Metallic Genealogy

A lone blip sparked onto the screen: A tiny, white dot which was barely visible on the empty background of space.

"Shall I let him come, sir?" Jeeps, the communications officer, asked. She was intense and minute: heavy in responsibilities, light in stature. About her head was attached a permanent set of comm-1 rated headphones. Through these she could access any like-rated interface and translate any language known or yet to be discovered. They also reduced that annoying hiss which very often accompanied disconnected channels. All of these features, sadly, seemed to impress no one but her.

Beyond this general description, Jeeps was a normal girl from Bellingklek, who had, like many of her peers, simply checked the wrong box at an orientation and ended up in military service for an undisclosed number of years. (Improper numbering of boxes on surveys being the main tool the army used to gather new recruits into their misogynistic institution.)

General Quock looked around the office, and grimaced. "How can a man think in this mess?" he thought, and then smiled at his success at such thinking. He thought about the possible irony of this for several minutes, and then cleared his throat when he noticed Jeeps staring at him.

The room was a vast mess of entanglements: Computers and equipment lined the walls, covering desks and the floor like stores of food ready to be shipped to whole starving planets. And these were merely the office supplies! The bulk of his operation was kept off site: Two warehouses full of hard rations, weapons, and magazines of every variety--enough for two thousand men to engage in a ten year war and not get bored during the off-hours. Yet, he still worried that it might not be enough.

Into placid thought he went. Beyond Jeeps, and the uncertain troubles at hand, leapt the mind of General Quock. Everything then went black –- as it always did when these lapses overtook him. He let his body relax and the vision overtake him. Once he succumbed, everything was bright again as if he were in a another world.

"Haligan," said Quock's younger brother, Fendripth. "I think the bird is dead."

"I believe so, too," Quock heard himself say. His voice was diminutive and less commanding.

"What do you think we should do?" His brother looked frantic, nearly at the edge of tears -- and also very young, which was indeed strange.

Of all of his "spells", the General's mind had never traveled back this early in life. The farthest, when he relived his adventures in the 21st war of Pitspit in his late teens. Here he had taken part in a number of unorthodox and embarrassing acts that he would really like to forget. But when a spell came on him -- usually no more than once or twice per day -- it would almost always have some pertinence to his current situation. He failed to see how anything to do with his brother and a dead bird could have with a couple of dots on a monitor screen, though. As always, no matter how embarrassing or painful the vision, he was locked into it, unable to escape until it's conclusion.

The young Quock thought for a minute, and said finally, "It may just be pretending." He looked into the confused face of his younger brother. "Close the cage and we'll hide behind the curtains and we shall see if this is but a ruse. Yes," he said, his eyes wild and dancing. "I believe there's still some life in this bird yet!"

General Quock squinted at the screen, and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Jeeps stared at her commanding officer for a few moments. She was used to Quock's frequent trances, but this was the closest she had been when one was actually occurring. It had been the general's eyes that had alerted Jeeps' to the change. When Quock drifted away, the man's pupils shriveled to small points and then simply disappeared, leaving only glistening white orbs behind. While in his trance, Quock's body swayed back and forth rhythmically as though cradling a sleepy infant. And once the man had returned to reality, Quock's pupils returned like the quickly widening iris of a camera.

"Ring them, and see what they want first," the general said in a rough, whiny voice. "It may just be an abandoned ship. If so, we could certainly use the salvage."

Jeeps nodded slightly before cuing up the antenna, which she did by pressing a vast assortment of buttons. Suddenly a thought struck her and she cupped her hand over the microphone. "What if they've come to attack us?"

"With only one ship?!" The general threw back his head and laughed akin to a witch's cackle. Jeeps had heard this laugh before. The first time she just assumed that Quock was engaging in some holiday-appropriate mimicry -- it had been only a week shy of Burn the Spell Caster's day, after all. However, since then she had come to discover that this was in fact Quock's true laugh. As she found it wholly disturbing, Jeeps took care to tell few jokes in Quock's presence. "That would be suicide, Jeeps. Even with our barely equipped defenses."

Jeeps removed her hand from the small, metal mesh of the comm and tapped a button on the panel in front of her. "Unknown ship," she said into the device, "you are approaching the planet, Siniss 10. Security locks are in place. What are your intentions, please?"

Jeeps pushed another button and a fine static came through a larger receiving mesh which was set into the ceiling.

"Perhaps they didn't hear you," Quock offered, peering over his officer's shoulders. "Try a different frequency."

"I know all that," Jeeps muttered under her breath, being quite careful not to be heard. She punched another button, switched to a higher set of frequencies, and got the same response. Jeeps knew her duties, and this equipment, and it annoyed her to no end when officers threw out obvious suggestions in an attempt to make themselves sound important.

"Well, pretty soon," the general shouted excitedly, "they'll be close enough to ask them in person."

Jeeps exploded. "THE FREQUENCY SCANNERS, OF WHICH THERE ARE ONLY TWO...!"

The general started to take off his belt and Jeeps tried desperately to calm herself. So many are the time she had seen her leader lash out severely at insolent beings, slapping out eyes and ripping off noses with hardly a change of expression. This belt was, in fact, a hunk of steel-lined leather feared the planet over.

"It scans all possible frequencies, sir! In rapid succession! If there's anyone aboard that ship, they're deliberately not responding!" Jeeps had been inching away, ever so slowly during this explanation, and by the time she had finished this last sentence she was standing behind one of the file cabinets.

"Well then," Quock said, his voice civil under the circumstances, " Very good. More metal for the pile, eh."

To Jeeps' relief, the heavy leader had just been tucking in his shirt.

"Jeeps...!" The general looked at the control board and found his communications officer absent from her post. "JEEPS?!"

"Over here, sir."

"But for the reverence of Burnt Toast, get up off of the floor!"

Jeeps scooted over to her chair and sat down.

"Have a retriever ship go out there to...well, retrieve whatever that ship is carrying."

"What if it's an ambush, sir?"

"Then have the retriever accompanied by a few fighters. Veebus Neebus, Jeeps. Use your head, woman."

General Quock stood erect suddenly, forcing Jeeps to stand at attention, saluted feebly and tromped out of the room.

Once he was free of the eyes of his men, the General quickly ran to an escape pod and closed the door securely behind him. As his vision had ended before showing him the final outcome, he felt it best to be prepared for anything. Switching on the security viewer, Quock grabbed a brundle stick from the food storage and waited to see with almost eager anticipation if this bird would indeed come back to life.