Spike Harris

[Ant]

Veranda Incognita

The Outcast Destroyer edged slowly between the huge doors built into the hillside.
On the command deck of the Destroyer, a four armed maintenance droid controlled the ship, beeping and whistling to itself as the ship entered the hangar bay. Through the screens, an automated repair facility could be seen working on a Large Train to one side of the hangar.

A scarred, tough looking man, wearing an Armed Forces style flightsuit watched the droid expertly control the landing of the fully automated cruiser.

As the droid brings the ship in to a soft landing next to the large train, it swivels it's sensors towards the observer and starts beeping and whistling.

The man's blue-gray eyes read the translation on a nearby screen and he shakes his head at the colourful language before replying.

"Watch it you little scumbag...that kind of talk is likely to get you vaporised if you don't watch it."

The droid beeps and whistles again.

"Er... right. I'll be getting my bag."

He turns to leave, looking over his shoulder at the still beeping droid as it makes obscure gestures at him with two of it's arms.

As he disembarks from the Destroyer he is met by a dark haired man who smiles in greeting.

"Ah, you must be Lieutenant Harris. Welcome to Gran Canaria."

"Thanks. Call me Spike. Alan Kell right?"

"Call me Al. Come this way and we'll see if there's anyone who can help with your expedition."

As they leave the hangar Alan gestures to a wooded valley.
"Down that way is a creek if you want to try some fishing. The local lakes and rivers have been populated with various species."

"Sounds interesting. Might take you up on that."

"I heard rumours of some attacks on various planets. It must feel bad when they get past the defenses."

Spike Harris looks down. "I...I'd rather not talk about that thanks."

"Oh...right. sorry to mention it."

They walk in silence for a moment, before Spike looks up and speaks again.
"It can get tough out there."

"Well anyway, how's the ship charter going so far? Any problems since pickup on Pittsburgh?"

"The ship seems fine. Flew here through some hostile systems no problem. Wish we had something like that in the Armed Forces actually. Slides between asteroids really nice."

"Yes, I was rather lucky on getting the YTC. I'll have to tell you how I came by it sometime. I think the Liberty Rogues and Outcasts are still a bit miffed at losing it.
I'd like to enter it in an upcoming race meeting but it's unlikely to be eligible.
XM giving you any problems?"

"The robot? It seems a little...well...unstable."

"Ah yes...XM seems to work far better at piloting and maintenance work like that. It got itself shot a few times after some misplaced comments so I had to install the swear filter. I've tried reprogramming it not to swear but it just doesn't work as efficiently like that."
He gestures at his glasses. "These have a built in translation unit now so I can understand what it's saying. As you've probably noticed, the swear filter seems to pick up on almost everything the droid says as requiring filtering. Maybe trying to reprogram it made it develop a worse glitch. At least it's not getting shot all the time now anyway. That got to be a little expensive."

"Wouldn't mind blasting the little creep myself after reading some of those comments."

Annoyed sounding beeping comes from behind them.

"Ah, it appears XM has followed us in the hopes of an upgrade...or something. I'm not sure if it's possible for a maintenance droid to have emotions, although the comments it makes seems to suggest that's the case... there's a rather intriguing droid around here that uses some kind of antigrav unit to get around."
Alan grins and glances at the droid.
"If XM were human I'd say it had a crush."

A long series of beeps follow with wild gestures from all four arms.

"You want to do what? Maintainance on the hydraulic system and power couplings? well...er...
...anyway, here we are...Veranda Incognita.
Hopefully we'll be able to find some help to get you started on your fishing expedition, perhaps with recommended systems to visit and how to go about it.
They have a rather sophisticated defense system here. I'll just do the eyescan...there we go."

Spike Harris glances around.
"Nice place."

"Isn't it just. We might as well go around the front and enjoy the view for a while I suppose."

"Breep beep beeeep?"

"Yes XM, you can serve the drinks if you like."

------

The waterfall at one end of the secluded pool lent a cooling mist to the air.

Spike Harris casually cast his fishing line into the pool of water and leaned back against a tree.
He sat and watched a small trout swim around, the occasional surface ripple showing where an insect had been taken.
The unbaited hook drifted around in the eddies, the fish ignoring it.

Spike thought for a moment about how much his wife Janine would have enjoyed being here. She'd always enjoyed the active lifestyle during the little time they had together on Cambridge. They would have spent the day swimming and relaxing in this place...

All he had now was the memories though, since that terrible night when the bomb had hit.
He'd overcome his anger and grief and finally started to accept that he must go on, although it had been touch and go for a while.
He shook his head at the way he'd risked his ship and crew needlessly against impossible odds.

"The only way is forward, can't change the past", he muttered to himself.

The maintenance robot swivelled it's sensors towards him.

"Another beer please XM. That fish is smelling good by the way."

XM reached inside it's self-contained refrigerator and extracted a chilled bottle of locally brewed lager, expertly pouring it into a glass before passing it over.
It turned back to the gas grill and prodded the fish that Spike had caught earlier.

Something nagged at the back of Spike's mind.
His sense of danger was something that had served him well during fleet operations.
He wondered if all the activity at Veranda Incognita was normal. Something definately seemed amiss, something about that black shuttle that had passed over earlier perhaps?

"Can't I ever have a bloody holiday without something going wrong?"

XM beeped and passed over a slice of perfectly grilled fish.

"Thanks XM. Don't mind me. It's probably nothing...although perhaps we should get back to the hangar soon, just in case."

------

The scanners in the hangar were top of the line.

Almost as soon as the scan had started, several anomalies were detected.
A very large cloaked object was in orbit, detectable by the gravitational effect it had on orbital debris.
While Spike Harris watched the scan, a communications satellite passed into the general area of the object and abruptly disappeared from sensors.

"Ah crap.", Spike muttered.

He looked over to where the maintenance droid was moving around the base of the Destroyer and yelled, "XM, get the YTC prepped for launch! We might have to get out of here in a hurry!"

He noticed the robot was already removing the refueling lines.

A beep from the console drew his attention back to the scan.
"Well, well. What do we have here? A subspace rift?".

He'd heard rumours of these rifts forming, possibly into parallel dimensions. The only problem was that they weren't very stable and entering one could easily turn out to be a one way trip.
He quickly sent the location data to the onboard computers of the Destroyer and then turned to the communications console.

Transmit code: GC-555-2362
To: Veranda Incognita, SF fleet command, LoganKell

Possible cloaked battlestation in orbit near Gran Canaria.
Buggered if I know why, so I'm getting the hell out of here.
Checking out a nearby subspace rift.
Location data follows.

Spike Harris.

He could hear the engines of the ship were already approaching launch readiness.
Hitting the transmit button, he turned and headed for the boarding ramp, hoping there were still some communication satellites operating.

"Go! Go! Go!"

The Destroyer launched smoothly into the sky, avoiding the area of the cloaked object and the other detected anomalies. Soon they were safely on the other side of the planet to all the strange traffic.

Spike regretfully looked at the planet dwindling in the rear viewscreen.
"So much for that part of the trip. Set course for the rift."