THE LANDSRAAN CHRONICLES

Book One

by

J. Dayton

Prologue

“Someone once said space is not only bigger than we imagine, but bigger than we can imagine…. They had NO idea…”  

                                                Quinn Derelith

        In a little used section of a universe, a glimmer appeared amongst the stars. The effect only lasted for a moment, but at that time it was the most important event this universe had seen in a millennium.  Of itself, the glimmer was nothing to behold, but rather, what it hid. The long, sleek missile beneath paused for a moment before heading for its final destination.

        Landsraan’s moon hung against the starry backdrop, never realizing what was about to greet it. Approaching the moon’s orbit, the illusion was cast aside and the deadly dart flung itself into the ground. For a brief moment, nothing. Then a flare, brighter than Landsraan's sun, spread from the point of impact. Waves of savage flame swept across the surface consuming everything in its path. Frantic calls from the multitude of starcraft nearby fell on deaf ears; Hundreds of thousands of lights had been extinguished in a matter of moments.

        On the planet below, a lone figure wrapped in shadows looked up at the conflagration and smiled.

        In a low whisper it said, “It has begun.”

Chapter One

        You know, The one with all the extra-dimensional visitors?

BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! An alarm goes off as the Sun beats down on a clear Arizona morning, or is it Noon? BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZ-CRASH!!  Silence. A synthetic voice speaks out, not that the lone person in the room is listening. “Initiating Cryo-Aquatic measures.”

SPLOOSH! “YEA-AUGHH! What the ever-lovin' schnott are you doing L.I.T.E.?,” said the lone person upon receiving a rather rude awakening.

The synthetic voice replied with a deadpan, “Waking you, Sir.”  

If the AI system governing the facility ever decided to develop human emotions, impatience would very well be the first, considering the nature of the person it was trying to rouse.

It added, “As per your orders.”  

Quinn Derelith sat up on his bed, sopping wet with the ice water his Amazingly Wonderful  cyber assistant had just hosed him with. “Yeah, I don’t seem to recall that last bit on my list from last night.”

The A.I. replied, “No, that was a last minute addition from Mr. Hazard.”  

I really have to check LITE’s algorithms later, Quinn thought, for a second there he almost sounded amused… “What time is it? Oh, Crap! Crap! Craaap! I’m late!” Quinn yelped.

“Yes Sir, by .75 hours,” The AI intoned.

Quinn hurled himself at his closet and quickly pulled on some pants and a red T-shirt and grabbed his favorite Datapad. “Schnott-Fire! Why didn’t you wake me earlier, LITE?” He scolded the Computer.

The Facility A.I. quietly reminded him, “I did Sir. You ‘Pressed the Snooze’, as you put it, approximately 12 times.”

Quinn jerked his shoes on and flew out the door, almost knocking over a Maintenance Bot as he ran down the hall. “I’m guessing my esteemed colleagues are already in the Lab?”

The AI's voice now came from the datapad, “Affirmative. I have a message from Mr. Happ, he says: 'At least you don’t need to take a shower now.' End message.”  

“Oh, the fun just never ends around here...” fuming and still chilled from his abrupt dousing, Quinn turned down another corridor in the complex.

Situated next to an old and rather large crater in the Arizona desert, J-Corp Engineering is home to some of the most advanced scientific discoveries in the later half of the 21st century. Quinn inherited control of the corporation four years ago when he turned twenty-one.

“You’d think the president of the flippin’ company could manage to sleep in without two yayhoos deciding to get funny,” Quinn fumed to himself.

Several other residents of the research complex offered morning greetings as he dashed by: “Hey, Quinn, late night?” and, “Isn’t that like the third time this week?” followed by “Aren’t you supposed to be in the main lab right now?”

“NOTED!” Quinn yelled as he finally came to the massive doors leading to his pet project. He thought out loud, “Hopefully this won't be the biggest flop in the universe if it doesn’t work. But, it's not like they can start without me, I have the ARM key!”

Passing through the entrance, Quinn saw two of his best friends and associates. Standing there were Mattholomew “Duke” Hazard and Kenshiro Happ. Oddly enough, Happ is not oriental in the least.

Quinn shifted to scold mode and fired off, “What have I told you two about making weird changes to LITE’s programming? One of these days he’s going develop a sense of humor and NO-body will be safe!” He then thought to himself, “Can’t be too mad though, this is one of the most important days of my life. Maybe now I can finally find out what happened to Gramps.”

Quinn’s grandfather was the founder of the J-Corp research group. He went missing many years ago attempting, and possibly succeeding, in what Quinn was going to try today.

“Except this time we’re going do it by the book,” Quinn hopefully and silently prayed, “Fifteen years is way too long.”  

Duke looked up from a monitor and said, “All systems out of warm up. RDM is fired up and on standby. We’re green, Quinn.”  

The Resonant Dimensional Matrix stood at the heart of the massive wall of electronics across the room.

“You DID remember to bring the ARM key, didn’t you?” Happ added, with a slight smirk on his face.

“Like I could forget it,” Quinn chided, “It’s only the most important key to a doodad I’ve ever built.”

Kenshiro shook his head and replied, “Just checking, dude…”

Quinn slapped a nearby counter top. “Well let’s get this party started, shall we? Bring the emitters online and activate environmental lockdown. LITE? Sound the alert.”

“Yes Sir, - All Residents, prepare for lockdown; Proceed to your designated areas and observe all necessary restrictions. Project initiation in fifteen minutes,” intoned the computer throughout the complex.

The massive doors behind Quinn slowly closed with a low boom, sealing the three engineers in.

“History is about to be made here today,” Quinn thought, “We’re finally going to crack the dimensional barrier and possibly discover a whole new universe. Or blow the whole flipping place up; But let’s not be a Negative Ned.”  

Quinn grinned as banks of equipment came to life around the room. He thought to himself again, “Ever since I discovered in Gramps' notes that a synchronous tone sequence was needed to stabilize the D-Matrix, things have really progressed; This one’s for you, Gramps.”

He was broken out of his reminiscing as LITE announced, “Matrix activated, emitters online, awaiting 'Go' from Command.”  

Quinn looked at the other two and asked, “Ready, gentlemen?”

 “Ready to rock, old chap,” said Kenshiro.

Happ was situated behind the heavily modified keyboard that generated the control tones for the flickering lights now starting to form in the center of the D-Gate.

He added, “All areas report ready and waiting.”

Quinn inserted the Amplified Resonance Module key into the main console and inquired of his head security officer, “Mr. Hazard, are the security measures in place?”

Duke turned and saluted before jovially replying, “Aye, Keptin!”

“Don’t do that,” said Quinn as he gave Duke the humorous Evil Eye while the lights intensified. “OK, Mr. Happ, get those fingers walking.”

As the musical tones starting coming from the system speakers, Quinn had to wonder if a rock band from the latter quarter of the 20th century would’ve had any idea that part of one of their songs was the key to stabilizing a dimensional wormhole. Too hilarious. The lights now reached a crescendo.

“UMM, Quinn…” Quinn jerked his head around at Duke, who added, “Something’s off here…”

LITE abruptly sounded off, “ALERT – ALERT! Gate integrity compromised, incoming interference detected.”  

“IN-coming?! What the Sam Frell is going on?” yelled Quinn.

Kenshiro looked up from his monitor and shouted, “Something not being generated by us is synching to our gate frequencies, the power output is rising, fast!”

 Quinn quickly ran to LITE’s main panel and inquired of the computer, “Can we shut it down?”

The AI replied, “Not Advised, Sir; The feedback would form a new crater beside the existing one. Caution, detecting incoming transit signal.”  

Duke yelled from the other side of the room, “Something’s coming through from the other side!”

Quinn grabbed a nearby railing and answered, “Duke! Sound EVAC alert and prepare for unannounced guests!”

Duke started frantically punching buttons. “NOTED! Perhaps they’re friendly?” he asked hopefully as reinforced blast shields were activated around the command area.

The light in the matrix was violently churning now and with a sudden surge seven forms came hurling out onto the floor. Moving wobbily to its feet, and dressed in some sort of red armored spacesuit with a opaque helmet, one of the newly arrived visitors spoke:

“Ugh. This doesn’t look like Abyillon Central. Where the fiznab are we?!”  Quinn stared in astonishment and said, “Well it ain’t Kansas.”

Chapter Two

Earlier: somewhere over the hyper-dimensional color band.

        “Mr.Dulu, have you succeeded in contacting Command yet?”

        Geral Mauserville was not a happy camper. Oh, he loved camping just fine, in fact he wished he was doing that now. Instead he was waiting to hear news about some incident that had happened the night before and was apparently locking up the lines of communication back to headquarters.

        “All comm lines are overwhelmed Commander, with this level of overload it could be days or weeks before the system calms down,” Geral’s chief communications officer paused at the terminal he was using. “However, I am receiving a live straight beam Priority Alpha-X message from Queen Mynnivere herself.”

“It must be bad,” Geral thought.

Alpha-X level was only used for extreme disaster events.

 “Alright, put her up on the main viewer.” The head of Geral’s home world Rodin appeared on the screen. Slight static interference danced across the monitor.

“Commander, I am sorry to be the one giving you this news, but an incident of, well, I can’t even begin to describe the scope of it…”

She sighed heavily before continuing, “There’s been an attack on Landsraan Secondus.”

Geral’s mouth dropped. “What?! Don’t tell me those whack jobs from the Anti-Fed League actually went and blew up something?”

        The Queen closed her eyes for a moment before replying, “No, far worse… The moon was hit by a World-Breaker, Geral…”

        Someone in the back dropped a food tray. Stunned to the core by this news, the rest of Geral’s troop could only sit in shock over it.

        Geral finally spoke, “Are they sure? Only two of those things are still left after G1, and they’re under the highest security in the known universes…”

        Geral couldn’t believe the words he was hearing, especially since the being responsible for that tight security was one of his best friends and commanding officer. He looked up. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me the Council of Dimensions is trying to blame…”

The Queen replied with a weary voice, “I’m afraid that is exactly what several on the Council are trying to do as we speak. A tribunal has been declared for tomorrow to decide if charges will be filed against the Omegiar. People are scared, angry, and want justice, even if an innocent being has to be a scapenarf.”

The Commander could only shake his head in disbelief at that pronouncement. “Surely Maxx and Councilor Truxx will back Taank up! I should have been there…” 

Mynnivere shook her head sadly. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, there was nothing you could have done. The missile was cloaked somehow, it wasn’t even detected until right before it hit.”

He looked up in hope. “Then it couldn’t have been one of the quarantined units, they didn’t have that capability!”

The Queen nodded, “Yes, but Omegiar Taank swore before the entire Council of Dimensions that all were accounted for and secure. And after the fleet incident at the end of G2, well, there are still sore heads from even then. But there is something you can do NOW. I am hereby giving you, and such others as you see fit to take with you, full royal authorization to act as envoys on the behalf of Rodin. We are experiencing unexpected flare activity and our gate system will be down for some time. So, I will have to take a ship to the next nearest D-Portal. Get there as quick as you can, the trial is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in Abyillon Prime.”

Dulu motioned to Geral when a light started flashing on the console. “Commander, there seems to be another message coming in for you from… oh, schnott, its Julanda.”

Two of the group seated to the rear of the cockpit went wide-eyed at Dulu’s announcement, and yes, they are a little short to be M-corps members.

“MOM?!” The twin nephews of Geral yelled at the same time. “Duck and Cover!”

The two fun-loving (read, trouble-making, by most beings and accounts,) brothers dove behind their seats and peeked out warily.

“Ummm, you better answer, Unc, you know what happened last time you ignored her.”

 “Why me?” Geral sighed at the heavens.

Of all the sisters in the universe to be related to, he had to get the most paranoid worry wart of all time.

“Your Majesty, we should arrive by tomorrow morning at our current speed, but right now I need to calm Julanda down,” he said.

A small smirk crossed the Queen’s face, not that Queens allow that sort of thing to be noticed. “I’m surprised she hasn’t already blown the airlock doors in looking for the twins. She must be mellowing in her mid age. Be careful Commander, and may the Stars shine favorably on your trip.”

He waved at the screen. “Thanks, Mynn.”

The Queen raised her eyebrow. “Ex-Cuse me, Commander?”

 Geral turned red momentarily. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Mynn gave Geral a quick wink. “That’s better.”

The screen winked out as another face flashed into existence with much fury. “GERAL!! WHAT IN THE SEVEN TONGS OF ICE ARE YOU DOING WITH MY BOYS!!”  

Geral grabbed his ears in protest. “Dulu, turn that down!”

The Comm Officer frantically hit buttons. “Um, yeah Sir, I got it as low as it will go…”

Sheesh.

“Sis, calm down! Everybody’s OK!” Geral pleaded.

“WHERE ARE THEY?! I WANT TO SEE THEM THIS INSTANT! TUFFIAS!  CUBBERTON! GET OUT HERE NOW!” She bellowed out.

Two pairs of eyes edged out from behind the seats. “Hi Mom, we’re ok, you don’t have to yell in front of everybody…”

At the sight of her children, Geral’s sister finally cut the volume level and calmed down. Slightly.

“It’s been all over the NewsNet services about the attack, I was afraid you had been…” she blathered out.

“It’s alright ‘landa,” Geral soothed, “We were on a wilderness training exercise on Messer-D, and we’re on our way back to Landsraan now. Nothing else has happened as far as we can tell. We were just getting updated and briefed by the Queen, whom you just cut in on by the way.”

Julanda’s face turned bright red before she spoke. “The Queen?! She was talking to you just now?!”

Geral nodded. “Yyyup. We’ve been appointed representatives for Rodin to the Council. Everyone present, I believe she said.”

The red glow almost reached the back of the cabin. “Oh.”

Geral used his best calm down voice, “Don’t worry though, I’m bringing them home after tomorrow, everything should be settled by then.”

“You had better,” She sniffed, “You know I’ll flay your hide if you don’t.”

Geral gave her a lopsided grin and said, “Love you too, sis, but we have to log off and prepare for our gate transit. Tell mother hello for me. Geral out.”

Dulu hurriedly cut the connection before the highly vocal member of the Commander’s family could voice any more protests. Geral thought for a moment before addressing the group. In all, seven of them were on their way back from the training mission: Himself, the twins Tuffias and Cubberton Rouss, who were the ones in training; Communications officer Ean Dulu, Docc Holday the team medic, Gate Transit Officer Riff Fretz, and Geral’s older brother, Wedginald 'Wedge' Mauserville, who was back in the crew quarters.

“Ok, you all know what’s happened, and what's expected of us. If anybody wants to be dropped off before we get there, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Like you could keep us away,” Docc spoke abruptly. “We’re gonna go whether you want us to or not.”

Geral smiled at the older medic. “Should know by now, hunh? Alright then, lets…” –THOOOM!!!

Geral was cut off as a violent explosion rocked the ship.

“What in the irregular blue blazes was that?!” Geral yelled as alarms started going off.  

Dulu sprang to a nearby console and studied some readouts before turning his head back toward his commander. “I’m reading an explosion in the drive section, but according to this, it came from outside the ship!”

The twins got wide eyed and said at once, “Someone’s attacking us?!”

Wedge ran into the control room and shouted, “What just happened?!”

Dulu checked the screen again. “Definite strike from outside the ship, nothing on sensors before that! Commander, I’m reading severe fluctuations in the drive core; We have maybe six to seven minutes to total core meltdown!”

Wedge and Geral had some choice words for that news. The Commander made a decision.

“Looks like the narf spit has struck the air oscillator, our only way out now is if we use a personal D-gate. Riff, you got enough juice to power a portal to Abyllon?”

Riff checked a gauge and replied “Maybe, It’ll be close.”

Geral gripped the control panel. “It’ll have to do. Get us as close as you can. You've got four minutes, let’s get it together!”

The group acknowledged with an “Aye, Sir!”

The seven quickly grabbed their gear and prepared to use a doorway generated by Fretz’s Gate Transit Access Remote, which would hurl them through the dimensional walls to universe Alpha-Prime, home of Landsraan, the Council of Dimensions, and, although they didn’t know it yet, a whole lot of trouble.

Riff called out, “D-Matrix is stable, Sir, locking in coordinates for Abyllon Transit Central!”

Geral looked around the cabin one last time and ordered, “Punch it, Mr. Fretz!”

Riff’s fingers deftly moved over the activation keys on his G-TAR, causing a shimmering beam of light to erupt from the end. In front of them a small dimensional portal flared to life.

Riff checked a setting and said, “Portal’s set…  Something seems a bit weird though, we seem to be getting a power boost from somewhere!”

 Geral slung his bag over his shoulder. “It might be Central synching to our beam,” Geral said. “Hopefully Mynn won’t be too mad at me for losing the ship…”

Wedge slapped him on the shoulder. “Can’t be helped. And you know she hates it when you call her that in public.”

Geral grinned. “Well get raised with someone for most of your life and you tend to be overly familiar around them.”

Geral’s mother was the Royal Tutor and is Rodin's current Minister of Education.  His sister is a Lady-in-Waiting for the Royal Family and their Father was the Captain of Asteraan’s Royal Guard, one of the precursors to the M-Corps. Geral and Mynnivere were like brother and sister growing up.

“We got into a lot of trouble too, while we were at it,” He thought fondly. He barked out, “Scramble, Gentlemen! Let’s get out of here.”

As they ran into the swirling vortex, he noticed a strange set of sounds. Must be his imagination, he supposed. Immediately his feet were pulled out from under him and flung him sideways. Oh, snarf! No, this wasn’t normal at all, the portal seemed to want to bring back the lunch he had eaten earlier. There was a flash of light, a bit of darkness, and he and the others found themselves landing on a hard concrete floor.

“OW,” moaned the twins simultaneously.

Geral got groggily to his feet. “Ugh. This doesn’t look like Abyillon Central, where the fiznab are we?!”

It was then that he noticed the three tall humanoids staring at him from across what seemed to be some sort of Lab. The one closest said something about it not being canned hash, and Geral fell back on the floor and said nighty-nite to consciousness.

Chapter Three

Meanwhile, back at the Complex…

Quinn couldn’t believe his eyes; There were visitors from another dimension lying on his lab floor. And they were a bit on the short side. All of them were wearing some sort of uniform with reinforced armor pieces attached. They also had on helmets with visors, and some sort of backpack.

The one who spoke earlier started to rouse. “Oy, My aching noggin, Wedge, did I hit yer big head coming through?”

Wedge was looking at something over Geral’s shoulder. “No Bro, but you might want to get up and look at what we did hit…”

In an instant Geral was on his feet staring at the humanoid he thought was a hallucination. “OK, who are you and where are we? We are on our way to Abyillon Prime on an urgent diplomatic mission for Rodin…”

“Whooooa, hold on there dude!” Quinn held his hands up quickly. “I have no idea who you are or where that is! You just interrupted a project my group and I were working on to access the dimensional barrier.”  

Geral said in disbelief, “What do you mean you’ve never heard of Rodin or the city of Abyllon Prime?! What kind of backwater pocket dimension did you send us to Riff?!”

Riff looked indignant. “Hey it wasn’t me, the coordinates are fine, this Yayhoo somehow piggybacked our signal, that must be why the power output was off.”

Quinn frowned at being called a Yayhoo, that was a name he usually reserved for Duke after one of his goofy pranks.

“Hey now, this Yayhoo has a name. I’m Quinn Derelith of umm, Earth.”

All seven jerked their heads in his direction at once.

“Oh, great my name probably means something insulting in their language,” he thought, “but wait, they’re speaking pretty darn good English.”

He heard soft mutters from the small crowd. “No frappin’ way…”

“It can’t be…”

“Schnott-fire!” – WHAAP!  Geral smacked the closer of the twins on the back of his helmet.

“Tuffias Rouss! What did I tell you about using that kind of language!”

Tuffias rubbed his sore head. “Well you use it!”

“No, I use colorful metaphors,” Geral shot back.

“And the difference is?!” both brothers exclaimed.

Geral glared at the two. “Shaddap or I’ll tell your mom…”

Both got quiet fast. “Shadding up, Unc.”

Geral turned back toward Quinn and asked, “Why are you using that name if you don’t know about Landsraan or Rodin? I’m pretty sure you're not old enough to be Quinn Derelith.”

Quinn eyed the other warily. “I was born with it. I was named after my grandfather.”

Geral got wide-eyed. “Your Gran-… Oh, ever-loving Peete… I know where we are. This is Commander Derelith’s world. The one he came from originally.”

The twins became excited at that; “Awesome! We learned about him in History class! Is he around here?!”

“Those two are hyper,” Quinn mused to himself, then he addressed the haggard group: “No, he isn’t. I haven’t seen him for almost 15 years. That’s what I’m doing here, attempting to replicate his research and go look for him. He disappeared after conducting this same experiment. The only clues were a group of what looks to be Matrix settings and a letter addressed to me.”

Riff raised his hand. “Can I see those numbers?”

Quinn shrugged and pointed at a monitor close by.

Riff scrolled down the list and scratched his chin. “Ohhh, ok, so that’s what happened… you had the same set of numbers I had. The D-Matrixes must have synchronized frequencies and locked in on each other instead of the Hub.”

Quinn looked at him funny. “You mean we dialed the same number at the same time and got each other?”

The transit officer shrugged, “Yeah sure, if ‘dialed’’ means dragging us to an unknown dimension of no return, then, yes…”

Geral glared at his big-mouthed officer. “We don’t know that there’s no return from here, Mr. Fretz. Perhaps our newly discovered friends here can help us get back before the trial.”

Quinn was puzzled. “Trial? You guys aren’t convicts or something are you?”

The two ADHD short guys started laughing hysterically.         “Convicts?! Oh that’s a good one… No dude, we’re part of the Land Force!”

Quinn thought he was going to have to change his name to Jigsaw he was so puzzled right then. “Land Force? Is that some sort of...? HEY! Would you guys quit all staring at me at the same time like that? You’re creeping me out…”

Geral shook his head in disbelief and said, “Your Grandfather never told you about serving in only the biggest and best ‘Force for Justice and Good’ in the Federated Dimensions?!”

Quinn looked down sadly and replied, “No, he didn’t talk much about what he did before marrying Nanna Tam, just that he was in some sort of local militia or something. He left me a few things from then but otherwise I had no idea. Sorry then, please, what is the Land Force?”

Geral looked at his nephews and said, “Alright boys, fill the man in on his family history.”

Both of the boys started off one after the other, with Tuffias leading, “Right-O, Unc- I mean Commander! - Land Force is the shortened name for the Landsraani Allied Hyper-Dimensional Defense Forces which is way too long to say at one time so most just say Land Force.”

Then Cubberton added, “The Land Force was founded after the First Great Galactic War, or G1, about one thousand years ago, by Maxxilon Steele and a group of other intrepid explorers called the Robor-Force, to defend the Federated Dimensions from any and all threats.”

Tuffias continued with, “The Force hit its current prime about fifty some years ago during the second Great Galactic War or ‘G2’ because that also is a lot to say, during which the one we were heading to help became Supaar of the most decorated and famous of all the various groups that make up the Land Force.”

Quinn held his hands up. “OK, OK, whoa! First, do you two ever breathe, second, what’s a Super, and third, what does this have to do with my grandfather?!”

Geral chuckled a bit. “We’re not sure if they breathe or not, they won’t stay still long enough to tell; And it’s Sup-aar, not ‘super’. It’s a designation for a major division commander. Currently Taank is Omegiar rank, which is a sort of fleet admiral or major general to use your grandfather’s terms. Your grandfather served as a sub-commander under then Supaar Taank during G2. They were stationed together for several years at some base that’s supposedly hidden away and extremely top secret, where the battle that ended the war was fought. My father also fought alongside them; although I was little at the time and don’t remember it much.”

Quinn raised both eyebrows, “Wait a second, how old are you?! If this happened fifty some years ago and you were little then…”

Geral thought for a moment, “Let’s see, next B-day I’ll be fifty-two.”

Duke finally spoke up: “Little old, ain’tcha?”

Geral made a gesture with his hand, “No, not really, I won’t be eligible for military retirement till I’m at least 160-180, and that’s if I take early leave.”  

Duke shook his head. “Dang, dude…”

Kenshiro cut in, “So what was that trial you were speaking of then?”

Geral got somber and then said, “There was an attack on one of the moons of Landsraan last night, the surface was wiped out completely. The weapon used was very rare, only two are supposed to still exist, and they’re under lockdown on Landsraan Prime. The Omegiar was in charge of security for the weapons after they were discovered; He was sure all of them were accounted for, but there must have been one hidden away somewhere.”

Quinn nodded. “And I’m guessing the ‘People in Charge’ think your commander either didn’t do his job very well or lied about the number of these things?”

Geral looked up and said, “Looks that way. The hearing’s scheduled tomorrow in the capital city of Abyllon Prime. The Council will decide if charges should be brought against him. We know he’s innocent, but there are several members of the Dimensional Council who aren’t fond of him, especially after the Fleet Incident at the end of G2…”

Duke asked, “What sort of Incident?”

Docc answered him, “Wellll, he sort of may have… ‘misplaced’ an entire fleet group…”

Kenshiro raised an eyebrow. “How does one ‘misplace’ an entire fleet of ships?”

Docc looked sheepish and shrugged. “No ones knows for sure. There are a lot of things that have been classified or that are just downright unknown about events that happened at the end of G2. I was there with him and I’m still not sure either.”

Quinn scratched his chin for a moment and got a look in his eye; “So, it would seem that we have ties to each other. Luckily, none of the equipment blew, so there’s no reason that we can’t just try it again and get you guys home. I’m sure with your expertise we can figure it out.”

Quinn paused for a second. “However, I have one condition.”

Now it was Geral’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

Quinn looked at Geral dead on. “Take me with you… this may be the only chance I have to find out what happened to Gramps. So, I get you guys to your friend’s trial, and maybe he or someone else there will know where he is or what happened to him.”

Geral blew out a long sigh. “I don’t think that will be a good idea, Quinn. Things are… complicated over there concerning Earth Humans.”

Quinn said, “That sounded like a capital ‘Earth Humans’; aren’t there any of us over there?”

Geral crossed his arms and explained, “There are what you would call ‘human looking’ beings; on the outside they resemble you three, but their internal makeup is different. After G2 there was a rebellion of sorts involving a group of Earth Humans living in Landsraan’s home dimension, Alpha-Prime. You see, when a true Earth Human crosses over into some of the dimensions other than their own, they… gain abilities not native to their species.”

Quinn got wide-eyed. “You mean like superpowers?”

Geral nodded. “For lack of a better term, yes. It varies from person to person, but it came down to a group of them got big-headed and thought they could run things better than the existing government. There was a revolt, and it ended with them being exiled to their home dimension where they had little to no extraordinary powers.”

Quinn was surprised. “You mean, here? But surely Gramps wouldn’t have been a part of anything like that…”

Geral shook his head quickly. “No, No, he wasn’t part of that group but he voluntarily chose to leave with other loyal Humans, to keep an eye on the malcontents. He was one of the few that was well liked, famous even, due to his service in the LF, but he chose to leave other than to cause any hard feelings amongst the populace.” 

“Wow, I never knew,” Quinn contemplated silently. “All those years and he never said a word.” He broke from his reminiscing and said, “I still need to go, though. Somehow he was able to find a way out of here. If he thought something over there was important enough to risk re-exile or worse, I owe it to him to find out what that was.”

Geral showed a slight grin. “You would have disappointed me if you didn’t, Quinn; Dereliths are apparently the stubbornest beings in the Known Universes. But there’s still the fact that you’d stand out like a sore thumb coming with us.”

Quinn got another look in his eye.

“Uh-oh, he has a plan, Happ.” Duke warned. “He has the glint.”

Quinn was grinning broadly now. “I do. But you know we haven’t all been formally introduced yet.”

Geral seemed to relax slightly. “True. My name is Commander Geral Mauserville, M-Corps division of the Land Force.”

Geral went on to name the rest of his company, after which Quinn had to refrain from asking, with seven guys that had names and sizes like that, was there a cute brunette with a thing for apples and whistling while she worked waiting on the other side? But he didn’t want to come off snarky.

Instead he asked, “So, Commander, do you guys wear those helmets all the time?”