SG/SF: Trail Boss #1 (1/2)

[Eric Burns]

Altiverse 000SUPERGUY, local 1994-03-03 12:49 UTC
Twenty-three minutes after the defeat of Satan, Prince of Darkness, Duke of
Smelly Feet, CEO of Hell<tm> Inc., commander of the Hellship Yesj.

APRIL 3, 1994: 7:49 AM EST

     "I can't-believe-he's gone," Relativity Woman panted, her breath
coming in staccato gasps.  "I can't, I can't."  The rest of the room was
silent, apart from the gentle rasp of Spandex Babe's hand against the back
of Relativity Woman's costume, and the quiet sobbing of Dangerousgirl.
     Trashman stood silently, his mind awhirl.  He tried to come up with
reasons for leaving the microphone active, and succeeded -- revenge, a
final torment, an attempt to bring Dangerousman back from the edge, sheer
cruelty -- but he entirely failed to choose a final answer from the list.
     <<Guys?>>
     "It's..." Unorthodox Lass began, reaching for Dangerousgirl, but
stopped.  She had been about to assure her teammate that it was okay,
everything was okay.  But that would have been patently false.
     <<Hey, guys?  Listen->>
     "Not now, JOEL," muttered the Masked Bruce.
     <<I really think you ought to see this.>>
     "I said not now!  And for crying out loud, would you turn off that
damn picture of the sun-"
     Mike Green gaped.
     <<I told you so,>> JOEL said smugly.
     "LOOK AT THIS, ALL OF YOU!" the Masked Bruce commanded, and the team
looked as one at the conference table as JOEL zoomed the picture.
     Glowing bright orange, its shape difficult to make out in the blinding
light, something six thousand miles long was forcing its way slowly,
ponderously, out of the surface of the sun.

APRIL 3, 1994: 8:00 AM EST

     "If that damned Texan fool hadn't destroyed our engine..." gritted the
demon, sweat pouring down his brow from some unseen exertion.  "See if I
can't re-route some circuits, boost output to numbers three and six."
     Lars pulled, trying not to think.  Was the heat fading?  It was
impossible to tell if the ship was even moving, let alone in which
direction.  He just pulled with his eyes closed, trying to ignore the fact
that he was trusting a demon.
     "Center the stick," the creature roared.  "Hold it dead center!  We're
going to make it!"
     The Yesj heaved against the pull of the sun, its ancient alien engines
blazing away with untold power.  It dragged itself slowly from the
photosphere, into and through the corona, metal boiling away from its
miles-thick hull to evaporate in space, propelled away by the solar wind.
Its Hellish weaponry fused itself in flat scraps to the hull, every access
hatch on the ship welded shut.
     And slowly, steadily, it pulled itself free.
     The great ship began to pick up speed, its hull glowing bright in the
blackness of space as it left the yellow star behind.  It heaved itself
past the orbit of Pluto, a streak of light flashing through the blackness
as it closed in on Venus.  Finally, it turned ponderously end-over-end and
the engines fired gently and constantly.  It slowed, drifting, settling
finally into a solar orbit near Earth's.
     It was essentially alone in open space.  The Xolchipalians and
Ottsamaddawiduans hovered outside Earth's orbit, trying to patch themselves
together and save their wounded.  Earth itself was quiet, as if in shock at
the fate it had narrowly avoided.
     Then, a small vehicle of sorts dropped slowly, softly, toward the dull
red hull of the Yesj.  It flitted forward, almost to the bow, as a
collection of similar tiny ships gathered around it, like a swarm of tiny
insects gathering around an elephant.
     The foremost vehicle -- which, on inspection, could be seen as a Ford
Bronco with a huge set of steer horns on the grille, touched down.  Its
tires melted instantly, and the wheels were welded to the Yesj's hull by
the heat.
     The door opened, and a space-suited figure with a ten-gallon helmet
leaned out, a thick pole in one gloved hand.
     "DAMNitall, it's hot!" he said.  Pointing one end of the pole straight
up, he planted the other end on the hull.  It, too, fused itself in place.
     "Ah do hereby claim this ship in th' name o' the Lone Star State!" he
bellowed, and touched a stud on the pole.  It instantly telescoped upwards
a mile and a half, and an enormous steel Texas flag unfurled and stood
rigidly in space above.  "And ah do hereby rename it...TH' ALAMO'S
REVENGE'S REVENGE!"
     "Och, Stetson darlin'," said a matronly voice from inside the truck,
"I do think it bae time fer a celebration."
     "But yer arm's broke, darlin'," said Stetson, closing the door and
turning to Scotty as he removed his helmet.
     "The rest o' me works just fine," she grinned, wrapping her other arm
around his neck and pulling his face down to her own.


                         Sfstory Digest presents
                       Stetson Tyler, Space Cowboy
                                    in
                                Trail Boss
                                  Part 1

            Based upon the work, attitude, and sheer willpower
                                    of
                             Frank Orzechowicz
                  The Large Manly Man in Wet Clothing
                                   aka
                               Nigel Savage

                 Prologue taken from "Yesterday's Hero"
                                    by
                            William R. Dickson

                       Written, if that's the word
                                    by
                             Eric Burns-White,
                                Lord Sabre
                   which is a really embarrassing title
               twenty-nine years after you started using it


Altiverse 000SUPERGUY, local 1994-03-07 13:34 UTC

April 7, 1994
11:34 AM EDT
Conning Tower Level 117 (Tertiary Control Deck)
Pretty Damn Fine Ol' Hellacious Ship "Alamo's Revenge's Revenge"

     The man was six feet tall, shoulders broad, grey ten gallon hat held in
his hand. His hair was short and a bit sparse on top, salt and pepper over a
weathered face, tanned brown and of indeterminate ethnicity -- there was
clearly some First Nations in there, probably more than one tribe, alongside
some European, possibly African, and it was hard to rule out Asian.
Similarly, it was hard to tell the man's age from looking at him. Eternal,
maybe. Or perhaps old. Or maybe young. Middle aged was on the table as well,
while the Vegas Oddsmakers had 'post pubescent' as a 1000-to-1 longshot. He
wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and a bolo tie, and his cowboy boots were
functional, not fancy. He was a man who worked, and this was his ranch.
     It just happened to be a ranch that doubled as a crippled starship six
thousand miles long floating at the Earth-Sun T5 point to keep from
accidentally disrupting the celestial mechanics of the planet with its
gravity well. And like any decent ranch that had been through a storm, the
first thing you had to do was get the fences repaired and make sure the herd
was doing okay.
     It is worth noting that the man's former ship -- the Pretty Damn Fine
Ol' Texas Ship "Alamo's Revenge," formerly the largest starship commanded by
a human being or indeed any known sentient in either Altiverse 000SFSTORY
(its origin point) or Altiverse 000SUPERGUY (its end point) had actually had
hundreds of head of cattle on board, along with horses, chickens, fields,
and all the rest, along with the cowpokes and ranch hands what needed to be
on hand to bust broncos and git dogies along. Before its long firey crash in
the Sahara Desert, the call to abandon ship had triggered automatic systems,
grabbing every animal and a frighteningly complete number of plants and
dropping them in their own survival pods. When a man designed a lifeboat, he
didn't leave behind anything he was GOD DAMNED RESPONSIBLE FOR, dagnabbit.
Said survival pods were now floating in a Xolchapalian Containment field,
and said cowhands in survival suits were going from pod to pod seeing that
all the usual work got done. Because damn it, just because everything was in
a pod wasn't a reason to shirk the damn job.
     "Well," the man said, finally. "What we got, then?"
     He said it to one of the small group of people who were standing on the
auxiliary control deck, wearing the brown uniforms of the "Alamo's Revenge"
with the command staff patches. The people who were the man's right hands,
and sometimes his left hands to boot. The stalwart captain, dark skinned
with short curly salt and pepper hair who'd seen more than his share of
danger and continued riding high. The red haired woman who'd gone from
programmer to astronaut to navigator to tactical officer and mastered each.
The tall man -- boyish, really -- with the unruly brown hair and pale skin
who had been the genius architect and shipwright of the "Alamo's Revenge,"
and finally the auburn haired woman, slightly paler than the other red-head
who clearly was her daughter, built a bit like a curvy tank. Around them
were five officers of the alien Xolchipalian Defense Forces, two warriors of
the Ottsamattawidu Empire, a Xolchipalian Commodore and the fabled Galaxy
Hunter who I'd be coy about but only fools were coy about Galaxy Hunter.
     The shipwright -- whose name, since I'm getting tired of being coy
about the humans as well -- was William 'Bill' Tog, shrugged. "It's kind of
a mixed report."
     "That's being kind," the tanklike woman -- Esmeralda Montgomery O'Scott
Campbell, legendary engineer of Her Majesty's Royal Navy turned legendary
engineer of the "Alamo's Revenge" itself -- said with a thick Scots brogue.
"The Primary engine's fucked t'Hell and back, which makes sense since it
came from Hell in th'first place."
     "Not likely," Tog said, shaking his head. "The engines were clearly on
the 'Yesj' before--"
     "Alamo's Revenge's Revenge," the man we mentioned at the beginning
said, arching an eyebrow and making it clear with a look that there was no
possibility of debate in this declaration.
     "...right... yeah. The... "Alamo's Revenge's Revenge" was more or less
in its current configuration when Satan first salvaged and claimed her. He
pretty much just retrofitted the information technology, adapted the
transmission stations, yanked out the powertrain and primary spinal mount
and retrofitted them to use a Hellsconduit and Brimstone Projector instead."
     "So Satan didn't have more'n salvage rights to the ship before us
anyhow," the man in charge said, and yes we seem to continue being coy about
his name even though it was already said in the prologue *and* was named in
the opening titles, so being disingenuous now was just ridiculous right on
the face of it. "So our claim's just as legitimate."
     "More legitimate," the dark skinned man -- Captain Stephen Lee Majors,
former Mission Commander of NASA Astroshuttle "Trailblazer," then Captain of
the "Alamo's Revenge" itself -- said. "After all, Satan's gone. We're here."
     "We're here alongside several billion demons in the main body of the
ship," the younger redheaded woman -- Shauna Campbell, former Royal Air
Force, former NASA Astronaut, operations expert and ploymath -- said. "The
argument can be made that they still have possession of the ship."
     "I don't think so," Majors said. "The entire Conning Tower's cleared
out, as is Engineering -- and we've established that none of the four
hundred and forty decks of the main body of the ship that the demons are
still on have either working Transmission stations or control systems. I'd
say they're less legal owners as an infestation."
     "Wait, four hundred and forty decks?" one of the officers of the
Xolchipalian Defense Forces asked. She looked human, save that her skin was
dark crimson as most of her species was and her hair was bright silver, also
pretty much like most Xolchipalians. Her name was Officer Claudia Christian,
which was a pretty strange coincidence but that's all it was, as she was a
legally distinct entity from any public figures or science fiction actors
from any Earth you may have heard of. We make that plain by putting
'(Coincidence)' after her name and the names of other Xolchipalians who have
coincidental names reminiscent of actors from speculative fiction movies and
television shows... which is to say all of them. "The 'Yesj--'"
     "Alamo's. Revenge's. Revenge."
     "...right. It's six thousand miles long," Christian (Coincidence)
continued. "How can it have only four hundred and four levels in the main
body of the ship?"
     "Actually, quite easily," Bill Tog said. "See... the ship's main body
is a tapered cylinder with the conning tower rising out of the aft
quarter--"
     "Looks like a bloody kazoo," Shauna Campbell muttered.
     "--with levels that are actually cylindrical, one over the next going
into the center, with gravity pulling down on the outer skins. Each deck
plate's approximately thirty-five hundred feet thick and made of the same
remarkable armored material as the outer hull, with a full mile of clearance
on each deck. Since the main body's nine hundred miles in diameter, and the
center twenty miles or so's taken up by engineering and the spinal mount,
that leaves four hundred and forty decks--"
     "...wow do I no longer care," Christian (Coincidence) said.
     "Interesting," Officer Mira Furlan (Coincidence), one of her
comrades-in-arms said. "I'm quite interested. It's easy to think of the
'Yesj--'"
     "Alamo's Revenge's Revenge! This ain't hard!"
     "...quite. It's easy to think of... this ship... as being the size of a
planetoid, but all those levels that are 9,600 kilometers plus, curved
around -- the potential livable area would rival a large planet."
     "Rival?" Bill Tog smiled a bit. "The livable area in the main hull is
approximate nineteen point three times the size of Earth's surface area,
without those inconvenient mountains or oceans getting in the way."
     "Damn right," the man whose name we're *still* not allowed to type
said, grinning savagely. "We got over fourteen thousand Texases worth'a
space down there! By God the possibilities are adequate!"
     Furlan (Coincidence) cocked her head. "Just adequate?"
     "My plans are BIG, lady!"
     "Yeah," a third Xolchipalian officer name of Jerry Doyle (Coincidence)
said, his vice resplendent with cynicism. "Big plans, 'cept for billions of
demons and some question as to whether or not we're even gonna let you keep
this crazy Hellpipe."
     "Ottsamattawidu recognizes the salvage claim," Galaxy Hunter said. The
hero of so many battles commanded respect with his mere presence, and his
words hung in the air the way fish don't.
     "It does?" the Xolchipalian Commander -- Commander Michael O'Hare
(Coincidence) -- of the officers asked, his pet eyebrows looking as
surprised as he did. "I admit, I didn't expect the Empire to so casually
cede such a powerful weapon to such a...."
     "Loose cannon?" Shauna Campbell asked.
     "Certifiable nut?" her mother asked.
     "Crazed man with delusions of grandeur?" Captain Majors asked.
     "Visionary without understandings of basic limits of physics?" Bill Tog
asked.
     The man grinned at his peoples' assessments as though they were
showering him with praise. "I'm curious too, got to admit."
     Galaxy Hunter shrugged. "We lost a lot of ships. The Xolchipalians lost
more. We all lost officers. And not one of us even scratched the exterior.
Not one of us except you and your crew. You crippled the engine and came
within a hundred yards of piercing the armor on the Conning Tower. You
forced the ship into a defensive posture for the first time and gave
Dangerousman precious time to get aboard and stop Satan. Only Dangerousman
himself would have a claim to rival yours, and he doesn't want the ship."
     "How do you know?" Officer Christian (Coincidence) asked.
     Galaxy Hunter arched his eyebrows. "I asked him."
     Officer Christian (Coincidence) shrugged. "Good enough."
     "To be fair, I'm inclined to agree with Galaxy Hunter," Xolchipalian
Commodore Robert Vaughn (Coincidence) said. He had commanded the
Xolchipalian Task Force that had broken itself on the ship's bow, trying to
delay the attack. "If one of our officers hadn't delayed in accepting the
'Alamo's Revenge' as part of the task force, we may have stopped Satan with
a lower cost -- and we're not in a position to take possession of this ship.
We can't leave it derelict and we don't have the sheer power to destroy it.
Our esteemed commander here is the best possible candidate for claiming and
holding the ship."
     "Now hold on," the man whose name I *still* can't write and that's
really beginning to chafe said. "I ain't no commander! The Captain a'this
ship's over there and his name's Majors, assuming he'll take it!"
     "Of course I will," Majors said. "So long as it's really my command and
not just a fancy title you give me while calling all the shots. *Again.*"
     The man -- damn it, still not cleared to write the name you already
know God Damn it -- laughed. "Well said, son! But don't worry -- I got
work'a my own. Oh, I'll be the owner 'cause I'm always the owner and 'sides,
I claimed the damn thing, but it's your ship. Me -- I got to think about
those fourteen thousand Texases down in the primary hull to fill up!"
     "Fill up?" Shauna Campbell asked. "What do you mean?"
     "I mean I got plans -- travelin' the stars is all fine, but there's
more that can be done! I'm gonna blaze a trail and remake pioneering --
because we're carryin' the damn prairie with us! We're the colony and the
ship all in one, the biggest Conestoga wagon ever done ride, and the damn
territory bein' ridden to all at once! We're the Trail and its destination
all at once!"
     Captain Majors arched his eyebrow. "And that makes you--"
     "Makes me? That doesn't make me nothin', son! I'm already here! I'm God
Damned Stetson Cowboy, and I'm the God Damned TRAIL BOSS!"
     There was a long pause.
     "That was the dramatic reveal?" Officer Christian (Coincidence) asked.
     "Isn't that the title of the whole series? How is this a surprise?"
Officer Doyle (Coincidence) added.
     "Don't talk to the camera," Commander O'Hare (Coincidence) said.
     "It's all fine and good," the elder Campbell said. "But we shot the
damned engine out, tore out enough armor from the back'a the conning tower
to actually make it potentially vulnerable, and when Satan got blown back to
Hell<tm> he took the Hellsconduit and the Brimstone Projector with him!
We're on reserve power, one quarter drive, and got no way to replace any of
it. We're damn close to being a space station right now! We can't ride the
damn space trail with our axle broken!"
     "Scotty's got a point," Captain Majors.
     "Don't call me that. I go by Zelda now."
     Captain Major blinked. "You do? Since when?"
     "It's what Stetson called me after I told him I didn't go by Scotty any
more -- like it better than anything you can make outta Esmeralda normally."
     "No... I mean why did you stop being 'Scotty?'"
     "Ask god damned fucking Simon Pegg! He knows why, the bastard!"
     There was a pause.
     "Who's Simon Pegg?" Shauna Campbell asked.
     "*Exactly,*" Zelda snapped.
     "No worries," Stetson Tyler said, smiling that insufferable smile. "I
got a plan for the demons, the power train, the repairs, the spinal mount --
all'a'it!"
     "How?" Commodore Vaughn (Coincidence) asked. "How could you have a plan
for all that?"
     "I'll admit, I wasn't sure how you were going to pull such a thing off,
Stetson," Galaxy Hunter said. "After the destruction the 'Yesj--'"
     "'ALAMO'S GOD DAMNED FUCKING REVENGE'S REVENGE!"'"
     Galaxy Hunter arched an eyebrow. "Not when it was shooting at us."
     "Oh -- good point, son. Carry on."
     "After the destruction of our fleets, it's not like any of us can
provide materials, much less engineering help or even help clearing the
decks."
     "We could assign a few officers," Vaughn said, "but even they would
have trouble with billions of demons."
     "Don't sweat it. It's all in the plan!"
     "Where did this plan come from?"
     "Where else?" This was a new voice, causing everyone to turn around.
There, standing near the transmission station, stood a short balding man in
robes. He looked for all the world like Wallace Shawn circa 1989, but he
wasn't. No, he was known throughout the altiverses -- and generally disliked
where he went. He looked insufferably smug. But then, he always looked
insufferably smug.
     "Oh Needlewarp," Shauna Campbell muttered.
     "Language," Zelda snapped.
     "You? Are cautioning me about swearing, Mother?"
     "Bloody right. You're doing it wrong. When confronted with a troll-like
smegma coated fuckwad, you don't waste your curse by saying 'Needlewarp!' I
taught you better than that!"
     "Actually... you didn't."
     "Well, in my mind I did."
     "God, that explains so much of our relationship."
     "How did you get on this ship?" Captain Majors asked the ferretlike
man, ignoring the familial discussion entirely.
     "There's a perfectly simple explanation for that," he replied, walking
towards the group. "And it will cost you twenty bucks to hear it!"
     "You're on retainer, son," Stetson said, "and don't you forget it!"
     "How can I forget it -- I still have a space station to rebuild! But
you're the one paying my retainer -- not him!"
     "Why are you here," Bill Tog half-shouted. "What can you possibly do
for us?"
     "Forty bucks will tell you the answer to both of those!"
     "He's here 'cause I hired him, and he's giving me the details of the
plan that's gonna get this ship up and running better than it ever was
before!"
     "Him?" Zelda demanded. "You think he knows how to do that?"
     "Of course I know how to do that, idiot!" the man shouted. "I am the
SAGE! I KNOW EVERYTHING!"
     "That was a better dramatic reveal," Officer Christian (Coincidence)
said.
     "Was it? It felt stock to me," Officer Furlan (Coincidence) said.
     "Shut up," Officer Doyle (Coincidence) said. "The mike's still on.

(This is the end of Part 1. Part 2... will follow. Believe it!)
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