Chronicles of the Flying Dolphin

Chapter Three: Starbase Eighty-Six

For how long now had Fractal been leading the Space Pirates from the Forbiden Sector? As with so many things, it seemed like both a long time, and not very long at all. The Lillies had shown him short-cuts through space and time that had previously been known only to the weird sisterclones themselves. He had come to think it not unusual to return to a place before having left, and chronology had lost much of the little meaning it once held for him.

Throughout history - and the future - he had fought (and would fight) the corporate conglomerate politibeurocracy of the Federation - he was bound to have been captured sooner or later, but all the time travel and dimensional hops had made it impossible to estimate linear time with any precision. Perhaps it had been sooner; perhaps later.

By Home time, it was every second summer that the Feds transported fresh trainees from their colonies to the processing center at Starbase 86. As "new worlds and new civilizations" were sucked in to the Fedration's ever-expanding sphere of influence, disidents were gathered for "processing" - a mind wiping ordeal that erased all traces of the subject's [victim's] former personality and left docile servants for the feds to use as they saw fit. It had been going on for several centuries. For all that time, the brother & sisterhood of the Forbidden Sector had stood idly by and watched the heavily armed transport maneuver through the cosmos with it's cargo of stolen souls.

Those were the days before young Fractal had accidentally been herded into the Zone by the Feds themselves. Four of the last six such transports had been liberated. Most of the drafted "trainees" had been safely returned to their own worlds. But a surprising number elected to join the pirettes in their battle to maintain chaos in the face of the Federation's stagnant order.

After having missed the last such transport while scouting the far side of the galaxy, Fractal had perhaps been overeager to capture this, the sixth such ship to fall within his grasp since his having been forced into a life of piracy by the Federation's ineptitude.

Having experienced nothing but victory in battle, he had merely become overconfident. After all, none of the other ships in the liberation force had been captured. And the Flying Dolphin was easily the fastest and most maneuverable among them. Either Fractal had become careless... or he had intended to be captured.

He was being loaded into the Fed's system - handprinted, voiceprinted, retina scanned, and drilled repeatedly on acts of piracy he had indeed committed, and others which may not have even occurred. He played this game through three changes in shifts of the guards and information officers. As the fourth shift took their stations, his hopes and fears were as one confirmed.

The Dolphins of Terra had been correct. They might not have developed the telekinesis for flight that their cousins at Home enjoyed, but they ruled the H2Osphere of Terra - just as their cousins ruled the Surrounding Sea of Home. They were also able to communicate from world to world. The priestess of the Terran Dolphins had told Fractal that Federation ambassadors had captured an Human Goddess from Home; a redhead with enormous breasts.

Now who does that sound like to you?

"Kristal... Kristal, look at me! Kristal, its Fractal!"

"She can't make sense outa wut yer sayin', skum, shes an info offsir - she scrambles data." the guard with his hand in his pants told the pirate.

But, when the guard turned his back, Kristal flashed her childhood friend a wink. She was no longer a temple girl. Her ten summers had passed and she was now a full fledged Goddess, no matter what kind of programming the buearocrats had subjected her to.

Trauma lay concealed in an H2O tank on board the Flying Dolphin, which was docked somewhere near the center of this planetoid sized maze of interconnecting tubes called Starbase 86. Fractal wished that he had the blade in his hand at that very moment; and the entire structure they were in lurched, as if momentarily stopped in it's rotation on it's axis.

As the guard mumbled some unintelligibe obscenity at the stim-drink he had spilled on himself, Kristal drew his touch-gun and spaced him out. She felt a certain pleasure knowing he would awake with a head like too much wine.

"Kristal, how did they ever find Home? Why did you let them capture you? Has anyone else from Home been taken? Where's Xero?" and too much more for her to assimilate came flying from Fractal's tongue as the Goddess dragged him along the winding passageway. "Too be soon telling not enough but going get to be time right now!" is what came out of her.

Somehow he knew precisely what she had meant to say, but the dyslexic manner in which it had escaped her pretty lips shocked all the questions from his mind except, "Kristal, what have they done to you!?!"

"Advantage nothing that to our won't working be!"

And he had to laugh. She was probably right. Laughing and running hand-in-hand through the corridors of a Federation Starbase with a prisoner was not exactly the type of behavior that was expected from an information officer. She was also carrying a touch-gun! Only guards were allowed to...

Alarms shrieked and wailed. Quartets of guards popped out of the walls waving touch-guns - and an alien presence flew through the corridors in search of it's master. Even over the roar of the alarms, Trauma's demonic laughter could be heard. Saint Elmo's fire danced along it's keen blade.

Eight touch-gun wielding guards blocked Fractal and Kristal's way. Another four closed from behind. Twelve to two. Twelve to one if you only counted the weapons. But then the other weapon found what it was looking for.

The hand made blade from Home settled into it's maker's fist. But not before quenching it's unholy thirst with the blood of three of the eight guards who had blocked it's path. Of the remaining five, two were on their knees puking. Another had spaced himself out somehow with his touch-gun, and the remaining pair held their weapons out in front of them as though the hand-long devices were any sort of protection against an enchanted blade the length of a grown man's arm. The four who had been approaching from behind had turned and run away.

Lt. Kristal O'Info had known the exact location of the spherical silver spaceship. Although more than 99% of the data she had ever entered for her captors had been gibberish (and the remaining 1% pure bullshit), the lieutenant retained between her ears all of the information she had ever been exposed to. After all, she was a Goddess!

While the guards that had confronted them still stood facing empty air, the childhood sweethearts cleared the centertube in the Flying Dolphin and blasted three systems away to lay low for awhile within a belt of asteroids. But they were still deep within Federation territory.