Memoirs of a Timelord (9 page)

       "I dunno what it is, but it isn't what it appears to be.  The real question is why would someone pretend to be a massive battleship?" Squinting her eyes, Veena stared out the window beside me.

       "Same as us, they weren't really all that." I pointed out the obvious answer.

       "Then I got just the fix for them bitches." Turning towards me with a cruel smile, my sister from another galaxy had a plan forming in her devious little mind.  I could just see it in her eyes. "Follow me!"

       Grabbing Roxy and I by the hands, Veena gave a blink of her pretty blue eyes.  A nanosecond later and we were on the bridge; Veena had made a short lateral insertion and pulled us along for the ride.  Standing there we watched the utter pandemonium of the scene.  The Science Officer was running the show, and he was all of 22 years old.  The rest of the officers were falling-down drunk in the mess hall, and Roxy was swaying visibly right beside me.  Aside from the newly-minted Ensign Brady there were a handful of junior enlisted personnel manning the stations in the room.  

       "Stand by to fire all engines, let's get as far from this thing as we can." His knuckles white where they gripped the captain's chair, Ensign Brady could think of no other alternative than a full-burn.

       "Belay that." Veena poked him with a finger.  "Set course for their main power source, maximum speed."

       "W-what?" Ensign Brady stammered. "Run into 'em?"

       "Do it." She stood her ground.

       "But won't that just make it easier for them to grab us with a gravitational claw?" The ensign knew the modus operandi of the big ship well.  It was likely still taught in the academy.  Looking back and forth between Veena and Roxy, he was unsure what to do.

       "Look kid, all this that you see is a lie.  These people are not what they appear to be.  Once we get inside of their projection, we'll be able to see who they really are.  Trust me, I'm an alien." She winked at him.

       "What about the Captain?" Still unsure, Ensign Brady had one last objection.

       "Unfit for duty, mebbe not even conscious." Roxy swayed slightly, remindidng me just how plowed she was.  The last we had seen of the man he had been passed out on a table.  

       "First Officer's too drunk to even walk.  It's all you, hero." Veena pointed out to the bridge officer

       "Straight at them?" still unsure, Brady's eyes flickered between our faces until Roxy finally leaned forward the tiniest little bit.

       "Grow a pair, that's an order." She told him with hard eyes.  "If m' sisters say to attack, then the only thing I wanna hear from you is our progress.  Got it?"

       Biting his lip, the young science officer finally gestured to the helmsman.  Within seconds they had the ship rotated 180 degrees before firing the main engines.  

       The KuluMata was already at her top speed when all of this happened.  This burn would not increase that velocity at all, only change our arc of flight significantly.  It would mean that our two ships would intersect on a steep course.  As the distance between us quickly diminished, we were all a little nervous.  Sure, Veena and I had a pretty good idea that this was all fake...but if we were wrong.  If that were a real Rakagi craft then we would slam into the hull at full speed.  I doubt we'd chip the paint.

       "You're really sure about this?" I asked my sister using sub-audible comms.  I didn't want the bridge crew to know I had any doubts.

       "If we're wrong, at least the Rakagi will think that we had some stones for attacking them.  Maybe our death will be merciful.  I hear they respect that kinda stuff, y'know." The way she said it, I could almost hear the shrug in her voice.

       "Sure, what's the worst that could happen?  Some heads end up on pikes, they skin the rest of us while still alive.  No pressure." I echoed her sentiment as I braced for impact with the dreadnaught's hull.

       Then just like that we passed through this perceptual barrier and we were within the cloaking projection itself.  All around us is the sheen of the cloak as seen from the inverse side, and at the center of it all is a small vessel.

       Looking out a porthole I scan the ship with my eyes, sharing the data with Veena as soon as I collect it.  It's tiny, no more than a yard square, shaped like a very aerodynamic egg.  But then I notice something; the ship is now heading directly towards us, and fast.

       "Oh, now they wanna play chicken." In my mind I ran the numbers, immediately calculating that there was nothing we could to avoid the inevitable collision.  The Kulu just didn't have enough power to overcome their own inertia so quickly.

       "Sound for collision!" Brady screamed as soon as he saw it coming straight for us.

       I was grimacing when the little ship impacted with our hull.  Actually it was a bit underwhelming, there was no flash or breach, no debris, it just sorta vanished.  At least that's how it looked at first.  It took everyone a few seconds to realize that the little aerodynamic egg was now sitting quietly on the floor in the middle of the room.

       Mouths agape, we could only watch as a small seam appeared on the side of the tiny ship, slowly spreading until a portal was visible.

       "If this guy looks like Ron Howard's brother then I'm punchin' him, soooo hard." I noted for the record.

       "Eh?" Veena asked, unsure of the reference. 

         Sliding open silently, the door revealed a little hairy rat paw as the occupant climbed out of the snug little craft.  Right away I had an idea who this was.  

       "Morby?" Veena greeted the little hardware savant as she rushed forward to offer him a hand.

       "Morbesta, I shoulda known.  Who else has toys like this, eh?" I nodded to the little hardware savant as he climbed out of the vehicle with help from my sister.

       "I heard there was a party and assumed that my invitation must have been lost in the transit." Pretending to scowl at me, his expression turned back to a smile as he greeted Veena.

       "You look tired from your trip..." Veena pooh-poohed the little rat.  Reaching down she scooped him up like a cat before cradling him in her arm.  Laying belly up, she caressed his hairy midsection.

       "So very tired, but some more of this and I could recover entirely." He seemed to almost purr as Veena cuddled him.  That was my sister's secret power; she knew exactly how to find your sweet spot and appeal to it.   Me? Morby wouldn't even let me scratch him behind the ears, let alone pick him up for a full belly rub.  She just had this magic with people.

       "You can't park that here," Ensign Brady flushed as he saw that Morby intended to leave the vessel there on the floor.

       "F'git about it." I did my best Jersey accent as I reassured the young ensign that it would be okay.  "Think of it as a handicapped space."

       And after that, we went back to the party and watched a rat drink like a fish.  Seriously, for such a little guy, Morby could really put the stuff away.  

       

       

       Remember back when I said that Veena, Roxy and I were like the Three Musketeers until something happened?  Well, I shoulda known that there would be a hitch.  It's not a bad thing, it just completely changed everything in our happy little trio.

       So anyhow, I was poking around in Engineering one day (pretending to be looking at the engines but really looking at the engineers...) when I notice this one very handsome Lieutenant working on a compressor flow valve.  I'd never seen this gorgeous young engineer.  But then again, I was seeing a lotta new faces because this was Zeta shift.  Usually I was here during beta or gamma shifts when m' girl Roxy was awake.  But this was the middle of the night, and truth be told, I was there at that late hour so I could do a little hunting on my own.  It was tough to man-shop when I had Roxy or Veena with me.  Every guy on the ship wanted a date with them, but not so many wanted to go out with their plain brown sister.  I'd been trying to master my morphic abilities, but I still couldn't make anything I was willing to wear outside of the house, and definitely nothing that could compete with those two.  Sometimes I felt invisible with them around.

       Sorry, I got a little off track, again.  Where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, the cute Lieutenant on Zeta shift.  Yeah, him.  Anyhow I was just eyeballing him, about to go introduce myself when my eyes picked up an odd detail.

       Remember back when I mentioned how Timelords can see your Aura, measure it, all that?  Well, if you have two people who have identical auras, or perfectly complementary auras, these people will be highly compatible.  Actually I understate that.  It'd be damned close to Shakespearean love at first sight.  In humans an exact match of biorhythmic auras would trigger hormonal releases that would chemically pair-bond the two lovers.  If the cyclic frequency of their auras were stable, or changing at the same rate, then they would be bound together for life.  

       Now you gotta understand that it's extremely rare to find an exact match between two individuals, mebbe one in a million or worse.  But my eyes were telling me that despite astronomical odds, I had just discovered a perfect match right here on the ship.  A matchup this close, and we are talking identical within .00000009nJ, is extremely rare on populated planets.  For it to happen within a crew of just over 1100 was almost a complete statistical impossibility.  When I checked to see who held the other half of the golden ticket, I had to sit down; Lieutenant Dreamy was a perfect biometric match for my sister from another galaxy; Roxy.

       On one hand I was so incredibly happy for my sister.  This was like winning the lottery big.  How else do you say it?  Anyone who has ever been in love knows that this would be the mother lode of all relationships.  A perfect match?  Their life would be like an endless series of Harlequin novels.  And it would still be burning bright fifty years later when they drop dead in their matching rocking chairs.  Yes, this would be a life-changing event for my sister.

       On the other hand, I knew what a relationship of this magnitude would do to our happy little trio.  We'd lose Roxy.  I'd seen it happen before with friends.  They meet someone, get married, and the two of them complete each other so they don't need their old friends as much.  Then there's the endless sex and cavorting in dangerous places, and next thing you know you haven't seen your girlfriend for a year. I felt like I was reading the end of Where the Red Fern Grows.  It had all been so perfect and we had the whole sister thing going on...and now it was over.  I felt guilty for even thinking of ignoring the data.  What kinda asshole stands in the way of something like this?  I loved my sister and even if it meant losing her I was gonna do the right thing and use my vast powers as a Temporal Editor to get them together.  Besides, it was good practice for my upcoming Causation training.  Really, when you think about it, this little matchmaker job was exactly the kind of work Timelords do on a regular basis.  We are the unseen hand, we manipulate your world with invisible fingers. [Cue ominous music]  

       In the end, it really didn't take very much of my super-Timelord-powers to get the job done.  All I had to do was ask Veena if the next time she had her thighs clamped around the Captain's head, could she ask him to transfer Lieutenant Rogars to Beta shift.  Heh, like five minutes later it was done.  What can I say, Veena had some impressive thighs.

       After that it was easy, all I had to do was get them in the same room and it was Westside Story all over again.  But there was a hitch: Lieutenant Dreamy was a bookworm who spent his time in the Library or Stellar Cartography.   Roxy was a physical person so she was either on a security patrol, in the gym, or drinking in the club with her sisters.  Even on the same shift, these two swam in different circles.  She was Command Staff, he was Engineering Staff.  The only time these two would cross tracks is if there was a security problem in Engineering.  

       So I decided it was time for a fire drill.

       See, it was actually perfect timing.  Veena, Aldoo and I all had an assignment due for Alien Species.  We had to carry out a native function while impersonating another species.  

       See, there were several layers to this whole Species training we undergo, starting with sampling a few hundred races, then spending a few hours as an alien species, and on up the scale until you eventually spend years living as a foreign lifeform.  Actually, by the time I was done with Species training I had lived as fourteen different species for the combined equivalent of sixty-three Terran years.  Before you can become an effective Editor, you have to possess a solid understanding of what is to be the other gal, right down to her panty shields.  How can you hope to have a real perspective if you spend your entire existence as the same genus?  You can't just empathize; you have to live it to truly understand a species.

       But this was back in my very early days of Polymorphic training.  I'd studied the theory and Sociological aspects of foreign species, but I'd only been a few different critters myself.  Veena was really good at this, but Aldoo and I were still pretty green.  Anyhow, we three had an assignment due and this seemed like the perfect time.  

       By this point in our new lives, all three of us had our own hot rods, custom enhanced by m' boy Morbesta, so it was easy for us to appear to be Klath ships.  I knew from their database that they had been given fair warning and detailed analysis on the owners of the domain they were about to pass thru, so when they saw our ships I'm pretty sure they shit their pants.  The Klath were some verrry bad dudes.  The kinda species that took pride in wearing your face to a costume party.  They were absolutely xenophobic, ruthless, and through plunder they had acquired a significant technological edge that they used to thwart anyone who entered their domain.   At least that was the rumor the crew had been fed.  The real Klath had been significant a century ago, but by this time on the calendar they were just a buncha clowns with a killer rep.  Not only that, but we were years away from modern Klath space.  It'd been fifty years since their borders were this far out.  But they don't know this.