No need for Rangers
Part One
By: Stainless Steel Rat
Short Prologue: There are those who believe, that life here on Earth, began out there, among the stars. Of course there are people who believe that the earth is flat, or that evil gnomes steal their odd socks, so that isn’t necessarily a telling point. Still, it is possible that even as we speak, brothers (and sisters, this is an equal opportunity gnomic utterance) of those on Earth, fight among the stars in a battle for survival. Of course, if there were no conflict, no dangers in the distant void of space, there would be no need for heroes, no need for courage…
Part one:
A mighty starship fled through fantastically distorted space, a majestic,
oaken tree, with roots that merged into twin, forward stretching nacelles, the
tree itself raised like the mast of a catamaran between them. They had the luster
and curves of polished driftwood, with narrow, aerofoil-like fins as canards
and down-swept tail rudders that fared out behind. It was currently haloed with
vapor and dust from the many wounds in its hull-bark. Surrounding it were over
a dozen silvered, shark-like shapes that dived in and threw beams of golden
light that struck and clung, and clusters of brilliant missiles that burst into
radiance as they hit their target.
At first these attacks had merely spread harmlessly across a transparent shield that surrounded the Treeship, but now, and ever more frequently, they burst through and expended their lambent fury across the hull. Fragments and volatiles sprayed from the carbon scored areas, even flaming where atmosphere vented fast enough. But the ship was not defenseless. Even as it twisted and spun like a dolphin to evade the attacks, dozens of smaller beams of light sprung in all directions from projections on the hull, seeking the silvered cruisers.
A polychromatic sphere was forming between the forward prongs of the twin hulls, and released, homing in on one luckless attacker. When it hit, nothing was left but a burst of high-energy quanta and a few wisps of metal vapour. But even as it retaliated, the Treeship suffered a mortal wound. Three attacking ships struck simultaneously at the crown of the tree and a beam penetrated the overstressed defense field, crisping leaves and turning branches to warped cinders. Fully a fifth of the wide spread treetop was destroyed, and the secondary beam weapons flickered and died.
Within the control sphere of the Treeship, the pilot hung in null-gravity, enfolded in the tendrils that acted as both shock harness and conduits for communication with her vessel. Many holo-image screens hovered before her eyes, matching the distressing data that was feed direct to her mind. Over 34% of the quantum energy conversion membranes destroyed in a single shot, and over half the remainder operating at reduced efficiency. Blocks three and four destroyed, energy and life support vacuoles ruptured… her companion was dying.
Its voice appeared in her mind, with overtones of sorrowful acceptance. ‘Princess Amarisu, you must escape. I estimate my time to total life-loss at under 13 trinary parts.’
The princess shook her head violently and spoke aloud. “No, Fumaro! I can’t leave you! There must be some way we can evade them. Surely we can drop into sub light, alter our vector, go dark. They’ll continue on at 512 kilolights…”
The nearest star was over a light year away, but she and the ship sensed a cluster of Oort comets, and at a level below conscious thought, programmed a vector that would zig-zag through them without reducing speed. One of the metal ships was caught by a snowball at over half a million times light speed, and detonated in a warp implosion as impossible energies formed a singularity.
‘Not possible, their warp-fields match my every alteration. I am expendable. You are not. Without aid from the Lapanians, the Juraian Empire will fall to the rebellion within a year. You must continue your diplomatic mission.’
“But without you… This entire sector is unexplored, that’s why we chose this route in the first place. There are no friendly planets within range, or enemy ones for that matter. How did they find us, anyway?”
‘Analysis indicates multiple groups of 24 ships, such as the one that attacked us, placed to cover all possible trajectories. Over 12 groups would have been required for optimal coverage.’ The Treeship evaded an attempt to box it by the cruisers as it said this.
“The rebellion will loose planets… but they can wait a few months, as long as their manufacturing plants around Corus and Bezel are churning out the darned things…” She stopped herself. “You have a plan?”
Fumaro laid images in her mind. “Just under a binary part ago, we passed within 2 parsecs of a single yellow sun. There was structured electromagnetic flux, indicating an inhabited planet and my warp sensors picked up a faint warp node impressions, quiescent but active. One of them matched a Tree ship. I have prepared an escape pod in number 12 life-support vacuole. I am grafting charged warp nodes to it. You will be in it when I allow the section to rupture in response to an attack. It will fall away with the other debris, ignored. When it is safe, it will carry you back to that star. From there, I am afraid you are on your own.”
Tears ran down the princess’s cheeks. “But what of you, Fumaro?”
‘I will make sure none of these machines comes hunting for you, or report back to their masters. The pod carries my ship-seed. See it is well planted. It has been an honour and a pleasure, dear Amarisu.” The tendrils loosened from around her, letting her float free. An imbalance in the null-gravity field wafted her along woody corridors to a portal which irised open like an unfurling flower. Inside the revealed chamber was a seed-like pod, half again as long as she was tall. It was still attached to the surrounding chamber by its umbilical stalk, and the pulsing, torso sized spheres of warp nodes were clearly crude additions. The top half unfurled to reveal a petal-cushioned cavity, just large enough for a single person.
The princess scrambled in with some trepidation, it seemed a fragile thing to dare deep space. As the external leaves folded over her, and the soporific scent of the inner petals slowed her body processes into hibernation, she though she sensed Fumaro’s voice saying ‘Fortune favour you.’ The chamber outside flooded with the oxygenated, nutrient filled water that was the life-sap of the Treeship.
Fumaro no longer needed to consider life support, or stress levels. As another hit occurred, it started to flare and contract the warp-fields that slid it through space, juddering and yawing in a way that indicated to the simple robot minds of it’s pursuers that it’s warp nodes were unbalanced and it’s control was shot. When it’s defense screen weakened over a relatively unscarred piece of hull a cruiser was quick to take advantage, tearing the hull open with a cruel energy beam. A truly impressive stream of debris sprayed out, including damaged warp nodes, and the Treeship dropped to sublight speeds, it’s warp field vanishing for a fraction of a second, leaving the debris many millions of kilometers behind. Then it rallied, apparently putting everything into flying away at its prior speed.
The escape pod had been cushioned in the centre of the carefully controlled eruption, but lay quiescent. It’s almost non-existent awareness felt the distortion of space caused by it’s parent and the pursuers fade into the distance at over a light year per minute. With it’s limited range it could not sense the disappearance of the distortions as Fumaro diverted all it’s quantum energy into a massive feedback loop, creating an incandescent sphere of destruction a thousand miles across. The light from the explosion, attenuated by the incredible distance, would not reach the pods location for 5 years.
Operating on it’s carefully programmed instructions, it waited a short time after the distortions disappeared, then warped away. With its limited power it could only match a tenth the speed of its parent vessel, requiring hours to cross the thirty light years to its destination. As it drew within mere tens of billions of kilometers, it slowed still further until it coasted towards the sun at slightly below light speed. The outermost layer of seed covers unfurled, to tack using the solar gravity field and to guide it down to the third planet, source of both distinctive free oxygen spectral lines and the slight distortions in space-time that signaled supra-light warp capability.
As it closed with the planet, it’s speed dropped to mere kilometers per second. It crossed the terminator from night into day as it hit the outer fringes of the atmosphere. The extended covers were ripped away, and a sheath of plasma formed around it as it fell. But the next layer of the seed was designed for re-entry, and simply blackened and charred without loosing it’s integrity. It flexed, giving a degree of maneuverability, even as the pod fell. Its remaining mass sensors detected a small flying object near its path and it swerved, gliding like a thrown brick towards the ground. In the last few fractions of a second it enfolded the internal cavity in a null-gravity field, as it’s outer skin hardened under different energy fields. It hit, tearing a long furrow in the stony earth and coming to rest in a self-made crater, plinking slightly as it cooled.
&&&
The Rangerplane was been heading back to the city after a long and tiring mission for the Rescue Rangers. Chip and Gadget were up front, while Monty took up the main part of the back seat. Dale was slumped to one side, dozing, and Zipper was doing the same on Monty’s knees.
“That were a roight bonzer little dust-up!” Monty said, but punctuated his comment with a yawn. “But I’ll be happy to hit the hay, all the same. After a little morsel of the old golden mouse restorer, o’ course. Or two morsels, maybe even three…”
“I think everyone is the same way.” Chip stated. “Who’d of thought a simple string of animal disappearances would turn out to be due to a coven of crows using the creatures’ life forces to animate car horns? Those amplified squawks they gave off almost managed to scare the farmers away from their crops.”
Gadget frowned. “I still say it was some sort of engineering, magic is bunk. Those blare witches were phoney.”
Monty looked off into the distance. “I wouldn’t say that Gadget-luv. I’ve seen a thing or too in my toime, like the toime the High Holy… Moley!” This last word was because he saw a blazing fireball heading for the Rangerplane. Chip saw it too, and hauled the yoke over to the right, as Gadget pulled the lever that turned the wings vertical. The Rangerplane swerved violently, and to their common surprise, so did the fireball, evading them neatly.
“Golly and a half!” was Gadget’s initial response.
“A meteor?” exclaimed Chip as he pulled the craft back onto an even keel.
“Meteors don’t change course to avoid obstacles.” stated Gadget, “unless it had gas pockets that exploded at exactly the right time, but the chances of that are approximately 0.2315 percent… at a rough guess.”
“Aliens!” shouted Dale, grinning from ear to ear.
Chip sighed, “Again?” Once he’d have sneered at the idea, but after two close encounters of the worst kind, he had to admit Dale had a possible solution. He just hoped it wasn’t another superpower giving rock.
“That thing looked to be shedding bits, so I don’t think it’s a major threat. But I guess we gotta check it out.” He started to turn the yoke and the Rangerplane wheeled round.
Dale was practically bouncing up and down. “Of course we do, it could be an escape pod from a stricken starship, carrying a beautiful alien space princess.”
“Yeah, right, you keep telling yourself that.” Chip said, but without any real heat. Dale was still pining after a bat he’d met on a case some months previously. She’d made friends, and possibly more than that, but the call of her own kind had been too strong.
He’d originally been cheering her on, since this would reduce competition for Gadget, and make his friend happy, but when Foxglove had said her goodbyes, seeing how broken up Dale was, he’d switched attitudes about her. He hadn’t seen Dale this bothered about a female since Clarice, back before the Rangers formed. Of course she’d been leading both of them on, and then bailed. He hadn’t played the piano since, but at least it had brought him and Dale back together, even if it was in shared misery.
“Whoever it is may need our help.” said Gadget, pushing the wings to maximum forward thrust.
“Zo letz go!” Zipper buzzed.
Chip glanced across at his fellow pilot. It was becoming more and more apparent that Gadget wasn’t interested in either chipmunk as more than a friend. He sighed. It would have been nice, but it might have wrecked the very real friendship he had with Dale, the way their arguing over Clarice almost had. Only a pair of very god friends could argue and rough house the way they did and still stay together.
Besides, as a friend, Gadget was a very good one. He’d been working very hard to stop thinking of her as a female, just as a buddy. Not easy, he still felt things for her, but he wondered if that was just the remains of his initial infatuation. Anyway, didn’t some human say, if you really loved someone, you had to be willing to let them go.
They dropped down along the path the flaming object had taken. There was moonlight, so you could clearly see the ploughed fields and the copse of wood up ahead. Off to one side a few miles away was a widespread cluster of lights, an army base, and one they knew from their little adventure with the modemiser.
Up ahead you could see the dark shadow scar the object had made when it crashed, with a few glowing embers scattered like stars along it. The question quickly arose in Chip’s mind if there’d be anyone left to help, but he put the thought out of his mind as he helped Gadget land the Rangerplane.
They approached the crash site carefully. There was a hot smell, almost woody and vapour was still rising from it. When they crested the rise, they got their first look at the object, or rather it’s shadowed outline. It was not much bigger than a human fist and shaped rather like a flower bud. Gadget had some sort of device with a window and a little flap which she consulted as they’d gotten nearer.
“It’s not radioactive.” she stated.
Chip looked askance at her. “Do you always carry a gold leaf electroscope around with you?”
“Golly no, only when I want to check radiation levels.”
Dale had bounded down into the crater, waving a white LED torch, and Zipper buzzed overhead. “Wowie zowie!”
“Dale! No, it could still be hot!” Chip yelled.
“Uh uh! It’s okay down here… Hey, this thing’s kind of like a plant!”
“Plant?”, Chip and Gadget chorused, looking at each other, and started moving down, rapidly but with more care than Dale.
In their combined lights, the thing looked even more like a plant, or rather a bud, like that of a rose or sunflower. But the outer surface was scorched, edges crisped.
“Remarkable!” Gadget said, examining the surface closely. “I would never have thought a plant structure could survive this kind of impact, or even a re-entry.”
Dale suddenly blanched. “Ohmigosh! Supposing it’s like the Audbery 2 from ‘Little Store of Scariness’! We gotta get outta here before it wakes up and eats us!” He started to run back up the crater slope only to run into Monty.
“Hold up mate!” he said, grabbing onto Dale and lifting him up by the scruff of his Hawaiian shirt. “We don’t ‘ave toime to panic ‘ere.”
“There’s always time to panic!” Dale responded, legs still moving.
“Holey Moley! I think something’s happening!” Both Gadget and Chip took several steps back up the slope as the outer petals started to unfurl. There was weak luminescence from the cracks that started to appear. Finally the petals peeled back to reveal a cavity, lit by a dying radiance, and resting in the centre, on softer, more fleshy petals was a beautiful female chipmunk, eyes closed, but clearly alive, as her chest was moving up and down.
They could tell this because she was as unclothed as the most primitive forest dweller, apart from bracelets on her forepaws, and a headband, simple, but with ornate geometric patterns. Her fur had a green cast to it that wasn’t from the internal light, as their torches showed the same thing.
Dale turned to Chip. “Told you so!”