The Hierarchy of Now and Forever Ch. 03

"I was," John said, his voice hoarse. "Have either of you heard of a Guardian Angel?"

"Course I have," Dr. Carothers said, grumping. "I went to Sunday school, better than you ever did, you whippersnapper."

"Not that kind of Guardian Angel," John said, rubbing his throat. Dr. Darling offered him a glass of water and he drank with relief, feeling his discomfort fade as his erection did. He stopped wincing. "An alien. Some kind of Space Opera Field born entity?"

Dr. Darling nodded, slowly. "There are legends of such creatures. But none have ever been seen by credible witnesses."

"Well. I may be your first," John said. "Before I check out, can you deep scan my brain with the thought analyzer and store my dream? I think Dr. Darling and Lieutenant Sheyshan will want to study it. I think you both will want to study it a lot."

He looked from Dr. Darling to Dr. Carothers. "As for you..."

"If you're going to ask me when you can leave the biobed, the answer is not until I'm done checking you over," he said, frowning. "We need to be sure you're not carrying anything infectious. But once you're cleared for duty..." He made a face as the thought scanner, swung down by an eager Dr. Darling, clicked into place around John's head. "...well, I'd still prefer you take a week or three off. But since that's not going to happen."

John chuckled.

"This will sting a little," Dr. Darling warned him.

"How bad-" John started.

The bridge crew heard the scream.

***

"So, you're insane?" Trianna asked as John stepped onto the bridge with her.

"Not yet," he said, amused. "Not until I start seeing her in real life. Or, she can't prove she's not just a figment of my mind's imagining." His finger reached up and tapped the small rectangular metal stud that had been placed against his temple. "That's what this is for?"

"Ah, a mental scanner!" Shey said, stepping over from her science console - the rest of the bridge crew turning to watch their captain return. "It'll alert Dr. Darling if anything strange happens?"

"Precisely," John said, then smiled wryly. "Don't worry. I don't plan to be all protagonist-ey about this. If anything strange, anything at all, happens I'll tell all of you can you can stun me and ship me to the medical ward so the professionals can figure out what is going on."

Trianna chuckled, while Albert grinned from his console. "Can we stun you any time we want and just pretend you were acting weird?"

"No," John said, dryly as he took his seat.

"Good to know," Albert said. Then, frowning. "Sir, we're almost done decelerating - we'll be out of Tier Two and in orbit around Pluto within the next five minuets."

"Anything more on the Swiffo?" John asked.

"Not yet, sir," Shey said. "The Swiffo are the galaxy's best hiders. Even when we Sensurians were a part of the Totality, we didn't know where the Swiffo came from, where they were going, what they were doing, and even what they looked like. They only communicated to us through blacked out screens and radio. We don't even know what they did in the war. They were Battle-Thralls, but we never saw them doing any fighting." She frowned. "Of course, if they're the sneakiest sons of bitches in space, as others have claimed, then their fighting would all be subtle too, no?"

"True," John said, his frown intensifying. "And yet, we picked up their signal..."

"Maybe they made a mistake?" Albert asked.

"Or it's a trap," Eugene said, his voice grim.

"My thoughts exactly," John said. "Trianna, make sure our guns are warmed up when we arrive around Pluto."

"Aye, sir," Trianna said.

Shey bent over her console, continuing her scanning sweeps. John remembered what she had said before - that there was a chance that the Sensurians might be reborn once more. He wanted to ask her for more details...but, well, they were about to arrive at a potentially dangerous situation, and he wanted to be focused. Attentive.

Exciting, isn't it! A giggling, familiar voice spoke to his left. John swung his head around - but saw nothing there. No one. And before he could speak, the Excalibur burst from Second Tier and into Realspace around the beautiful, hauntingly isolated world of Pluto. The planetoid sat nearly as far from Sol as her sister dwarf worlds: Charon, Ophedius and Cliner, the last of which had only been discovered when FTL capable ships had traveled beyond the solar system for the first time. The world's surface showed up as glossy purple and gray on the false color screen, and Shey isolated a blip of glowing white power-emitting artifice on the polar region.

"That's the Swiffo ship, it looks like," she said.

John considered telling everyone he was hearing voices. He touched the metal plate - and there was no chirrup or alert. His mental scanner hadn't gone off...and damn it, he did have to at least try and guide his crew through this moment. Star Captain's had a job to do, and that job included first contact situations. He sat up a bit more in his chair and said, firmly. "Send a radio beam down to that blip. All channels."

"Done," Shey said.

"Swiffo ship, this is the UNN Excalibur," John said. "We are the flagship of the New Interstellar Alliance. We come in peace and wish to communicate with you."

Silence. Nothing but the grainy whistle of distant stars, crackling and buzzing through the radio system.

"Nothing, sir," Shey said. "I'm doing a more focused scan."

He, Trianna and Eugene walked to her console, where she threw up the scan. Trianna grunted. "That's definitely a starship all right. But we've never seen a Swiffo ship - for all we know, it's one of their Planetkiller Doomships that can crack our star in half over its knee." She said, while Eugene shook his head, leaning forward. The ship looked a bit like a bunch of rocks that had been glued to an over sized oyster. The rocks each were emitting the energy patterns that made it clear some were engine emitters, some were beam emitters, some shield projectors. John frowned.

"Well, wait," John said. "Eugene, do you see it?"

"Either the Swiffo use technology so different from every other species out there or..." Eugene said. "Or they have no fighter bays. I don't even see a shuttle bay. Shit, I don't even see an airlock on this thing."

"Running a bioscan," Shey said, her fingers playing along the controls. She frowned, then turned back to John - the motion sending a tiny spurt of her pheromones up despite her masker. He forced down the immediate reaction, focusing on her words. "Sir, I'm detecting one life sign aboard."

"A single Swiffo on a single Swiffo ship," John said. "This is getting stranger and stranger."

They all regarded the image.

"I think we need to knock and say hi," John said. "Call up the marines."

***

The United Nations Navy and the United Nations Marine Corps had always been two co-equal partners - but on Zeta Colony, there had not been enough training and material to really fully reproduce the Marines. There had been some security officers and some side arms, but none of the powered exoskeletal armor, none of the sophisticated combat weaponry, and none of the intense training that had made the UNMC so dangerous and effective in the war against the Zemturga Totality. Fortunately, Commander Lagrange on the Starbase had been able to help.

Of the several thousand people that worked aboard the former Zemturga starbase in orbit around Earth, there had been enough who had been UNMC veterans to cobble together a platoon. They didn't have the schematics for their power armor, but they had the designs for their side arms and for armored space suits - and they had enough raw material for the starbase's vast fabricators to get to work, spitting out rifles, armor plating, and uniforms to outfit them. Stationing them aboard the vast Excalibur hadn't even cut into their living space!

Thus, Terrain Vehicle 1 was launched, piloted by Delta Vee, with a load of six tough and gorgeous space marine girls aboard. Each one had traded in the silky gowns and slave collars of a pleasure serf for hardened armor and picked up their old ranks: Sergeant Danielle "Devi" Delacroix had a cigar dangling from her lips as she watched through the screen, her armored hands gripping the handles above Delta's head. She rocked left and right as the TV1 screamed down towards Pluto.

"All right, ladies!" she said, turning from the screen to face the fire team. "We've going down to knock, politely, on the door of this Totality spaceship. We're going to be ready for a fight, but the Captain wants us to take whatever Zemturga slave in there alive so we can question them. Prep for cryogenic fighting out there, I don't want to lose any of your fine asses by stepping on a hydrogen ice patch. Leslie!"

Lisa "Leaf" Leslie jerked her head up from where she had been worrying at the strap of her hip-armor.

"Stop fucking tugging at it and get it seated," Devi said, reaching down to yank the strap firm.

"Y-Yes, Sergeant."

"Ah, I love being in the marines again," Devi said, taking the cigar from her mouth, then tucking it into the vest pocket of her vac-armor, before shouting. "Hats on!"

Visors clicked into place. She swung hers down last.

"Check seals."

The marines started to sound off.

At the front, Delta glanced back.

Somehow, despite wearing bulky armor plating and a shapeless spacesuit, Devi managed to have just the most amazing rack.

"Keep watching where you're flying, sir," Devi said, in that tone of voice NCOs had when their officers were being idiots.

Delta jerked her head back forward as the TV1 plunged towards the mound of silt and ice that was where the Swiffo ship was concealed. The forward engines spurted once, twice, three times and the TV1 settled down, fully ensnared by the light gravity of Pluto's dark surface. Delta flicked a few switches. "Bringing on the floods. Good luck, girls," she said as the back of the shuttle opened with a hiss and the marines went bounding down the ramps. They moved with the eerie, fluid grace of anyone used to low-G maneuvering, and fanned out wide to give themselves plenty of room if the Totality ship opened fire.

Nothing happened.

They shuffle-walked forward through the barely-present atmosphere, coming closer and closer to the hiding place. Devi narrowed her eyes as she held up her hand - something tingling along her spine. Suspicion. A worry. A thought that something was ahead of her. Something that she couldn't put her finger on.

In the TV1, Delta frowned. Her eyes flicked down to her console. She saw a faint flicker on her scopes. She slapped her palm down on the com. "Marines, down!"

"Down, down, down!"

Devi flung herself forward - her backpack jets spraying and hissing as they sent her face first into the ice and dust. Plumes of it shot upwards from where she landed - and the rest of her marines dropped as well, burying their faces down as the energy spike that had been registered came to its culmination: The mound of dust and ice ahead of them burst upwards as the clamshell swung open and the Swiffo ship revealed the glowing pearl at its heart. A beam of pale white light shot from the pearl, skimmed over the heads of the marines, and hit the TV1, which rocked hard. Delta let out a single scream of shock as the TV1 slumped over and crashed onto its side.

"Open fire!" Devi shouted.

The marines came up to their knees and started to pepper the clamshell with small arms fire. Bullets sparked and winked off the side, harmlessly. Devi stood, then leaped once - her powerful spring augmented by a jet from her boost pack, and her drop accelerated similarly. She hit the ground like she was on Earth, rolled, and clutched to keep herself from continuing to roll. She peered into the cockpit of the TV-1, where she saw that Delta was sprawled against the glass, a bloom of blood marking the impact of her head with the hardened, transparent material.

"Shit," Devi hissed.

"This is Excalibur actual, what's going on down there?"

"The TV's hit, we've got a wounded pilot," Devi said.

Delta squirmed inside, her eyes flickering up. Despite her being upside down and mashed up against the glass, she held up her hand and gave a thumbs up to Devi.

"She's still alive," Devi said.

"I got a lock on my DP-P!" Helen "Hat Trick" Haunt said as she came up to a crouch, her shoulder mounted-micro missile launcher clicking home. "We got TNs and ship poppers, ready to go!"

A sudden squeal of static exploded through their radios and Devi clapped her palm to her helmet. She winced and hissed through the pain...then a voice squeaked through the radio, high pitched and terrified sounding. "Oh! Hello humans! I did not see you out there! I am Quip Wip, an innocent Swiffo trader on this humble planetoid. How might I assist you today?...oh dear! It seems my ship's entirely automated not under my control defensive systems has opened fire on you. I, uh...beg your apologize for this action which was not me panicking and slamming my palm upon the Patent Swiffo Kill All Scary Things Button."

"...can I nuke him, Sarge?" Helen asked.

"This is Captain Tangent, you cannot nuke the Swiffo," an authoritative voice spoke over their coms.

Helen grumbled under her breath - picked up by her radio mic more clearly than she might have wanted. "I wanted to freaking nuke him."

***

Captain Tangent drummed his fingers on his knee, watching the screen ahead of him. It remained black.

"Are you sure you cannot see me?" Quip Wip asked, his voice trembling and tremulous. "How odd! It appears that my video cameras are entirely on the fritz. Haha! Oh well. I suppose they'll buy that, eh, Wilbur? What do you mean the micr-"

The sound clicked off.

"Captain, I'm sensing a great deal of wackiness," Trianna said, her finger going to her temple - as if she, or anyone else on the ship, had ever passed their Rikan-Kamph Esper sensitivity tests. "Possibly with zaniness to come."

John sighed. "Captain Quip Wip, we have done a full scan of your 'merchant' ship. It has enough room for nearly six hundred Swiffo, and enough armament to put a serious dent in a battleship, not to mention stealth systems that make ours look like playing around with tinfoil and string. Cut the crap. You're a Battle-Thrall of the Totality."

A piteous sigh came from the black screen. "That is, sadly, the truth. We Swiffo, despite our most ardent wishes, were made into Totality Battle-Thralls in the year Quelling Quin Qo, which by your calendar would be the year 5772."

"Which calendar?" John asked. "The UN dating system hadn't reached the year 3,000, let alone 5,000."

"Oh. Uh. One of them. We're not entirely sure." Quip Wip said, a bit apologetically. "We picked it up the last time we met a human, when we were swinging by in the carefree days before we became Totality Battle Thralls and were independent Swiffo, doing as we pleased in the galaxy." He sighed, slowly. "Those were the days. According to my historical documents, the fellow was rather irate about being taken from your planet. He was in the midst of some kind of religious schism and declared us to be demons. An incredibly impolite reaction to being rescued and resuscitated for our interrogations - that's why we chose him! We thought no one would notice. But we did return him after five or six of our days. And he never called us back once."

John rubbed his temple. "This is all...very fascinating, I'm sure," he said, thinking of the many stories of historical abductions - and wondered which poor luckless farmer in the 1950s or 1960s had been returned to life and brought back after a week of being stuck on a flying clam-shell. That was, of course, assuming the calendar they had gotten was...he had no idea how they had gotten the dates so wrong. But that was neither here nor there. He sat up a bit. "What are you doing on Pluto?"

"Oh! Simple! I am...ahem...undergoing...a...complicated...and...extremely believable religious tradition of my people. One that, ah, requires me to stay home and not bother anyone nor be executed for any of my various crimes." The voice paused, then whispered to someone off mic. "I think they'll definitely buy that one, Wilbur."

"Who is Wilbur?" Shey asked. "We're only detecting one life sign down there."

"Ah! Er! Uh! That is to say, uh, no one! I'm speaking to no one, definitely not a space suit helmet with a smiley face painted on it. Yes."

John sighed. "Quip Wip, we are not a part of the Zemturga Totality. We do not recognize its laws or do we intend to enforce them. You can relax and calm down."

There was a long pause.

"You are sure?" Quip Wip asked.

"Yes," John said.

"Quite sure?" Quip Wip asked.

"Yes!" John exclaimed. "We are flying in an alien battleship under the flag of the New Interstellar Alliance. Our plan is to destroy the Totality in its...totality!" He laughed. "If there's anything we can do to demonstrate this, then we'll do it. But in exchange, all we want is your trust and honesty."

"...you are very sure?"

"Yes!" John said.

"You will even go so far as to pinkie promise?" Quip Wip asked.

John pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes, fine," he said. "I will pinkie swear that we will not ever, in a thousand years, give you over to the Zemturga or any government that recognizes their authority."

Silence.

The silence stretched. And stretched. And stretched.

"Are you-"

"Yes we're fucking sure!" Trianna exclaimed. As she did so, the entire rest of the bridge crew joined in a chorus of various forms of profane assurance. Once the noise died down, Quip Wip sounded nearly frantic.

"Okay! Okay! I was just making positively, absolutely totally sure I was not about to be exploded by lasers from orbit," Quip Wip said. Then, slowly, he sighed. "Okay. Now. Promise, you will not react too badly at seeing my visage. We in the Swiffo learned, many centuries before, the value of discretion and careful security."

"I promise," John said, smiling.

"Okay..." Quip Wip gulped.

The screen brightened.

John sat back in his seat.

Trianna's jaw dropped.

Albert blinked.

Eugene did a straight up double take.

Shey put her hand on her mouth and whispered. "Oh my."

Dr. Darling, from her position in the civilian science section, took her glasses off, in slow shock.

Reclining on a gold filigreed chair, with a spacesuit helmet perched nearby with a smiley face painted on it, was the first Swiffo any non-Swiffo had seen for centuries. Quip Wip had long, flowing golden hair framing teal green features and plush lips. Her neck was elegant and slender and flowed smoothly into shoulders, bust, waspish waist, and long, long legs. But while her form was anthropomorphic to the ludicrous, sensual extreme, her particulates were that of a kind of pseudo-crustacian. She had hardened plates of teal chitin covering her body in strategic places, interlocking and smoothly merging into rubbery flesh, giving her the appearance of a brightly colored statue, or humanized sea life. Her eyes were midnight black and she wore nothing at all, save for a small torque of metal around her throat.

"Hello," she said, her voice still male and high pitched and squeaky.

"...w-why...do you sound like that?" John stammered.

"Sound like what?" Quip Wip blinked, then took her torque off. She held it up, blinked, then hastily turned a dial. When she put it back on and spoke, her voice was a smokey, husky contralto that played along John's spine like fire. "I didn't sound like anything at all, Captain, I always sound like this. Shut up."

"Y-Your camera is on," Shey said.

"Oh. Right." Quip Wip coughed, then sat up. "You can see why we chose to disguise ourselves." Her hands cupped her hefty breasts, and let them jiggle slightly, her rubbery nipples hardening slightly as she pressed her chitin covered thighs together. "When we were first conquered, almost a hundred and fifty of your years ago, we saw what the Zemturga did to certain species. So, our high council made sure to conceal ourselves from their sensors."