CHAPTER FIVE
An Unexpected Space Café Skirmish
I.
We were strapped in and ready to go. I sat in the pilot’s seat of The Frog Hopper and Chuck sat to my right in the co-pilot’s seat. There were two other seats sitting directly behind us, but they were empty. I assumed they were for whenever our team grew.
I looked around at all the lights and buttons on the dash and soaked in that new frog smell. We had helmets on with sweet visors and were both suited up in our new uniforms and gear. Chuck’s P2 phaser was holstered to the back of his seat and our backpacks sat on the floor right beneath it.
Scout, how do you like your new digs?
“They’re sweet, dude. Thanks!” I responded to Nog’s head-voice.
We’ll be ready for your launch here in a just a few minutes. Were just making sure all your vitals are stable and Farrow is running through one last systems check.
I took a deep breath and looked at Chuck. “You ready, brother?”
“Heck yeah, man. Let’s do this.”
“Now when we get up there, you follow my lead.”
Chuck didn’t respond. He just looked forward, out the windshield.
“You got me, Chuck? You follow my lead, okay?”
“No, Scout. I’m not your sidekick. Do I looked like Robin to you?”
“No, Robin didn’t have a gut like yours.”
Chuck shook his head. “One of these days, man, one of these days.”
“One of these days what? What does that mean?”
“Your whole ego is gonna come back and take a big old honkin’ bite right out of your butt cheeks. You’re setting yourself up for karma.”
“Karma Chameleon,” a boys voice said from behind us. We both turned around real fast and saw Phil plopping down in one of the seats behind us and buckling up.
“Phil?” Chuck and I both exclaimed.
“Sup, broster’s,” he said.
“What are you doing in here? Did anyone see you sneak in?” I asked, nervous as all get-out.
“No, I came in through some side latch on the side. No one saw. I just wanted to come.”
Chuck and I looked at each other and then I decided: “Ok,” I said. “Just keep your mouth shut during our launch so Nog doesn’t suspect stowaway stuff.”
“Scout, he can’t go! That’s treason!” Chuck yelled. Clearly he didn’t know what treason meant. “He’s just a civilian with no training.”
“You trying to hog all the spotlight again, Chuck?” I said, “He can go. It’s my mission, my team, my Frog Hopper, my call.”
“Bro, I quit. I quit so bad, bro,” Chuck said, taking off his helmet and unbuckling his straps.
It’s lift-off time, fellas. Start your engines, Scout.
I lifted a small lever and pressed the red ignition button and the ship fired up with a quick jolt. Chuck panicked and strapped back in quickly and put his helmet back on. I smirked – I wasn’t about to let him bail on this!
“You strapped, Phil?” I asked.
“You know it, son.”
“Let’s do this,” I said as I pulled back the stick shift and the ship started to slowly move forward. I watched out the front windshield as people were scattering out of the way and hitting the deck.
Scout, you moron! We haven’t even opened the barn doors yet!
Oops.
I pulled back on the joystick steering thing and punched it hard. The rocket boosters on the back ignited and a blast of fire blew out the back of the Frog and it launched us forward from 0 to 100 in about a half a second.
We crashed through the front of the barn, sending wooden shrapnel everywhere. I was hoping everyone dodged out of my way.
My barn!
We sped by Nog’s house incredibly fast, clipping his porch with one of the Frog’s wings. I saw it collapse in the side mirror and it crumbled to the ground in a cloud of dust.
My porch!
I pulled back on the steering system and we lifted off the ground and sped through the sky. I did a quick little spiral move and then hit the boosters again, setting fire to the tops of the trees on Nog’s property.
My tree line!
We blasted through the clouds, out of the atmosphere, and within seconds, we were finally back in space.
II.
By the time we buzzed by Mars, the intense rocket boosters had shut down and we were pretty much just coastin’.
“This is pretty sweet,” Phil said, seemingly not even phased by the fact he was in outer space.
“You haven’t seen anything yet, dude. You’ll get to see us battle and fight robots and stuff,” I said.
“Do I get a gun?”
“Of course. I’ll grab you one when we dock with The Behemoth. There’re some extras in the back of my ship.”
Chuck sneezed and that was the first peep I’d heard out of him since he tried to abandon ship. I looked at him:
“What’s wrong, mang?”
“I’m not your mang, Scout. I said that I had quit, but you punched it anyways. Why? I don’t want to be a part of this team if it’s all about you. Plus, I don’t think Phil should even be here. It’s too dangerous for a noob.”
“A noob?” Phil said from behind us. “For your information, Chuck, I have experience when it comes to interstellar battles.”
We both looked at him hoping he’d expand on that a little.
“I watch the SyFy channel all the time, and I’ve been playing this online game with Lamar for a couple months now called Lunar Rocket Star. I’m pretty sure a ‘lil deep space mission won’t throw me off.”
Everything got quiet again. I could see Jupiter coming up in a few million miles. I turned to my bud, “Chuck, I didn’t let you get off because I need you. Side kick or part of a team, we’re in this together.”
Chuck nodded, but didn’t look at me.
Things were pretty chill as we were passing by Saturn. Chuck stared out the side window, Phil was slowly pulling a thread out from his Christmas themed sweater and I was just kickin’ it.
Suddenly, one of the machines on the ship’s dash started beeping. It caught the attention of all three of us, so we leaned in for a better look. It was some sort of radar/sonar screen. It appeared that there was something floating around in space that we were coming up on fast.
I looked out the windshield but didn’t see anything.
“Professor, are you seeing this?” I said.
No.
“It says we’re approaching something, but I don’t see a darn thing.”
Whatever it is, it must have some sort of cloaking device. Stay on course – maybe you’ll just by-pass it.
Or hit it! What was Nog thinking?
I squinted and stared out the window again and what I saw, amazed me. Something was out there, slowly materializing and shedding it’s cloaking device. It was a ship or a floating base or something. I couldn’t really tell. It was long and flat like an aircraft carrier, maybe around fifty feet long, made out of steel, and it had some sort of hub stationed in the center of it.
“What do you think it is?” Chuck asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Should we check it out?”
“Let’s do that,” Phil jumped in, “I’m hungry and maybe there’s food there or something.”
“Phil, there’s no way there’s food right there, smack dab in the middle of the Solar System,” I said.
The Frog Hopper soared into the station’s gravitational pull and we landed right outside of the hub. Once the Frog came to a complete stop, the three of us suited up even more into the space suits that came with the ship.
Once we made sure everyone’s oxygen tanks were good to go, we opened the back door to the ship and walked out onto the flat surface of the mysterious space station.
All moon walking-like, we bounced our way over to the hub. When we got there, a door slid open and the three of us entered.
Well I’ll be darned – Phil was right. We had just walked into some kind of space station restaurant. There was a long bar with about a dozen hovering bucket seats. There were about six or seven high-top tables bolted to the floor accompanied with four hover seats each. There was a menu on the wall over the counter, but it was all alien to me. There were pictures of food, but I couldn’t understand the language everything was written in.
There didn’t seem to be anyone else in there, so we made our way to the counter and we took our helmets off. We each sat in a hover chair and set our helmets down on the counter top. A swinging door behind the counter opened and something weird came out from the back room/kitchen area.
It was an alien, so the three of us were on guard. It was around five foot tall, skinny, brown scaly skin, had one eye in the center of the head and a small mouth. It was wearing something similar to an apron with blood smeared across it.
He moved his way right on up to us from the other side of the bar.
“Earthling’s, huh? We haven’t had one of you guys in a while,” the thing said, “I believe the last guys’ name was Lance-something. He was a singer or something.”
The three of us were stunned. It appears the interstellar communications that Blorf had told me about last year were still in order. Every species would sound to us however our brains allowed them to sound. So to us, everything came out in English.
“Can I get you Earthlings some grub?”
“Can we see a menu?” Phil asked.
The alien waiter gave each of us a clear slab, and right before our eyes, it digitally formed a menu.
“We’re not here to eat,” I said. “My name is Scout Brooks and this is my exploration team, Chuck Taylor and Phil Easton. This is just a pit stop to see what this place was.”
“That’s a shame. We haven’t had a customer in months,” the alien waiter said. “The name’s Cy.”
“Cause of your one eye?” Phil asked. “That must be so cool. To have one eye.”
We all ignored Phil’s randomness as he continued to be the only one who was looking at the menu. I smiled a bit – it was good to have good old Philly back.
“So, Scout, what brings you to the outer rings of Saturn?”
“We’re on a mission to dock with a massive space ship called The Behemoth. We have business there.”
“I see. I know all about business. Bluxtor and I have all kinds of business,” Cy said, rubbing his eye.
“Who’s Bluxtor?” I asked.
“My chef. Speaking of which, anything strike your fancy on that menu there?”
“No thanks,” I said.
“I didn’t look at it,” Chuck said.
“I’ll have the open-space club sandwich with a side of Saturn rings and a Milky Way shake,” Phil said, licking his chops.
There was a buzzing noise coming from outside. We looked out the window and saw another small ship landing out in the lot. Cy seemed anxious by it.
“Look here, Scout. Things are about to get weird,” Cy said. He lifted a small black satchel up from under the back of the bar and handed it to me. “Take this, and whatever you do, don’t let these guys get it.”
“What guys?”
The door to the space café opened and two menacing-looking aliens came in. They were both light green in color, stood about six feet tall and wore very tight, white jumpsuits.
Doing as Cy said, I stuffed the satchel in one of my space suit pockets and buttoned it up real nice so they wouldn’t see. I had no idea what was going on.
“Get out of here, Earthlings,” Cy said.
The three of us put our helmets back on and latched them up real good. I was getting nervous. What was going on? We stood up from the hover chairs and walked past the two ominous looking creatures. They approached the bar and engaged in conversation with Cy.
Chuck, Phil and I stood by the door and watched the aliens.
“Where’s the satchel?” one of them said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cy responded.
The two creatures pulled out laser pistols.
“Now Hulger, Kirpstal, fellas…we can work something out,” Cy pleaded.
“There’s nothing to work out,” Hulger said.
“You were warned,” Kirpstal added.
Cy took a deep breath. “I guess you spelunkers want to do things the hard way…BLUXTOR!”
On Cy’s mark, the brute, Bluxtor, busted through the swinging kitchen doors. He was a huge alien, the same species as Cy, and wore something like a chefs uniform complete with the hat. He was three times as big, full of bulking muscle madness and he was armed with a seriously big gun.
He opened fire on Hulger and Kirpstal and they dove out of the way, firing back. Cy grabbed his apron with both hands and ripped it off while doing some sort of throaty battle cry. He hopped the counter and pulled out some futuristic sword and began to slash it at Hulger and Kirpstal.
“Let’s get the heck up outta here, fellas!” I shouted as we bolted out of the café and moon-bounced back to The Frog Hopper.
Once we got back in, we strapped up quickly and blasted out of there. We zoomed back into space and I looked in the side mirror and saw the whole café space station explode.
III.
We were back on course, maybe about fifteen minutes or so out from The Behemoth, and all we could do was talk about the café skirmish. We were all clueless as to what happened. We obviously walked in on something illegal, but we didn’t know what it was.
I had Chuck look in the satchel, and all it was, was a small tube with dark blue goo inside. We weren’t sure what it was, so we agreed we’d give it to Nog when we got back for further analysis.
There was a sharp static that came over our radio system. Chuck started turning knobs like a madman trying to fix it. That’s when Lord Radar the Great’s voice pierced the speakers:
“Attention dweebs,” he said. “This is Lord Radar the Great and I have you in our sights.”
I looked out the windshield, and just as we zoomed past Uranus, I could see it – The Behemoth. It was intimidating, ominous and unnecessarily massive in size.
“What do you want, Radar?” I asked, gearing up to get serious.
“I want you guys to dock with my ship, come in and pay the price of admission – which is death.”
“Are you going to let my uncle go?”
“I can’t make any promises. Who’s with you?”
“It’s me, Chuck and Phil.”
“Philly Fat Cakes made the trip?” Radar laughed. “Once your little embarrassment of a ship gets close enough, our tractor beam will do the rest and bring you in. That’s right, I have my very own tractor beam. You’ll then be greeted by my minions and taken to me for some price-payin’. Got it?”
“Oh we got it, Radar. We got it real good,” I said, not really knowing what I meant by that. It sounded good, but I don’t think it made sense.
“See ya soon,” Radar maniacally laughed before there was radio silence.
“Are you guys ready for this?” I asked my team.
They both nodded, and we continued on course towards The Behemoth.
We eventually got close enough and all of our electronics turned off and left us in the dark. We could feel the force of Radar’s tractor beam pulling us in. We watched out the windshield, as we were brought closer and closer to the ship. I saw a cargo bay door open straight ahead and we were sucked right into it…into The Behemoth.