Emperor Fred goes Postal AAR

[2guncohen]

Im wondering if he will clone himself by accident  [:D]

[Gertjan]

Good story, very innovative. Please continu!

[Magpius]

If I recall, didn't you do a really kooky AAR with AT, and a banana republic?
btw The pig's arse  comment gives you away as Aus. not Brit. Given the age of the expression you're probably mid 30's +.
(assuming you remember rubbery figures and Big John E.  So much for profiling...)
love the AAR. you got a good style going here.
(although I cringe at the goodaye's [:'(])

[lancer]

Shuttled my way up to the Zion Space port. Big. Really big.

Could see ships being built in the mess of construction yards. Activity everywhere. Freighters, fleet units, Constructors, Explorers. All milling around. Coming and going. Passenger transfer pods crisscrossing hither and yon. Robot drones hovering. Tractor tugs huffing and puffing. Cargo sleds dancing in synchronised ballet.

Absolutely awe inspiring. The cogs of my empire meshing, turning. Gearing up. The raw bone structure of the body of conquest. Human ingenuity and industry writ large upon the stars.

Pride. That’s what I felt. Overwhelming pride.

It may not be my empire at present but that would change. I was confident that all that lay before me would eventually be mine. Nobody else’s.

MINE.







Son of IGOR interrupts.

Squirts up a message to my Com Log stating that the Prime Minister is prowling the corridors of the Palace hollering for his missing son. He’s knocked on my door several times in the last hour.

Nice to know but do I need to deal with this? Is it a concern given that I’m about to depart for places elsewhere?

Not sure.

While I’m planning on an extended space voyage at some point I’ll need to return. Is the Prime Minister a key player in the power structure? I thumb a few keys and flash up the relevant dossier.







Son of Igor has done a great job with these. A big help.

Represents the will of the people. Well they happen to be my only viable support base. I think that I need to action this. Can’t afford to have him offside.

How best to deal with the whiskered one?

I note that he is a full-on pedant.

Isn’t ever going to be the life of the party. Wouldn’t even be serving the drinks. No, he’d be standing in a corner pontificating over the weather and the symbolism of his bowel movements. Turning it into the corner of doom. Death-by-boredom within a three metre radius.

Ah, but he’s squeamish. Parents must have kept reality at bay. Too much for his delicate sensibilities.

I can work with that.

After surreptitiously relocating to the nearest off-limit droid storage closet I dictate a message for Son of Igor to tidy up and send to Mr. Whiskers.



“Dear Prime Minister,

It grieves me greatly to hear of your son’s disappearance. While I am not currently at the Palace rest assured that I am leaving no stone … Blah, blah, blah.

Sincerely,

Emperor Fred



Second message. To be circulated anonymously to the more conspiratorial inclined third-rung media outlets. Use enough cut-outs to make tracing difficult but not impossible.

Originate from Fleet intra-net.

Admiral Wanda’s office.







That should keep his whiskers quivering. An excess of worry and you can’t think straight.

By the time he untangles that mess he’ll have forgotten all about good ‘ole Emperor Fred.


* * *

I prowl Zion Star port. Pacing up and down.

Poised on the delicate cusp of a decision. Son of Igor conveniently provided false authorisation papers for me to board both a Frigate and an Explorer.

Can’t decide which would be best.

The Frigate would be an excellent introduction to bug-blasting as rumour has it that pirates abound and some action is virtually guaranteed. Frigates are powerful and well protected. I would be safe.

The Explorer, on the other hand, would take me out of this system into the wilds of deep space. Voyaging where no Fred has been before.

Who knows what is out there?

But dangerous. Very dangerous. Way out there on a limb in a fragile little spaceship, beyond the realm of rescue from Admiral Wanda and her Royal Navy.

In the end my urge to experience the vastness of space overrides my desire to feel the thwis-thwis-thwis of beam weapon discharges beneath my feet.

I scan the departure board for the next pod out to the Explorer.


To be continued...

Lancer

[2guncohen]

To go where no Emperor has gone before [:D]
* Humms the star trek song *

[Shark7]

Join the Imperial Navy...
See exciting new worlds...
Visit intriguing wonders...
Meet stange new species...
and KILL THEM!

I have a feeling Emperor Fred and I would get along quite well...we both have the same feelings towards the vast bug-filled regions of space...'Free Fire Zone'. [:D]

[lancer]

Nobody has ventured beyond the home system. Nobody who has returned to tell the tale.

Captain Wally of the Survey Corps and the crew of the “Lazy Sal” will be the Christopher Columbus of the 28th century. And I, Emperor Fred, am along for the ride.

Purely in an advisory capacity of course. Captain Wally was very clear on that.

Insisted on confirming my authorisation to tag along with Fleet HQ.

Naturally I told him that this wasn’t necessary and that few are chosen for the honour that has been bestowed upon him by my esteemed presence.

Captain Wally appreciated the honour but said he would check with HQ regardless.

Oh, but this is a secret assignment. The People must not know that their Emperor is leaving them, if only temporarily. Fleet HQ is riven with leaks and back-sliders whose only wish is to supplement their income by tipping off the press.

Woe betide the man who sailed off into the distance in a blaze of publicity with the People’s beloved Emperor onboard and whom failed to return.

His family would be lynched. His dog fed to the pigs and his name forever immortalised as the yellow-bellied coward who failed in his duty to protect his Emperor.

Captain Wally, after careful consideration, decided that Fleet HQ were busy people and best left to get on with running the Royal Navy without unnecessary interruptions.



* * *


With that little misunderstanding out of the way, I take an interest in my surroundings.

Captain Wally is a man who takes pride in his work.

I find myself on the receiving end of a serious gush of enthusiasm as he demonstrates the finer points of the SS “Lazy Sal”

Straightening up, squaring his shoulders, Captain Wally commences the conversation with a salute.

“I must officially welcome you onboard Sir!”

Yes, yes. No need to call me 'Sir'. Emperor Fred will do. Tell me about your ship.

“EX-1 Recon Probe, Sir! Finest ship in the known galaxy.”

Mmmm. Given that most of the galaxy is currently a blank slate that’s no great recommendation.

I’m tempted to tell Cpt. Wally to relax as he is beginning to tense up and go all sphincter-faced on me but instead I make the mistake of asking about the “Lazy Sal’s” weapon load-out.

“None.”

I stare at him.

“Explorer Sir. We don’t carry weapons. Our job is to explore.”





One thing you can always count on with the military is that they have as much mental flexibility as a Lemming racing towards the nearest cliff.

Captain Wally is going exploring. Hence he doesn’t need weapons. Therefore exploring must be an activity devoid of all danger. Ipso facto explorers, in Cpt. Wally’s diminutive mental world, don’t ever die.

Damn.

I should have opted for the Frigate.

Captain Peanut Brain here and his defenceless ship are going to get me killed.

Sensing my reservations Cpt. Wally moves to reassure me.

“Sir, we may not have weapons, or armour, or stealth, or electronic countermeasures or damage control but we do have .... “

I could hear Cpt. Wally cueing the drum roll, building to a crescendo as he pauses before the Big Revelation in Intergalactic Safety that was about to be revealed – Dum Dum Da Dar!!!

“….shields. Yes Sir, we have a mighty Cordovian HX100 shield system.”

Shields. Or more correctly Shield singular.

Before boarding the S.S “Lazy Sal” I had Son of Igor beam up some equivalent stats for naval vessels currently in service.

The Venator class Escort had a similar shield system but it also had armour and a couple of the latest Maxos Blasters. The Praefectus class Frigate had two complete HX100 shields rigged in tandem along with extensive armour backed up by a hefty four Maxos Blasters.

The “Lazy Sal” was looking a mite lonely and useless when it came to a knife fight.

“Fuel Cells!” shouted Cpt. Wally, maintaining the rush of good news. “We’ve got four – that’s one, two, three, Four! – FS100 Fuel cells. Enormous capacity. We can go anywhere, anytime.”

Like a toothless, clawless tiger with a great set of lungs.

Of course Cpt. Wally didn’t see it like that. He was too busy hitting the high points of interstellar kamikazidom.

“Yes Sir, we have SIX Proton thrusters. Yep, Six of the ‘em. Not those flaky pastry ZX-2’s that were so prone to thermal stress cracking, no Sir. We have the ZX-3. Six! Acceleration of 7.3 per second.”

I noticed dribble in the corner of his mouth. Traces of froth.





“Did I mention the turn rate? No? An amazing 17 degrees per second. Couple of J3 Thrust Vectors take care of that. No other ship in the fleet can turn like us. Yes Sir, the Lazy Sal has got a solid lock on turns. Full inertial damping. Don’t even feel it on the bridge. Smooth. Super smooth.”

Huge grin. Satisfied expression. Cat with more cream than it can handle.

But the wonders hadn’t ceased.

“FS100 Fission reactor. Power. Lots of power. Cooks it up and pumps it out. Gerax Hyperdrive takes that power and thumps the pedal to the metal. They use to use Uranium for fuel. Nowadays it’s pure Caslon.”





Served straight, in a dirty glass, I added quietly to myself.

The S.S “Lazy Sal” and Captain Wally.

What a combination.





To be continued...

Lancer

[2guncohen]

[:D] +1rep

[thiosk]

Has the makings of the best AAR ever.

Those advisor images should totally be used when leaders are implemented/

[Dadekster]

Yep, this confirms it. You definitely have a more avid and vivid imagination than me [:)]

Great read and wonderful humor. Keep it up.

[the1sean]

great stuff! keep it coming, I'm hooked =]

[lancer]

Son of Igor updates my ComLog with a raft of reports.

The Angry Ant has sent me one regarding the perilous state of our resource stockpile. Telling me I should resolve it pronto.

I don’t know. One moment I’m nothing but a puppet with convenient strings to yank and the next I’m a handy hatstand to hang the blame upon.







Resources. Who cares?

Son of Igor thinks I should. Tells me it’s vitally important to load up on all kinds of weird stuff. Like Krypton.

I need a lump of that to put under my pillow. Might help.

Except it’s a gas. Maybe I can inhale.

The Minister for Industry I add to my list of imminent personnel changes. Permanent changes. Like a trip to the cemetery permanent.

Once I’m fully in charge, of course.

Another report that catches my eye is the population make-up of the planet. Turns out there is a healthy 8.4 billion people beetling about the surface on their daily grind.

No need to worry about finding volunteers to colonise the great beyond or enough grunts for cannon fodder.







Disturbingly only 5.5 billion of them are human. The other 2.9 billion are toads.

That is an awful lot of amphibian *ssholes clogging up the planet.

Not that I’m against foreigners or foreign species. No sir, not me. I just don’t like anything that isn’t human.

It’s not natural, is it? If toads want to talk and do whatever else they get up too then that’s their business but they shouldn’t be doing it on my home planet.

Go find a muddy pond to copulate in somewhere else in the galaxy.

It gets worse. The toads are breeding up at three times the rate of we humans. It’s clear that they aren’t watching television (toadvision?) or doing much else other than humping their little froggy brains silly. Disgusting.

I glance at the population projections that Son of Igor has attached to the report. In ten years there will be a sex-addled toad for every human. By year plus eleven we will be outnumbered. By year plus twenty, toads will rule the world.

I’m sitting on a demographic time bomb. The human race is staring down the barrel of imminent toad-a-geddon.

A sudden thought pops into my head. The toads don’t like me.

I glance at the dossier on the Quameno ambassador. The toads, it seems, not only don’t like me, they want me gone. Wouldn’t be surprised if the toads have a contract out on me. Doubtless some toady hit man is planning on sliming me to death.







Well they can’t get me here on the “Lazy Sal”.

I fire back a query to Son of Igor and ask him to find out how many votes do toads get in the High Council.

Surely they wouldn’t have equal voting rights? Would they?

It might, I resolve, pay to have a quiet chat with General Huss when I return and see what military options exist for ‘rationalising’ the toad population.

As in rationalising them all back into the mud. In bits.


* * *


Zion recedes into the distant and the “Lazy Sal” lifts itself bodily out of the planets gravity well prior to engaging hyper drive.

With a last wistful look in the rear view mirror I strike up a conversation with Senior Ensign Spence, the ship’s resident Astrophysicist.

“Used to be a Lieutenant, you know” says the irrepressible S.E Spence who seems oblivious to my exalted status. “Had a few hiccups with the pills. They busted me down.”

A dark frown crossed S.E Spences face. “Raging junkie I was. Couldn’t lie straight in bed. Happens to us Astrophysicists. The curse of space. Too big you see. Vast. Stare at all that blackness for too long and it swallows you up.”

“So you want to know where we are going? Damn good question.” Spence stares at my pockets. I notice a nasty twitch. “Hey, you’re the Emperor guy, aren’t you?”

I let that one slide through to the goalkeeper.

There are times when it pays to roll with the punches. Marooned on the “Lazy Sal” with Captain ‘I-Love-the-Navy’ Wally for the foreseeable future I need access to certain information.

“Must be a real honour being the Emperor”, continued S.E Spence, lowering his voice to a sibilant hiss. “Wouldn’t happen to have any of those really expensive pocket rockets in there would you?”

Taking my lack of response as a negative Spence tried again. “Bonzai Brain Burners? Huh? Not even a lonely hit of Purple Circuit Zapper?”

Sensing an opportunity I hand Spence a couple of my heart tablets. Ordinary, run-of-the-mill heart tablets.

Spend time in the plastic coffin and no matter how much shock therapy they give to your heart muscle it eventually atrophies. One tablet, every six hours, for the rest of your life.

Optional of course. Only if you want it to keep pumping.

Told Spence they were something new, ‘Galactic Gangers’, guaranteed to scramble your Hypothalamus. Soaks it in so much dopamine that it forgets Christmas. Very special. Very exclusive.

S.E Spence forever grateful. Face twitching worse than a rodent with its head in the pepper pot.

Made an ally. Always useful in difficult situations.

Spence pockets the pills. “Yeah, so where were we?”

We were about to go somewhere.

“Right. Got it. So this is how it works. I tell the Skipper where to go and that’s what happens.”

Pause.

“Hey, no need to stare at me like that. Stars. It’s all about the stars. We are looking for planets suitable for humans. Certain stars have a greater probability of hosting the kind of planets we are looking for.”

S.E Spence flashes up a diagram on the nearest info-panel.







“Pretty simple. Stars have three main characteristics.” I notice Spence was holding four fingers in front of me, not three. Had he swallowed one of my pills already?

“Size. There are big stars and there a little stars. The big mothers are all James Dean. Live fast, die young. For a star that is. Little guys live forever.”

I can vouch for that.

“Colour. That’s number two. Different colours represent different temperatures. And luminosity. Big word that. How bright the suckers are. The really bright hot stars are coloured blue. The cold, frigid, you-don’t-want-to-sleep-with-them stars are all red.”

Spence’s face became all puzzled and philosophical. Frowns going every which way. Waves of thought reflecting off rock walls in unpredictable patterns. “Just…,” he paused, laboriously assembling the sentence, “…like the broads.”

Excuse me?

“Red haired broads. They’re all grannies with an aging complex. They fend it off with fancy nanotech antigens but sooner or later it catches up with ‘em.” Spence winked at me. “Nearer to dead, brighter the red!”

Spence made a slashing motion across his throat to emphasise his point. “Can’t date a granny with a Zimmer frame, can you?”

Lot of ageism happening here. Old and wrinkly grannies I can sympathise with.

“But the Blue haired ones are all crazy,” continued Spence. “Gotta be to have hair like you’ve just stepped out of the sheep dip. Crazy broads are hot. Everybody knows that.”

I nudge Spence back on topic before his wacky libido takes charge of his brain.

“Right, yeah, so…. What we want is a Star that is on the Main Sequence.” He points to the diagram and traces out a diagonal line.

“These are the stars that are living the good life. Others are all too young or too old. Now we narrow it down to stars on the Main Sequence that might have a suitable planet. These ones.” Pointing again. “G-class Yellow stars. Like back home.”

So what, I ask, makes them special.

“Water, man. It’s all about water. Planet needs to have liquid water for us humans to do our thing. Ever tried to knock back a nice cold glass of dust? Ain’t going to do it, is it?”

Try drinking Tea.

“Need to find us a G-Star and then look in the Liquid Water Zone to see if anybodies home, planet-wise.”

The what?

“Liquid Water Zone, man. Planet too close to its sun and water gets burnt off. Too far away and it freezes ‘cause it’s too damn cold. Gotta be in the Z-o-n-e.”

Spence sniffs loudly and wipes his nose with his sleeve.







“G-class Star has an oven setting just right for the Zone. Other types of Stars generally don’t.”

Another sniff. I’m not sure whether to lend him my handkerchief or punch his nasal passages flat.

S.E Spence starts sniffing up a storm. “Whole damn star might be a bright blue Bunsen burner.” Sniff.

Becoming a mite annoying. Can’t stand sniffers.

“- Or a measly little red runt with barely enough heat to light a fire if you were standing on it.” Sniff.

Really annoying.

“- Orange MS star might stretch to it but if you’re after the next human-friendly planet then it’s G-class, baby, all the way.”

Sniff.

Jeez. If it wasn’t for my feeble physique I’d stiff left Spence in the snotter. Instead I drop a heart pill on the deck.

Plop!

Like a hunting dog picking up a scent S.E Spence immediately stops waffling and swivels his head, searching for the source of the noise..

I wait until he bends over then I knee him in the nose.

Lot of blood and wet spluttering sounds.

No more sniffs.

I do the right thing and give the man my handkerchief.





To be continued...

Lancer

[lancer]

The Toads have got me worried.

The more I think about them the more I realise that I can’t afford to let this issue simmer and stew. Every minute that passes means another bucketful of slimy toads on Zion.

Flicking through the pile of reports Son of Igor beamed up to me I dig out the one from General Huss. A simple request to expand the armed forces by another three battalions.

There is an attached note from the Chancellor Charles to say that we can’t afford such luxuries and – in big red letters – why do we need them anyway?

‘A peaceful race such as ours,’ states Chancellor Charles at his pompous best, ‘has no need for legions of vicious storm troopers’.

No doubt. Good point Chuck. Let’s issue the entire population with ‘Give Peace a Chance’ fridge magnets.

Project a massive aura of Love. Guaranteed to repel all Alien invasions.

I am, of course, expected to rubber stamp the Chancellors demand that this request be rejected.

Personally I see a pressing need for a strong military in the face of a rampaging toad population.

What if they start getting uppity? Threaten to take over the parts of Zion that aren’t festering, fetid swamps? The mind boggles.

Toad mentality. How would you be?

Decide one day that you need to build a city. A great big domed mega-polis somewhere on the planet.

Gosh, where-oh-where could we put it?

Over there!

In the middle of that smelly, oozing, mud-hole of a swamp.

What a great idea! Hey there’s another swamp almost as disgusting as this one on a separate continent. Let’s build a second domed mega-polis smack in the middle!

Need to move fast. Grab all the prime swamp before anybody else. Get it while it’s cheap. Buy up big. Build even bigger.

Toads. The swamp kings of Zion. Give them a bucketful of mud, throw in some disgusting toadie reproductive action and they’re in frog heaven.

That’s why we have to get rid of them. Lowering the tone of the planet. Filthy amphibians in more ways than one. Have to go.

I, Emperor Fred, have decreed it so.

I dictate a quick reply to General Huss. A confidential reply.

He can have his three new battalions plus another nine of the best.

I stress the importance of the military. Mention that the Admiral Wanda and her navy are only there to move divisions from one planetary conquest to another.

Infer that I’d like to see the next appointment as the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be from the Army rather than the Navy.

Can’t trust the navy. Run by a woman.

Only problem is that the Toads are voting to oppose all these measures. I think we need to work together to deal with the toads.

It would be – I stress in the vaguest possible terms – really helpful if somebody could develop a fungus. A toxic froggy fungus that accidentally found it’s way into the nearest swamp.

Yours, Emperor Fred.

Before I send it I pull up his dossier.

Better check that General Huss is on the same wavelength before winding him up and aiming him at the toads. Could be embarrassing if he goes public.







It appears that General Huss and I have a lot in common.

I am, courtesy of the plastic coffin, almost as vertically challenged as the diminutive General. Nor does he have the appearance of being ethically constrained.

I quickly add a note on the bottom of my message that I have it on good authority that the average size of the toads is increasing. In fact in a few years it is expected that all toads will be taller than him.

Mention that I don’t think it’s right and proper that the head of our Army should have to look up to a toad.





To be continued...

Lancer

[thiosk]

<3

Keep them coming lancer.
Actually, you could turn it into a damn book.
"The Madness of Emperor Fred"

[Shark7]

Is it possible that a lot of toads are about to be croaking. [:D]

[thiosk]

One can only hope.

Those toadies are a menace.

[Magpius]

The (cane?) toads could very well win this one folks![:'(]

[lancer]

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three … Standby for Hyperspace …

On my mark, NOW.

Whoosh!

G-forces slam me back into my crash couch. Miniaturised inertial compensators kick-in hard to keep my blood seeping into places it doesn’t belong. Drug injector whams 20cc of adrenalin straight into my weakened heart muscle.

Blurred vision. Buzzing in my ears.

Fifteen minutes before I recover enough to stand.

Can’t see diddly squat out the vision ports. Everything black with the occasional streak of white light. Lazy Sal vibrating hard. Loud humming noise from the hyper drive plant.

Lost my appetite.

Stomach feels as if it’s moved up to my throat. Nauseating.

This can’t be good for you. Captain Wally assures me that I’ll acclimatise.

Or die.

Hyperspace-induced Deep Veined Decay gets one in every hundred.

Not immediately. Destroys the lining of the veins.

Gone within the year.

Shredded veins suffer multiple blockages. Limbs swell and deform. Arteries pumping overtime. Eventually your heart runs dry of blood and tears itself apart from the effort.

DVD. A-k-a Space Rot

Incurable.

Humans, one theory goes, aren’t meant to travel so fast. Human physiology just can’t hack it. Much safer to snap freeze the human body into cryogenic status than whipsaw it’s internal plumbing every which way but blue.

Not a lot known. Hyperspacial travel is new. Can’t even run tests to see who is predisposed beforehand. Med-Techs haven’t figured it out yet.

Only thing you can do is sign up to the Navy, strap into your first crash couch and pray.

Distressing pictures on the wall of the ship’s Med-Bay of the first recorded case.

Corpulent Spacer, no doubt sucking on the Navy’s benevolent teat, underwent terminal Space Rot while conducting an external hull inspection.







Scary time lapse photography taken by his in-suit face-cam.

Puffing up. Puzzled frown at first morphing into staring-down-the-edge-of-the-abyss sheer terror. Eyes disappearing under the bloat. Nose barely there.

Pinprick of a mouth. Attempting to scream out of a tiny tunnelled orifice.

Then BLAMMO!

Multi-directional blood splatter. Camera lens grossed out.

Blew apart his suit. Snapped his safety line. Drifted off into deep space.

Decision made to let him go. Nobody had heard of DVD back then. Thought whatever it was might be contagious.

Probably still out there. Drifting. Space detritus coalescing around him. Another umpteen million years later and he’ll be the first ever man-moon.

Pictures leaked to major news outlets back home.

Overnight Navy recruitment dropped. Forced to offer higher pay. Better conditions.

Very unfortunate. Very embarrassing.

Naval spokesman went on record stating that DVD only affected overweight people.

They lied of course. Affects all shapes and sizes. But the Navy didn’t want the Colonel Blimps. They ate too much and needed specially fitted suits.

Space going navy now the exclusive domain of the slim and the thin.

If you stack on weight they shunt you down planet side. Wire you up to an electro-shock treadmill. Run till you sweat away to nothing.

Insist they are doing you a favour. Saving you from Space Rot.

No they’re not. They just don’t want you chowing down so many expensive rations.




To be continued...

Lancer

[2guncohen]

I have a feeling the toads will end up as food for a "Glorious fat navy" [:D]

[lancer]

Nobody told me that space travel was so boring.

Absolutely, utterly, batsh*t boring.

Thirty six tedious days to get to the first star system on our exploration schedule.

Five weeks of twiddling my thumbs, staring at the walls, pacing up and down.

The crew of the “Lazy Sal” have regular duties to attend to.

Captain Wally additionally keeps them busy running back and forth with all manner of emergency drills and ‘what-if’ simulations.

I get to stare at the walls, the chair, the toilet, the carpet, the…

After the first week of hyper drive induced stupefaction I cornered him on the bridge and asked how he manages to keep his crew motivated.

“Good question”, agrees Captain Wally. “At the Naval Academy they use the first manned space flight to Mars as a case study in what not to do.”

I remember that. The ‘Let’s put footprints on Mars’ campaign. Huge billion dollar, supra-national funded program. Before I was born but even so, still big news.

“Three men,” continues Captain Wally, “carefully selected from a pool of several hundred astronauts, trained to an inch of their lives. Sent to Mars to plant the flag and pave the way for a future colony.

I try and recall how long was the trip? Six months? No, closer to nine months. One way. Same again coming home.

“By the time they landed on Mars there were only two left alive. Only one made it back to Earth. Nobody could get any sense out of him. Gibbering idiot.”

Clearly the Naval Academy had done a workmanlike job of instilling the lessons of the Mars mission into Captain Wally’s consciousness.

“Yes sir, turned out that stuffing three men into a spam-can and locking the door for back to back nine month stretches wasn’t a winning formula. Logs showed that, over time, tiny matters of no import eventually grew into monsters. First man murdered had a habit of passing wind in his sleep."

Captain Wally shook his head. "Autopsy found he was intolerant of certain additives in the food. After seven months of bad air the other two stabbed him through each eyeball with a pen and screwdriver while he slept.”

Gassed off once too often.” Captain Wally shook his head. “Who would have thought that passing wind could get you killed?”

It could if you were sealed up inside a small enclosed space for longer than was healthy. Try five hundred years in a plastic coffin.

“NASA tried different things after that. Gave up on odd numbered crews. Introduced mixed sexes. Aimed to give everybody a bit more personal space.”

Another sad, wistful, shake of the head. “None of it worked. Sooner or later somebody went troppo and set of an escalating series of responses. Violence begat violence.”

“Homo Sapiens,” said Wally, “have found to have a hard-wired limit of six months in space. After that it’s psychosis-city. You can,” he continued, “stretch it out a little longer provided there are periods of time when interesting events are occurring but in general, six months is it.”

About the same, I recalled, as a Boomer on a deep-submergence patrol.

“So,” I asked brightly, “we’ll be home well before we hit the six month wall?”

“No Sir. The Survey Corps is special. We get to stay out as long as our fuel lasts. Anything up to a year. Possibly longer.”

“But-“

Captain Wally held up his hand. “No need to worry Sir. The Lazy Sal has an all male crew of nearly seventy men”

No, that wasn’t correct.

I’m sure I’d seen girls onboard. Or were they cross-dressing men? Were we in Loony Tune Land already?

“Ahh. Yes we do have women onboard, Sir. Ten of them,” replied Captain Wally proudly, waggling his fingers in my face.

“However they aren’t crew. They are specially trained ship-board ‘Entertainment’ officers. Once a week every man onboard has the exclusive use of an EO for twenty four hours. They are accomplished musicians, conversationalists, bed-warmers and agony aunts.”







Entertainment Girls? Wow! And here I was feeling bored. Why wasn’t I informed of this before?

“Their function,” stated Captain Wally in his most official voice, “is to maintain crew harmony. Because they rotate attachments are rare. They act as sounding boards and pressure relief valves for every man on the ship.”

Hookers? You have a bevy of hookers onboard.

“No Sir, that is definitely not the case! We do not ever refer to them in those terms. They are highly skilled practitioners and a vital component of the Lazy Sal’s long term station keeping ability.”

Captain Wally frowned at me. “In fact the women sign a contract with the Navy and after completing several missions are able to retire on a very healthy pension indeed.”

I sensed strong undertones here that the onboard EO’s might be on a better deal than Captain Wally himself.

Which wasn’t my concern. Getting hold of an EO to ward off the endless boredom was. Maybe I could have two.

“Sorry Sir, no can do. Navy regulations state that people with Commodore rank or above cannot avail themselves of the EO’s. Bad for morale. Crew thinks that they are pulling rank and stealing their girls.”

What, so I’m the only person on the whole damn ship who doesn’t get to cuddle up to an EO?

“What the Navy wants, the Navy gets, Sir,” states Captain Wally, righteous naval advocate. Candidate for a knife in the navel.

I stomp off to my quarters in a mood darker than the vacuumed blackness of space.





To be continued...

Lancer