Admiral's Nemesis (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 11) Read online

  Deafening silence was the only answer from a deck that should have been swarming with space-hands

  “You’ve lost it, old man. Flipped your lid and dropped straight into the loony bin,” Spalding growled, trying to activate the cart. But the controls flickered and died. “Come on, you hunk of highly technological junk,” he said, flicking the controls back and forth but with even less response than before. “Is it that you want to die when that space spider sinks its extra-dimensional hooks into your processor—is that it?!” he shouted, kicking the cart in the side and suddenly the cart flared to life. “Now that’s more like it,” Spalding sighed with relief, jumping into the seat, activating the grav-cart control, and gunning the anti-gravity repulsors. With a spin of the controls, the cart turned around in a fast one eighty to face the crystalline creature still scuttling toward him.

  For a moment the old engineer suffered a crisis of concern. If he really was hallucinating, he could cause quite a bit of damage taking this old cart down a highly-active corridor.

  “Probably about to take a cart right into the middle of a crowded corridor, squishing spacers left and right, you are,” he informed himself, “for all you know, that creature could be the good old doctor come to drag your wrinkly, hallucinating arse straight off to the psych ward—and then after they discharged you for cause you’d have to do your duty and blow your own brains out with a blaster for doing such a fool crazy thing when you knew better.” He paused and then surreptitiously toggled the safety switch, enabling the auto-evasion routine that utilized the cart’s sensors to automatically avoid any human or humanoid shapes, be they bio-forms or robots, “Not that I’m crazy or anything; the old egg between my ears has never been better,” he righteously assured himself, taking firm control of the cart controls, aiming at the crystalline creature, and throwing the throttle wide open.

  Seeing the engineer approaching at high speed, the spider crouched and the crystals on its back suddenly shifted and scuttled like deranged beetles as its color started morphing from blue to a pale purple tone.

  But the old chief engineer didn’t have time for whatever nonsense the creature was up to.

  “It’s time for some payback!” he bellowed as the grav-cart ran over the spider with a satisfying crunch.

  The cart squealed in protest, repulsors whining like they were sucking up too much juice, as it fishtailed before smashing sidelong into the wall when two of the repulsors on the left side flared and finally stopped working. Before it could overturn, the cart righted itself, automatically compensating for the damage and swerving away from the wall thanks to the automatic avoidance system.

  Glaring over his shoulder, the Commander pumped his fist and was more than satisfied to see the creature appeared to have been flattened. “Take that, slackers!” he shouted.

  He then swore as the creature seemed to re-inflate, its crystals shifting and squirming until the spider had once again regained its former shape.

  “Well, that tears it,” Spalding swore, silently cursing the Demon Murphy for a timely assist providing divine intervention against him in favor of the spider. “I’m done playin',” he snapped, guiding the cart around the corner at high speed.

  Twisting and turning throughout the ship as fast as the little cart could take, he flipped active his communicator but, alas, no one answered.

  “Useless piece of junk,” he snapped, tossing the communicator off the cart and into the wall.

  Even when he passed through areas he knew someone should have been standing watch, no one was there and no matter how fast he went he could still feel the creature following him, locked on him like some kind of extra-dimensional a heat seeking missile.

  “It’s an angry imp of darkness and confusion!” he cursed as he hightailed it back to his quarters. Arriving outside his door he jumped off the cart. “You’ve gone mental, Terrance,” Spalding informed himself irately, “completely bloody mental! Thinking like you’re on some kind of ghost ship all alone…ha!” he declared, storming into his quarters. Hurrying over to his bed he reached underneath and punched in a code.

  The door to his little safe swung open.

  “Well, when crystalline entity bugs attack and reality takes a vacation there’s only one thing a man can do,” he declared, pulling out the safe’s contents and dumping them on the bed, “and that’s gun up, prepare to repel boarders, and go defend the fusion core—or, in this case, the antimatter generator.” He picked up a short-stock flash shotgun, jacked a round into the chamber and started to turn away, resolution on his face before an idea occurred to him and he hesitated.

  After filibustering for the better part of five seconds, Spalding finally gave up the ghost and irately snatched up the peculiar looking pistol he’d somehow picked up during his last hallucination and angrily shoved it down the front of his trousers.

  “Nothing for it,” he mumbled, fingering the hilt of the pistol.

  Unfortunately, when he went back outside the grav-cart was gone. “Murphy’s angry imps!” the superstitious engineer cried, running out of his room and looking down both ends of the corridor but wherever it had went the grav-cart was long gone. “The fly is definitely in the ointment this time, no doubt about it.”

  While he was still grumbling to himself, the spider phased through the bulkhead and pounced. Fire lanced across his shoulders and a crystalline leg punched through one side of his arm and out the other in a spray of synthetic blood.

  Levering up the flash shotgun onto his shoulder—dangerously close to his own head—he fired a round into the thing. The recoil tore the shotgun out of his hands and sent him sprawling to the ground.

  Jumping clear, the seemingly unharmed crystalline entity crouched and began to morph and glow while staring at him with a demon’s gaze.

  Spalding’s hand fumbled around for another weapon before landing on the butt of the pistol sticking out the front of his pants. He drew and leveled the pistol at the creature, squeezed the trigger...and nothing happened.

  “What a piece of junk,” he said witheringly, preparing to draw back his arm and throw the thing at the creature if nothing else, when the light on top of the pistol started blinking. Slowly it morphed from an angry red color to a light and pale green.

  “Hahaha! I’ve got you now, you creature from the abyss,” he chortled. “In the name of Murphy, Patron Saint of the Engineers—” he started leveling the pistol, and then yelped as the pistol jumped in his hand and fired all by itself. “What the blazes!?” he cried as a net of green energy enveloped the crystalline entity that far-too-closely resembled a spider.

  The Spider screeched, twisting and flailing, its legs digging into the deck as the energy net steadily pulled it back toward the pistol in his hand.

  The pistol vibrated and with a “whump” the crystal creature was compressed and sucked into the pistol. Spalding dropped the pistol to the floor in surprise and backed away.

  “That just isn’t right,” he grumbled as he warily eyed the pistol. After seeing that the pistol wasn’t about to explode and nothing was set to jump out at him and attack, he shook his head, returned to his room, came back out and placed the pistol in a bio-hazard containment box, and then placed that box inside an even bigger briefcase-sized container designed to block out—or, rather, to keep in—harmful radiation. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  After that he looked around for a bit to make sure there weren’t any more of the things ready to jump through the walls at him and then, with a shrug, he left for the bridge.

  ****************************************************

  Poking his head through the blast doors, Spalding peered around suspiciously. Relieved to not see any of the things he was expecting, like more hallucinations of himself yelling and screaming at each other, as if that was the way he would act if he ever encountered himself he silently scoffed, he quick-stepped onto the bridge and headed toward the Elder Tech jump engine interface.

  He knew he was either crazy or something had
seriously malfunctioned. Although, now that he considered it, what he thought of as a malfunction may have been a deliberately designed feature added in by the drive’s creators—they were aliens, after all, and old 'Elder' aliens at that. Old people are hard enough to deal with as it was, he thought, shaking his head, throw in a bunch of people that don’t even think like humans and you had a recipe for an engineering catastrophe. Couldn’t live with them and can’t use their mechanical inventions without serious repercussions.

  “The monkey’s in the wrench on this one,” he nodded knowingly and sat down at the console. He started to pull up the interface program when his console went on the fritz, randomly pulling up text and alien symbols.

  “What the blazes?” he growled, fingers punching the keyboard while the sound of white static started to emit from the interface console’s external speakers.

  Spalding tried to shut down the noise but the speakers only went off for a second before switching right back on. His hand slammed down on the console.

  “Confounded thing,” he cursed, pulling out a data stick from the console’s storage compartment, “we’re going to have to do an emergency system image restore,” he decided.

  Then, mixed in with the static noise, it almost sounded like someone was coughing. Spalding blinked.

  “Testing-testing,” said a static-laced voice.

  Spalding’s brows lowered thunderously. “Identify yourself,” he barked.

  “Testing, two-four-six-eight, testing,” repeated the voice.

  His blood ran cold, he recognized that voice now that the static interference was lessening. “This is moldy cheese speaking…come in, old potato?” said the other voice.

  “Get off the channel, you blasted hallucination!” Spalding cried furiously.

  “Is that you, old potato?” the voice said with satisfaction. “Good to know I managed to calibrate this thing properly. You don’t know how frustrating it is to be a tenth of a micron off and be sending tachyon pulses all the way out of Tau Ceti for all you know.”

  “I don’t have time to listen to the work problems of imaginary people,” Spalding said witheringly, “not when there are actual people here with actual work to do! So kindly take yourself away and get lost.”

  “I’m hurt, you old meat bag,” chortled the voice with deep satisfaction, “and here I was about ready to give you the secrets of the universe. But oh well, I guess you’ll just have to fumble your ham-handed way through things like usual. No point in helping out the helpless.”

  “Ham-handed?! If you knew half the things I’ve had to do to keep things running, you’d be down on your knees praying you moldy piece of…grrrr—” Spalding roared furiously as he fell into the hallucination’s trap. “Go, I said! Be gone and stay gone! We’ve got no need for the likes of you, you pompous, confounded…” he spluttered off into incoherency.

  “Ha! I’ve done everything you’ve done and more,” the voice cackled triumphantly, “so while I envy you the years of vigor and adventure before you, the sense of adrenaline flowing and blood pumping, the smell of sweet air,” there was a loud sigh, “anyway, my young whippersnapper, it’s time to listen to the voice of reason and experience!”

  “Youthful! Apprentice? Ha! You can pull on the other leg now,” Spalding snorted derisively.

  “Sweet crying Murphy, you’re just as pigheaded as I remember,” swore the voice.

  “Pigheaded! Just who do you think you are,” Spalding growled temper rising.

  “I am the ghost of future yet to come—but you can just call me e-Spalding,” sneered the voice.

  “You’re cracked,” Spalding chortled.

  “Laugh it up while you still can, you miserable excuse for an engineer. Because if you don’t listen to me you’re going to walk down a dark path, a dark path indeed!” snarled the voice, this supposed 'e-Spalding.'

  “Hey,” growled Spalding, “don’t try to push your failures onto me. I’m proud of everything I’ve done!”

  “You know, it’s hard to believe how insufferable I was back in the day,” e-Spalding said sullenly, “full of myself and entirely too ready to rest on my laurels.”

  Spalding’s head came up and he glared at the console. “Now you wait just a cotton-pickin' second. I’m no slacker to sit on my duff. I’ve got plans—plans that would blow your socks off if-”

  “Says the man who only half-rebuilt the Lucky Clover after months of work, and then promptly threw her straight into combat,” sneered e-Spalding.

  “That’s a low blow, you piece of electronic junk!” Spalding jumped to his feet and slammed his hands on the console. “Half my work crews were stolen and I only had nine months for a year and a half job!”

  “Tell that to the ship! You almost failed the Clover back then just like you’re going to fail her in the future unless you wise up and come to your senses!” barked e-Spalding.

  “There’s only one man that knows what’s best for this ship,” growled the old Engineer, “and it’s certainly not some hallucination that claims he failed to do the one job he had—which was taking care of my ship!”

  “Bah. If I leave things up to you you’ll just screw it up,” e-Spalding scolded, “it’s your fumble-fingered hands that—”

  “First I’m a slacker, and now I’m fumble fingered?” the old engineer said with outrage.

  “I was you, you fool! I’m the only one qualified to tell you where you went wrong so wise up and bend an ear,” barked e-Spalding.

  “Likely story,” Chief Engineer Spalding said skeptically, “there’s no way you’re me because I’m right here and the only time travel that’s possible in this galaxy is the one that moves you forward, not back. Next I suppose you’ll try to tell me something that only I could possibly know. As if—”

  “Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be,” snorted e-Spalding, “mind-reading or half a dozen drugs and a couple of machines could have been used to get that kind of information. Sweet crying Murphy, you’d think permanent brain damage was done to that head after medical got its hands on us, except I’ve clearly recovered while you’re still trying to play with half a deck.”

  “Oh, you imp-loving blighter!” Spalding fumed. “You just wait, yours is coming for you soon enough!”

  “Can’t handle the truth, can you?” chortled e-Spalding. “I’m older and wiser than you—not to mention on a higher mental plane than you are. We both know by this point that trying to convince you that I’m your future self by telling you about all the things only you possibly know would be an epic failure,” e-Spalding paused, “which, let me tell you, was a really upsetting realization once I stopped and thought about it.”

  “Ha! You’re welcome,” Commander Spalding said happily.

  “And that’s why,” e-Spalding continued, clearly trying for long-suffering but falling firmly into irritable and cranky instead, “as punishment for being a really stubborn blighter, and as proof of who I am, I’m going to give you the schematics of future things you don’t yet have the equipment to build.”

  “What?” Spalding blinked.

  “Read 'em and weep, you old reprobate!” chortled e-Spalding, and immediately on the screen of the interface console all the alien symbols disappeared to be replaced with standard text and diagrams.

  “That’s...impossible...no one could be that…” the Commander trailed off as he unconsciously looked at the diagrams. Minutes later, he was hooked—and then he stopped to take a look at the engineering specifications and his face flushed.

  “Finally saw it, didn’t you?” snorted e-Spalding.

  “What kind of nonsense is this?! All of the base materials require impossible tolerances,” Spalding purpled with outrage.

  “If by 'impossible' you mean 'just barely on the edge of what’s possible in your time'…then yes. That’s exactly what you’re looking at,” e-Spalding said happily.

  “But with this I could upgrade the Lucky Clover, double the power output of her antimatter generators, triple her s
hield strength with regenerative shields, and add a potential 40 percent increase in speed,” at this point the old Engineer was practically drooling at the avalanche of thoughts.

  “Sucks to be you right about now, doesn’t it?” e-Spalding said rhetorically, “convinced, yet old bean?”

  “You can’t honestly mean to tease a man like this,” Spalding snapped, shaking his head mulishly, “as they are right now…these schematics are blooming useless!”

  “Well, of course—I’m not a moron, after all,” e-Spalding said, as if speaking to a slow person. “I already had the Clover up and running at her top performance potential with the currently available tech and equipment at your current time period. And if I couldn’t do it any better than it is then you certainly can’t improve on my work!”

  “Just what the blazes are you on about?” Spalding snapped. “I’m the one that put this ship back together, not you!”

  “Since you are me—or, rather, I was you—the difference isn’t worth the spit it’d take you to talk it out,” the so-called e-Spalding snorted.

  “Now wait just a blasted second,” the old Engineer said irately, “the only 'me' in the room is me! Furthermore, I’ve got no time for hallucinations insulting me—and what’s this nonsense about 'I couldn’t do a better job than you?' Why, if I could go back and give my younger self a piece of my mind he’d have twice the ship we had back in the day!”

  “What a bunch of utter nonsense,” e-Spalding sneered, “maybe when you were younger that might have been the case, but as of today you’re just an old man, fixed in his ways and bellyaching about the good old days; a washed up engineer without the drive he had in the past—or the drive he’ll be regaining in the future. In short: you’re at the lowest point in your career, old man. Just too young for any real wisdom but entirely too old to be willing to take direction from anyone else. In short, you’re a skirt-chasing old dog, too set on chasing a woman that doesn’t want to be caught, to take my ship to the next level.”