Starr vs the Emperor of Space Pt. 01

"The weapons are slaved to my magneto-computational device," Jas said, cheerfully. "All Claudette has to do is authorize it. Your tools require a smidgen more finesse. Besides, Claudette is the most level headed of all of us and least likely to open fire on peaceful people, right?"

Claudette mewed softly, like a soaked kitten.

"What kind of guns do you put on a rocket? Death rays?" Mark asked.

"Preposterous! The energy requirement on a death ray is prohibitive and absurd, compared to the relative efficiency of gunpowder," Jas' eyes sparkled and she beamed at him. "The nose cannon has a magneto-catapult loaded with iron dust, to swat anything lightly armored out of space, while the sides have a pair of ball turret mounted nuclear pellet coilguns. I found that once uranium is used up as a power source, the slugs are remarkably effective at piercing armor. When jacketed in ferrous metals -- say, iron bands -- it can be accelerated by magnetic fields to incredible speeds!"

Mark whistled. "I wish we had you around back when we were dusting it up with Jerry."

Jas chuckled again, then settled into her seat. "Oh, the OSS was quite happy to have a seventeen year old with my mental flexibility, I'll have you know." She chuckled. "And...other kinds of flexibility too."

Mark blanched.

Then he learned that Jasmine Starr, for all of her qualities, did have one fault.

She didn't believe in anything as pedestrian as 'counting down.'

***

In darkness, the only light came from the cathode ray projectors, shining on scales and glittering nictitating membranes. A claw tip came down, pointing at the bright white smear that appeared every rotation of the radar-scopes.

Sibilant voices hissed.

"Commander Vile...a ssssship hasssss launched..."

The chuckle that came from the rear of the bridge was as vicious as its namesake.

"Well, then, Signalzard Greenscale. It seems that the hostages are about to have a...terrible wedding."

"No, sssssssssir." The claw tapped again. "The launch...came from...Earth..."

Silver gauntlets crashed down on black armrests. Glowing red eyes flared as a shape moved in the shadowed bridge -- standing. Then a gleaming silver finger pointed towards the astrogation globe that swirled in the center of the cruiser's bridge.

"Set our course to intercept! Prepare the Robot Death Rockets for immediate launch!"

"Yesssss ssssssssssir!" A scaled tail thumped the deck plating and claws clacked as they operated toggles and dials.

And on the glimmering green screen, the white dot began to draw closer...

And closer...

And closer still.

***

Claudette did not enjoy being in space.

But this was not the first time she had been dragged along despite her best wishes on the Missus' madcap schemes. There had been the underground civilization that she had explored when she was fourteen, and the thawed out primeval dinosaur that they had had to flee from when they had both been both going to college. And the less said about Count Von Jager, the better!

This, though?

This?

This was just too much. Her arms crossed over her chest as she tried to keep some kind of modesty when she was dressed in nothing more than a thin layer of gold paint -- or so it felt -- while her stomach tried to do loop dee loops in her belly. The reporter, Mark (Gosh, he's handsome, a tiny part of her brain was thinking) looked as if he was just barely keeping his stomach down as the rocket felt as if it had begun to fall...but rather than the fall terminating in their immediate death, it just went on and on forever.

The Missus laughed, softly, then tapped at her controls. "We're out! We've attained orbit!"

"Amazing," Mark said, his voice tight. "Why aren't there any windows?"

"Windows?" The Missus sounded confused. "Oh! Uh, the wheel, there."

Mark reached out and started to crank a wheel. With a slow clattering noise, the shutters that covered the windows began to retract, folding up on themselves...

Claudette forget her modesty entirely.

The Earth hung above them -- a glittering orb of white clouds and blue, blue oceans. It looked as vast as she could imagine...and yet, so, incredibly small. She shook her head, faintly, while the Missus chuckled, her voice soft. "That is where every king and emperor, every mad handed dictator, every Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, every President and celebrity that has ever lived has been -- a tiny blue dot in a sea of night..." She shook her head, slowly. "Not so tiny here, but we're but in the shallows of the cosmic ocean!"

"G-Gee, Missus," Claudette said, her voice soft. "I never thought it'd be so...pretty."

Mark nodded. He blew a little kiss at the window.

"I bet yer friend Chip is going to be so ding dang jealous when you get to tell him about this!" Claudette said, trying to relax into her seat -- it was hard without the press of gravity, or without arms to brace with. As it was, she was not unlocking her arms from over her chest until she was in proper clothes.

Mark opened his mouth, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I bet he will." He looked back out the window again. Then he frowned. "Well, I'll be a son of a..." He bit himself off, then leaned forward. "There are five, I repeat, five bogies on this scope -- they look like they're coming towards us faster than a damn bullet!"

"Retrograde or prograde?" The Missus asked, her voice dipping into the confident attitude she always had when things were about to go very, very, very, very wrong.

"...the...indicator says RG, so, retrograde."

"Racing Rockets, who launched their birds retrograde?" The Missus muttered under her breath. "I didn't think the Reds would be so wasteful. And five? Their Sputnik program is still on the drawing board stages!"

"Missus, I got a bad feelin' about this!" Claudette said.

"Do we have them on the scopes?" The Missus asked, smiling over her shoulder at Mark.

"We do...damn they're fast! I can't get more than a blur outta this thing."

"Their orbits are very high...they look kind of small, their radar signal bounce is half our size -- who in damnation launched these things?" The Missus' brow knitted. Then she reached over and pulled down her intercom, speaking into it. "Unknown space rockets, this is Jasmine Starr of the Atomo. You are cutting your orbits very close to mine -- please respond."

Silence.

Claudette started to chew on her knuckle, whimpering.

"I repeat, this is Jasmine Starr of the Atomo, please respond or we shall be forced to assume you are hostile!"

"Shit!" Mark exclaimed. "They're opening fire on us! Death rays or something!"

Claudette moaned in terror -- while she saw the scope-screen flashing up on the forward view of the rocket. It showed the five glints that were the approaching rockets, and the glittering streams of green light rushing towards them.

The Missus chuckled. "No, you are quite mistaken -- those aren't beams or rays of any kind! Those appear to be pyrotechnic tracers, attached to their bullets, to aid in their targeting."

"Just like on Normandy..." Mark said through gritted teeth.

"Quite! But it seems they fired too soon!" The Missus touched the controls and the rocket rumbled and hissed. Pressure shoved Claudette back into her seat -- and through the window, she could see streamers of glittering green whip past the rocket, almost like sinuous bands of liquid. "Claudette, be a dear and activate...the magneto-catapult."

Claudette looked down at her console and forced her shaking hands to move. She triggered flicked on the electro-catapult and waited for the magneto-calculator that the Missus had mentioned to take over. Instead, a bulky circular screen popped out of the console, showing her a grainy televisual feed of the view outside of the rocket. A moment later, a metal grating swung down, layering a circular cross-hair on the center of the screen, with a grid providing rangefinding context for the five streams of glittering green smearing across the view.

A pair of handles swung free and pressed against her forearms. Claudette meeped.

"Missus! You said-"

"The magneto-calculator does most of the work, don't fear! Just keep the circle on the center of their formation and when it chimes, pull the trigger!" the Missus said, and the entire rocket shuddered again as they maneuvered to dodge another streamer of whipping tracers. This time, the Atomo was not quite fast enough, and the whole hull rattled and clanked and groaned as the Missus frowned, her eyes intent as she glared ahead of her.

Claudette whimpered as she swung the crosshairs...they locked and she felt the handles ticking loudly -- the upper right corner of the cross-hair had a small mechanical indicator that clicked up moment by moment, towards completion as the magneto-calculator did its best to target...

The handles chimed through her gloves.

Claudette closed her eyes and thumbed down the triggers.

The pressure pushing her back into her seat lessened, then cut off entirely.

She opened one eye. "A-Are we all right, Missus?"

"They've gone over the horizon, you got a great shot!" The Missus said.

"You got three of them," Mark said, nodding.

"They'll be back around again," The Missus said, her voice set and determined. "We should flack up -- those hits were all in the midsection, but we could have been a lot less lucky..."

"Flack up?" Mark asked -- but the Missus was already unstrapping herself. Without the engine on, there was no pressure keeping them in their seats. She pushed through the air, moving like she had been born to fly, and came to a heavy locker set against what seemed, to Claudette, to be the ceiling. She swung it open, revealing what appeared to be heavy orange jackets, which she snatched and handed out. Mark swung his on, shaking his head. "What on Earth are these made of?"

"Ballistic nylon, just like what the bombermen in your army air corps wore," the Missus said, cheerfully.

"And it didn't help them much," Mark muttered as he swung his armor on. Claudette clasped her on, trying to keep herself from crying. She had just latched the last part on when Mark swore, loudly -- using a word she had never heard from a man in the company of two ladies before. Her eyes widened, almost more horrified by that then what he said.

Almost.

"There's another bogie! It's in a prograde orbit, higher than ours, but slowing down! They're getting closer! It's...it's huge!"

The scopes whirred as he used one of the controls -- and the forward view-screens showed the image of the other rocket...

"I-I don't think the Reds built that, M-Missus," Claudette whimpered.

The other rocket wasn't just huge.

It was gigantic.

It was nearly five times the size of the Atomo, and pure midnight black, with gold trim along the nose cone and with a bright red triangular logo painted upon the side, with alien letters emblazoned below it. A string of white, blue and green circles were daubed along the side of the name -- in a strange, confusing pattern of five white, two blue, three green, two white, one green...and blistering from each side of the ship were what were unmistakably weapons.

Claudette had, in her time, seen far too many weapons aimed at her head to make the mistake that they were anything but.

The most striking detail, though, was the fins. The back of the ship had a quartet of what appeared to be glowing, bright red fins that thrust from the edges of the engine, as if the whole ship was trying to pretend to be a shark...

"By the Rings of Saturn!" The Missus exclaimed. "No human hands laid one finger on that rocket, or I'm a monkey's uncle!"

"W-What are those dots?" Claudette stammered.

"Why, they could be anything," The Missus said, rubbing her chin with her finger, frowning slightly as she did so. "This is an alien culture, after all, but-"

"They're kill markers," Mark said, his voice grim. "Chip had a bunch just like em."

The radio crackled and buzzed...and a voice speaking English filled the cabin -- but it spoke English in a way no human ever would. "Ssssservilessssss aboard the unregissssstered atomic rocket identifying itssssssssself assss the Atomo...ssssssurrender immediately or be dessssssssstroyed."

Mark gaped. "How in the fuck-" Claudette winced at his language. "-do the little green men from Mars speak English?"

"They must have been observing our planet...long enough to learn our most commonly broadcast language. We've been sending radio waves out into space for a dog's age, long enough to learn the King's English at the very least," the Missus said, quietly. "But this rocket has more bark than bite, I think. They are too well armored for the Magneto-Catapult, but the great beast of a thing cannot maneuver enough to be proof...against the nuclear pellet coilguns!"

Claudette was already tapping switches. The targeting reticul clacked as the mechanical indicator for the magneto-catapult swapped out for smaller ones that indicated the coilguns. The view jumped as the screen shifted from camera to camera.

"Target the weapon blisters that have their smaller weapons -- they'll be faster on the draw," the Missus said, confidently.

Claudette gulped.

The reticul dinged.

She pulled back on the triggers, her eyes open this time. The whole rocket shuddered as the two ball turret mounted guns rumbled, their magnetic launchers flinging the pellets of depleted nuclear fuel at the enemy rocket. One blister, then another, then another burst apart in a spray of sparks and spraying atmosphere, as if the rocket itself was bleeding. Claudette laughed. "We got s-some good hits, missus!"

"Don't get-"

Whatever Mark had been about to say was drowned out when the Atomo began to scream. The screens flashed and then filled with static as the hull groaned and creaked. Sparks flew from the consoles -- and then the entire bridge shuddered as Claudette threw up her hands to protect her helmet as her console sprayed with sparks as the cathode ray tubes in her screen fractured under a sudden strain.

"What's happening!?" Mark cried out over the radio.

"That, Mark...appears to be the death rays!"

The Missus sounded remarkably calm. Of course, she always did.

Even when things were going so very terribly wrong.

Wrong enough that the whole world seemed to reach out and smash into Claudette's head. Her vision filled with white...

Then went dark.

And then she knew nothing at all.

***

Jasmine Starr had awoken in prison, restraints, and dangerous situations many, many, many times in her life.

This one still took the cake.

When she opened her eyes and groaned, she found that she was restrained not merely by chains...but by nothing at all. Her wrists were held above her head by thick steel bands that wrapped around her wrists, and by others that wrapped around her ankles, and another that looped around her belly. All of them were held a few inches away from a sleek, gray slab of metal that was planted in the center of a dark room, illuminated only by dim red lights that were set in the ceiling. There was a sensation of down, meaning she was either on a planet, in a spinning station...or accelerating. From the faint rumbling noise, she was willing to bet...

The latter.

She hawked, then spat. The spit flew away from her mouth, then dropped onto the ground with a faint splat. She did some quick mental math, frowning. She was able to figure some basic things in her head -- at the very least, guessing at the outline of the truth, if not getting the exact number.

"A third of a gravity," she murmured, softly. "Interesting."

The doors to the chamber opened with a hiss and a click and Jasmine saw her first alien.

Her first two aliens.

The first was almost distressingly human. His skin was more golden brown than even the most tanned Asian -- and the gold was more literal than figurative -- and his facial features had an ethnic cast that was entirely different from even the strangest tribes of Africa or the most obscure civilizations of the Amazon. He was...if someone had taken a human being from the plains of Africa, a hundred thousand years before, and placed them on an alien world, then allowed them those millennia of breeding to undergo without any attempt to bring them back into any human fold. The differences were both subtle and utterly impossible to deny. His head was bald, but she had no idea if it was congenital or the result of shaving, and he had a triangular tattoo on his forehead.

He was clad in a silvery suit of armor with a black under-suit -- as if someone had taken one of her kinetic pressure star suits and added armor to it, all of the armor bright and shiny, making her think that there were things other than camouflage to worry about in the battlefields of space. He had a long, flowing red cape that hung behind him and rippled ominously in the light pull of the thrust gravity, and hanging from his belt were a pair of weapons -- a holstered pistol of some alien make, and what appeared to be a bladeless hilt of a sword...a thrusting sword, if she had any guesses based on the shape of the hilt. Something in the fencing class.

The other alien was more in keeping with what one might expect from the term. He was tall and broad shouldered and completely shirtless, something that Jasmine appreciated immensely, considering the slabs of heavy, male muscle that strained against his scale covered skin. His face and head were crocodilian and his eyes were bright gold, almost glowing in the darkness. His belly was flat and sleek, and he had a long thick tail that burst from above his buttocks -- his groin covered only in a pale white loincloth that clung to an impressive bulge. Despite his primitive looking clothing, he had a baldric that swept along one broad shoulder and cross his heavy chest and hanging from said baldric was several tools: A tucked in dagger that was nearly a short sword, a series of rectangular pockets that could have held anything, and his very own pistol, and finally, at the very edge of his shoulder, there was a conical mask that looked as if it could fit right onto his snout.

"Ah!" Jasmine exclaimed. "Your scales mean you don't need to fear much in the way of vacuum -- and the hull protects from radiation well enough. Or are you resistant to radiation as well?"

"Silence!" The bald man snapped, then cracked his gauntleted hand against her face, the knuckles scraping along her cheek and snapping her head to the side. Jasmine did help with the effect by tossing her head and body with the blow. She sagged, concealing how little the slap had hurt thanks to her quick actions by panting and whimpering softly. The bald man sneered. "You stand in the presence of Commander Vile and his second, Lieutenant Tailscorn."

The Lieutenant inclined his head.

"How did you sneak onto Earth, clone?" Commander Vile growled. "How did you get this war-rocket there? Have you warned the humans? Have you warned the United States or their Soviet Union of our presence? Well? Have you?"

Jasmine frowned, slowly, then lifted her head. "Curious..." She murmured. Then it sparked in her mind. "Two years ago, the reds...detonated their first atom bomb." Her eyes narrowed. "And we just got out of nine years of total war -- you...you know you cannot invade us without incredible losses, eh?" She grinned. "So, you're waiting and scheming up here in orbit, is that it?"

The bald man's eyes were widening. His face set and he snarled. "She's human."

"That ssssssshe ssssssssseemsssssss to be..." the burly lizardman growled.