, tossing caltrops into a front tire on the way by. That would stop the bus. Passing a bus at highway speeds while using one hand to toss large triangular spikes of metal into the bus’s tires was no easy move. Especially with the twisting and winding of the coastal highway.

  By the time Sammy and Brewskie had caught up with the bus it was already on the side of the road. Several pissed off marshals were standing alongside surveying the damage.

  This was no ordinary bus. This was a prison transfer vehicle. Used to transfer the most dangerous people. Bullet proof and manned by a minimum of 4 armed guards and a driver. So 5 marshals, minimum.

  Three were outside, that left two more inside. Minimum.

  Sammy pulled off the road about 100 feet behind the bus. Brewskie opened his door and got out.

  “Hello officers, can I be of assistance?” Brewskie yelled to them, looking to see if he could count how many were still in the bus. Didn’t want to miss any and leave witnesses.

  “No, no. Some asshole on a bike spiked us. We got it, we called a wrecker.”

  The marshal speaking took a round to the chest from Brewskie’s assault rifle. He’d liked to have waited to open fire but the side of the road was no place to dally for long. An innocent passer-by might complicate things.

  Be fast. Be aggressive.

  Speaking of aggressive. As soon as Brewskie opened up so did Sammy. She was firing her small pistol, so wouldn’t hit much from that range, but she wasn’t aiming anyway. She was firing periodically to keep heads down, giving Chopper time to work.

  Chopper stood up from under his tarp in the back of the truck. He stretched his massive frame for a moment then brought up his RPG. With Sammy cracking off shots and Brewskie switching to burst fire Chopper could take his time and do this right.

  Chopper lined up the shot, using the cab of the truck as a gun rest. He squeezed the trigger and the round fired about as straight as an RPG normally fires. Meaning they corkscrew a lot but generally go in the direction they are pointed.

  It was only a 100 foot shot but they only had one round for the RPG. If Chopper missed then they would have to fight their way through the guards.

  Chopper didn’t miss. Direct hit, more or less to the middle of the back of the bus.

  The problem was the results weren’t that spectacular. There was a small hole made but it wasn’t nearly big enough for a man to fit through.

  That didn’t matter.

  Brewskie looked at Sammy. “Sammy can you hit the brights?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know why.” Sammy turned on the truck’s bright lights, and overhead floods too, for good measure.

  Brewskie sat back to wait, firing periodically to keep the marshals guessing. He didn’t have to wait long. A hand appeared through the hole Chopper had made in the back of the bus. Then part of a shoulder.

  The hand was small at first, so was the shoulder. Then, slowly, they got bigger.

  Brewskie put his rifle down and called out. “Hey Tiny. Time to go.”

  Through the hole he could see a man’s face, “That you Brewskie? Took you long enough. One second.”

  Tiny stuck both hands through the hole and gripped the sides, pulling. Nothing happened at first but with a barely human roar he started yanking. Soon enough he was kicking as well, widening the hole. When the hole was human sized he kept kicking and wrenching.

  Tiny was no longer human sized, he’d grown, he needed a bigger hole. And he kept growing.

  One of the guards got wise to the plan and tried to angle for a shot through the back of the bus. He fired with his pistol a few times and Tiny howled in rage. He gave up trying to crawl through the hole and tore the top off the back of the bus.

  He pulled himself out of the wreckage of his mobile cell and looked around for the shooter. Standing on top of the bus made him a target for all the marshals. They emptied their pistols into him.

  Tiny flinched and covered up but didn’t bleed. The bullets bounced off, pissing him off more than hurting him.

  Tiny leapt onto the closest marshal. He’d grown to about 10 feet tall at that point, bigger than Brewskie had ever seen him. He crushed the marshal under his weight.

  Turns out there were only 5 marshals. The minimum number. With the one Brewskie shot, and Sammy clipping another, that left only 3 for Tiny to dispatch. He did so with sadistic glee. Took his time with the last marshal. A lady. Slowly pulling arms and legs out of socket before the final blow.

  Brewskie yelled out to him, “Hey Tiny. If you’re through, we need to get outta here.”

  Tiny smiled back at him and walked over. “You got a tarp or something?”

  Chopper tossed him the tarp he’d been hiding under and stepped back. Way back. Chopper was used to being the biggest man around. No longer.

  Tiny wrapped the tarp around himself and looked up at the sun, taking it in. He stepped up into the back of the truck. Not pulling himself in, but stepped up in. He must have been well over 10 feet at that point. Brewskie wondered how big he could get, he’d never seen him much over 7 feet in the past. That had been in jail though, so maybe being outside helped him get bigger.

  Who knew? That’s the problem. Who knows who or what a super human is? Who knows how strong they can get. It’s a crazy new world out there.

  Tiny knelt down, too big to sit in the truck comfortably, and covered himself completely with the tarp.

  Within a minute he was able to sit easily, relaxed. Within 5 minutes he was smaller than Chopper. By the time they reached Bonner’s hole he was a 90 pound weakling. Smaller even than Sammy.

  Chopper, once again the biggest man around, had gone from cautious to jovial. “So. The sun makes you big?”

  Tiny, his face barely showing o
ut from under the tarp, nodded. “Yeah. The sun is best. Any light will give me a boost though. Those bastard marshals kept me in the dark for the past 6 months. At least I think it’s been that long. I dunno. Maybe I should have kept one alive to ask.”

  Chopper and Tiny both shook their heads and laughed, saying together, “Na.”

  Tiny picked up Chopper’s axe, barely able to lift it, “This must be yours. It’s awesome. Has it seen much use?”

  “Oh yea,” Chopper said. “I use it as much as I can. You can borrow it if you want.”

  Sammy had been standing off to the side, listening in. “You two love birds need a minute?”

  Even Brewskie laughed at that one. Chopper was a notorious loner, except for Sammy. And that suited Sammy just fine. He’d never seen Chopper with a buddy. Brewskie was his friend but also his boss. So that was different.

  Froggy was waiting at Bonner’s when they showed up. He walked over. “So, this is the guy we sprung? I can see why they call him Tiny.”

  That got everyone laughing while Froggy looked confused.

  Tiny was going to fit right in.

  Chapter Nine

  5.2 light minutes out from Alpha Centuri a ripple in space appeared. It grew for a split second, flashed electric blue, then disgorged the shuttle carrying Specimen and Raseen.

  “Mein Gott! Raseen is it always this way?” Specimen hunched over in his flight chair.

  Jump shock. It turns out humans can’t handle faster than light travel any better than the rest of the known spacefaring races of the galaxy.

  Raseen made a mental note of that for his report. Soon there would be a million questions for him to answer. Endless debriefings and meetings. Copious note taking with his internal wetware computer would produce a raw report that answered most questions, but old fashioned inquisition by a panel of politicians was not yet outmoded. Pity.

  “Specimen, are you going to vomit?” Raseen asked. Specimen had vomited on the last 3 transitions through space-time.

  “No. Nothing left to throw up I guess. I am cramping up though, is it safe to unbuckle?”

  “Yes, we’ll need to get a thorough scan of the inner system. That will take some time. We have to find our exact location and relative velocity before boosting towards Alpha Centauri Station.”

  Specimen summoned his ghost hands, green and translucent. He unbuckled himself as quickly as possible and floated free. He spun around in air flexing his arms and legs, working off the jump shock response. Being ripped through space-time disturbed all manner of bodily functions. The price of faster than light travel.

  “How do you Markete stay so fit during the jumps?” Specimen asked.

  “Well, we are better than most species at transitioning through the stars, but really my immunity to jump shock is from years of practice. Before being marooned on Earth I’d been spacing for almost 20 of your Earth years. Half my life.” Raseen reflected back on the life he used to have, family and friends. Wondering what life he had to go back to after all these years away.

  A ping from the console caught the attention of both, Raseen sighed.

  “Looks like we’ve come out way off target. It’s to be expected with out of date star charts and this under powered jump drive. Every jump compounds any navigation errors.”

  “So what? Another jump to correct position?” Specimen asked.

  “No. We are too close in at this point. Space-time is warped by large stellar objects, like stars. When jumping around close to one it’s easy to slip into their shadow and be swallowed up.”

  “So we boost then?” Specimen said with a frown.

  “So we boost, yes, long and hard.” Raseen tried for a human frown to match Specimen’s. He didn’t quite have the expression down but humans could generally tell what expression he was going for. Without fail humans treated him as if he had communicated the frown perfectly. Very gracious creatures, these humans.

  Specimen strapped in, muttering under his breath in German. Raseen’s internal translator only caught every other word, most of them profane. These seats really weren’t suitable for humans at all.

  Once strapped in Specimen used his ghost hand to give an exaggerated thumbs up. Raseen returned the gesture, forever practicing his human non-verbal communication skills.

  “Boosting in 3...2...1...Boost.”

  Raseen eased the control forward, setting the main booster to a bit over 1 Earth gravity, sustained. He’d have gone for a harder boost but for the damned chairs. Even Raseen was having discomfort at that level of acceleration. What did the Torvin pad these seats with anyway? Rocks?

  Specimen checked the readouts. “Looks like the navcomp is saying it’ll be 29 hours to Alpha Centuri Station, boosting the whole way.”

  Raseen double checked. “Unfortunately, yes, that is correct.”

  Specimen lit up his ghost hands again. He used one to snake out across the cockpit and grip the booster control, the other hand he coiled around Raseen, pinning him.

  “What are you doing?”

  Raseen watched, startled, as Specimen bumped up the acceleration to 5 gravities.

  “Now how much time to the Station?” Specimen released Raseen.

  Raseen checked the readout. “Just under 6 hours, but can humans withstand 5 gravities for 6 hours?”

  “Can Markete?” Specimen laughed and leaned back into his seat.

  Humans. Strangest of all the galaxy’s creatures.

  * * *

  Expertly, Raseen slid the shuttle into the assigned docking slot at Alpha Centuri Station. The acceleration had been too much for Specimen. The duration had worn him out. He was sleeping in the troop compartment in the middle of the shuttle. There were sling hammocks in there suitable for sleeping in zero-g, or during low g maneuvers.

  The micro adjustments Raseen was making for docking would swing him around gently but wouldn’t bump him into anything. So Raseen let him continue to sleep. It was good to be piloting again, precision flying was a skill that needed to be constantly honed. After so many years without practice Raseen had worried he’d foul up the docking.

  The station filled the forward view port. It was many times bigger than the shuttle, several times bigger than the battlecruiser Brootstone the shuttle was assigned to, but it was hardly more than an outpost as far as space stations went. It had a permanent crew of less than 100. Space traffic was minimal.

  There were only 3 ships docked at the moment, none of them Torvin. Thank goodness for that. Explaining to a Torvin captain how one of their shuttles happened to show up without the battlecruiser to go along with it would have been difficult. Dangerously so.

  Raseen checked the flight plans of the few docked ships. Another fortunate event, a Galactic Control survey ship was enroute directly to GalCon Central. A ship named Salt Starter. Strange name, must be a rough translation from an obscure language. Raseen pinged their coms.

  “Hello Salt Starter. This is Officer Raseen Mowr, formerly of the Galactic Control survey ship Charter-12.”

  There was a moment’s delay, then the view screen coalesced into the image of the Salt Starter’s bridge. It was underwater. Or filled with water. Same thing really.

  A creature of unknown species filled the view, “Yes?”

  Raseen was well traveled. Especially in this area of the galaxy. He’d never seen a sentient like this. All tentacles, no eyes he could see. A four hinged mouth opened and closed but Raseen didn’t think it was talking. The computer identified them as Ophiuchi.

  Normally a formal greeting would have been given, standard procedure, but who knew with such a species? Perhaps a single word answer was the standard. When meeting with any new species it was essential to avoid taking offense at any perceived lack of tact. Tact was highly individualized, subjective. It differed by species.

  Best to get right to the point. “I am requesting that myself and one passenger be transported to Galactic Control Central.”

  The Ophiuchi on the other end spun around in circles, its tentac
les weaving and flowing in a complex pattern. An air bubble released from the mouth. Or beak? Four hinged mouth hole? Or was that an oil bubble?

  The com responded, after a delay for translation, “We are not going to Central direct. We detour to Sol for biological samples.”

  That wouldn’t do. Sol was essentially at war with Galactic Control. The humans would assume that any ship showing up uninvited was hostile. Raseen hoped to reach GalCon Central and avoid further hostilities. If this ship jumped in close enough to get samples, the humans would most likely do what they could to blow it out of space. More violence, with lives lost.

  Raseen was about to say as much when he stopped himself. He didn’t know what the attitude was right now, the political situation could be volatile. It was best to reach Central and give his report through official channels before divulging information about what was going on with Earth. It would avoid rumors.

  Panic could erupt here in the frontier if they knew Earth had super beings. Powerful ones too, at least one of planetary class, Miss Marathon.

  Raseen opted for diplomacy over lying or trickery.

  “It just so happens I have a human aboard right now, and we are in a hurry to get to central. If you would transport us directly I am sure he would agree to a complete bio scan.”

  Two more floating tentacle people came into view, one from above and one below. Of course a water environment would work in three dimensions. They swirled around each other in a great display of writhing and spinning.

  The computer started to translate, “We agree to your proposal. Our environment is not suited to your species. You will stay in your shuttle. We will transport it and you. We will commence the bio scan as soon as we are underway.”

  Direct and to the point. Good. With one conversation Raseen had secured transport to Central and staved off another potential conflict in the Sol system.

  Now for the dangerous part of the plan. Telling Specimen he was going to be poked and prodded by unknown tentacled aliens. Raseen knew enough about humans to know this was going to be a difficult conversation.