Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest

Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

Jay had been playing Galaxy Quest for so long that it had become his only reality. Well, of course he got up from his games console every now and then; to answer the call of nature, to eat or sleep, even occasionally to look out the window of his bedroom at the rain, or sun, or whatever meteorological irrelevance was passing. 


But all of that paled before his eyes in comparison with Galaxy Quest. For, in the world of Galaxy Quest, Jay was no longer Jay. He was Lance Cosmotron, an interstellar knight of the Zargon Trading Collective’s elite fighter wing, worshipped by every lusty maiden in the Quadrant, envied by his fellow jocks and feared by the slime sucking vermin of the Arachno-Pirate horde. Envied and feared with good reason; his kill tally was enormous. Lance Cosmotron was a ruthless assassin with an unfailing eye for inflicting maximum damage with the pulse cannons of his trademark deep crimson Tigershark Interceptor.

It was an uneventful sortie. Lance was leading an escort detachment guarding a convoy of 15 Heavy Freighters across an area of space notorious for Arachno-Pirate activity. Inside the bubble canopy of his Tigershark, he checked his instruments. The Scanfield display was clear. All other readings – fuel, ammunition, comms  -  were normal. Lance was alert, though. He scanned the star system visually. Arachno Pirates were notorious for switching off (Contrary to a whole series of Zargon-Arachno treaties) their transponders. And then there was this latest generation of stealth ships. A pair of eyes – a pair of sharp human eyes was the most important instrument in this job. Relying on technology alone could mean death very quickly indeed!

The stakes were high. Lance didn’t ask what the freight in the convoy was. His was a soldier’s job, and that was a job that required total concentration, total commitment, and absolute professionalism. So the question of what he was protecting was irrelevant next to the imperative that he lead, that he execute his mission, that he see this sortie through to the end. He was not an insensitive man, of course. He was fully aware of how the Zargon Outposts badly needed the supplies carried by this convoy if they were to hold out against the onslaughts of the Arachno-Pirate scum. But his faith was such that he left philosophical questions – such as those he’d heard whispered about the possibility that they were transporting Arachno Whore Slaves and even, biological weaponry to the Zargon outposts – to others with lives sufficiently trivial to allow them the time to ask them. He kept his mind on the job at hand.

Still nothing.  Scanfield was clear. Not a blip. All other readings were nominal. He looked to the starboard quadrant and saw two silver Tigersharks cruising in formation; he looked to port and saw two more; with his own deep red vessel at the point of the ‘V’ he was satisfied that he was leading an effective deterrent to any possible Arachno-Pirate assault on the convoy.  

His satisfaction was fleeting, though. Lance Cosmotron was not a man to allow satisfaction any rein at all. A man who rested on his laurels was a man who let his guard down. A man who let his guard down was no man at all. There was no way that was going to happen so he remained in a state of razor sharp alert.

Lance’s heightened awareness was sent screaming. A woman’s voice came over the comms: “Jay, are you still up there?”. Lance keyed in the transponder code for full detachment alert. The voice again: “Jay, what are bleedin up to?” What was this? Lance had made it clear that total comms silence was a tactical must for this mission. There had to be no deviation from this. What was happening now was a potentially catastrophic breach of protocol – whoever was using the comms was putting the whole mission, the convoy, even the survival of the Zargon Outposts as risk! He looked right and left and saw that the four other Tigersharks had assumed full combat spread. Squadron transponder read Weapons Orange for all five, shields were projected in a standard Alpha Web configuration and while each of his pilots – Harry Glowman, Gerko Wall-Ace, Frances Hucknall (the only woman in the detachment) and the android, Den1 MH0N – had acknowledged the full alert, none of them showed green for comms. So who had broken comms silence?

Lance did a lightning fast inventory. Was it Glowman? Harry had a reputation for comms diarrhoea but that was usually well within Zargon space. He would never put the mission at risk. Never. If nothing else it would have jeopardised the one thing that Glowman cared about – cubits. It was all money for Glowman; what he lacked in killer instinct he made up for in greed. He would never have been the one to mouth off. Surely?

Perhaps it was Wall-Ace? Gerko was, well…a fanatic. He went on these missions with one goal in mind: to kill as many Arachno-Pirates as possible. Wall-Ace’s pure hatred of the oily, dark-scaled Arachnos was an unvarying, white hot source of murderous violence that Lance rarely unleashed. Only under situations of near-desperation did Lance call on Gerko to blaze into a dogfight. It was a reassurance to know that his wanton thuggery was there to be unleashed in a crisis but Lance knew that there would always be collateral damage in that case. Had his trained pitbull grown resentful of the leash and decided to pick a fight? But wasn’t it a woman’s voice that he’d heard?!!!

That narrowed it down, didn’t it? Frances Hucknall or Den1 MH0N. Hucknall was a woman but Den1’s android software was capable of articulating at feminine frequencies just as well. Which of the two? 

Frances or Franny, had beaten the odds to become a Tigershark jock even though she was a woman. So few women managed to get through the rigours of basic training. But Franny was almost robotic in her determination and capacity for hard work. Sure, there were the whispers: that she had swallowed a lot more than Professor Dempsey’s lectures on flight theory at the academy, that she had serviced half the mathematics faculty in her wife’s (Franny was officially a lesbian) massage pod on Athyus 9. Could she be trusted? Deep down, Lance would never have doubted it before now: If nothing else, Franny was not a risk taker. It would go against everything that made her who she was. Besides, she didn’t have the imagination to see how the squadron, let alone the convoy could survive the mass assault of of Arachno Pirates that breaking comms silence in this sector would most likely cause.

So that left Den1 MH0N. The plastic bastard. Deep down Lance had always felt funny about going into combat with these fucking glorified laptops. Let them vacuum the floor, make the dinner or, at most, peddle their cyber-arses on the streets or in the Phoenix android whorehouse. Anything more was a step too far. Give these machines responsibilities such as taking the stick in a Tigershark and next thing you know, they’ll have betrayed us all. Then again, these things only did as they were programmed to do. Den1, indeed had been mapped with Lance’s own cognitive signature – he was capable of performing only within the limits set by the aggregate of Lance’s past experiences up to the moment of the most recent cognitive signature transfer two lunar cycles ago. In short, Den1 was a clone. There was no way that he would have broken comms silence because it was something that Lance himself would never have dreamed of doing.

Lance fingered his plasma rocket trigger. Maybe I should just blast all of them out of the stars straightaway? Maybe it doesn’t matter which of them did it; I’ll kill them all to make an example. If the Arachnos descend on us I’d fancy my chances on my own almost as much as I would with these guys with me.

This whole inventory took a fraction of a second in real time. Lance thought quickly because he knew that out here there was only the quick and the dead.

The voice came again. “Jay, will yeh come down yeh dope!” Lance scanned all systems. All clear. He looked to port and starboard.  Standard formation. His mind was racing. He knew that he had to act. He had given this enough thought. He went Weapons Red, locked on to each of his four wingmen and opened up with a full, devastating salvo from his plasma cannons. In an instant each one of them had been vaporised. At a certain point, he realised, a true leader has to cut his losses and walk away. Who knows – who cares­ – who the traitor was. Such indiscipline was a cancer that had to be cut out. The safety of the mission was paramount. He knew that the convoy was better protected now. One good man was better than a whole squadron infested by a fifth column.

But horror of horror, the comms erupted again: “Jay, if I have to come up there I’m going to fucking bate yeh”. Lance was stunned. Could it be? Could it be that the traitor was among the convoy? A wolf in the fold? It could only be. As before, Lance took action. His reflexes took over but his mind was clear. One by one he vaporised the reactors on each of the freighters. Shards of hull casing, twisted girders, clouds of fuel vapour and mushrooms of flame filled all that he could see. There were bodies and body parts, too! Instantly frozen faces on decapitated heads, plumes of frozen red mist, jagged entrails of guts and organs, sad hocks of meat with protruding bone all spun out into space. Lance had no remorse. The convoy had obviously been compromised but Lance had saved the outposts from the fate that was to be visited upon them by this Trojan Arachno-horse.

“What are you fucking doing you dope?” No! Lance heard the voice over the comms again but this time he felt a ghostly hand on his shoulder. His spine chilled. The last thing he felt before he lost consciousness was an intense downward g-force. Somewhere in a corner of his brain he realised that his Tigershark’s ejector system had been activated.

Lance opened his eyes. A dirty ceiling. He closed his eyes. He could hear music. It was slowly coming back to him: the escort mission, the voice on the comms, the suspicion, the killing, the voice again, the hand on his shoulder, the ejection….he opened his eyes and in an instant he was on his feet. He was looking at a thin, vaguely familiar-looking woman with a puffy hairdo and bad skin. Lance was on his guard. He backed away from her. The Arachnos were perfectly capable of body snatching, of assuming human appearance. 

She, or, rather, it, spoke:  “Jay, you’re going to have to stop playing that bleeding game; all that you ever do is sit up in that room.” Lance froze. It was the same voice he’d heard over the comms. He was face to face with an Arachno imposter. He put his hand to his belt to find his Cobalt pistol. Nothing there. Of course; they would not have left him with his weapon. He looked around. There in the corner. A plasma staff. He had to get it. The Arachno-Thing was speaking again: “What are you doing, Jay, Jesus, there’s a bleedin mad look in your eyes  - are you on drugs or something?” 

Lance was not listening. With the plasma staff in his hand he advanced on the Aracho-bitch. He pressed the handle. Just his luck. Out of plasma. But he had committed himself to attack and all that remained to him was to use the weapon as a club. He raised it over his head and swung with all his might. The staff struck the alien square across the back of its head and it fell to the ground in a heap. 

Standing over the prostrate body of the Arachno-imposter Lance swung the staff again and again, making devastating contact with its rapidly imploding cranium. At last the voice stopped.

Lance’s face was wet and hot. His vision was tinted red. He could feel pieces of the Arachno-Corpse’s innards all over his face. He straightened himself up to his full height, opened his throat ad roared: “Behold the filthy corpse of the Arachno-Demon!!!!!!!AAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!!”

Somewhere in the distance, over his shoulder perhaps, Lance heard another voice: “Jay? Jay? What in the name a Jaysis is going on here?” Another one. Still holding the inert but serviceable Plasma - Staff, Lance turned around to see a vaguely familiar looking old man. The Arachno-Body Thieves had been busy, he could see. 

The Arachno-man seemed to be crying. What duplicity! How dare it assume the emotions of a human being! As if it could ever be anything more than a filthy lizard!  The beast was still feigning humanity: “What have you done, son?….No! Nooo!” Lance was outraged. What a pathetic form of life this was. One of its kind lay dead on the ground and all it could do was whinge and whine! 

“Defend yourself!!!”, Lance bellowed into the creature’s face. “have you no pride, no respect?” “Wha, son, what are you talking about!” it blubbered. “Enough, you filthy wretch,” Lance commanded “Defend yourself or submit to your Arachno – fate, you piece of cosmic shit!” 

Lance thrust the shaft of the Plasma - Staff javelin-like straight through the thing’s windpipe, out the back of its neck and deep into the wall behind it, impaling his victim right up off the floor. Its fat legs were dangling and twitching  as a spout of pink arterial blood gushed from the wound all over Lance and its eyes slowly glazed over and its mouth curled into a hideous rictus. Slowly the Arachno-father’s body stopped twitching and it silently, finally went limp.

Lance knew that it could be some time before the Zargonian fleet picked up his distress signal. He knew there was no time to waste. Where there were two Arachno-parents there would be more. Light was slowly fading as Lance boarded up the windows of the house, and prepared for the long wait. He would wait and he would prevail. His training had prepared him for every eventuality. Even this. 

As night fell in that sticky, flyblown sepulchre, Jay crouched down and waited frantically. He stared into nothing, his empty, empty eyes were black pits. A heavy, wrought iron spike lay across his gore spattered lap. His hideous, sneering mouth shaped the words "Mama, Papa, Mama, Papa...." over and over and over again.