A much more human-looking Professor Frank sat at a table. His hair was cut, quite badly in Wickede’s opinion. It would appear that he had just grabbed chunks and cut it with scissors. This wasn’t far from what had happened, but Frank had got one of the droids to do the cutting. His beard no longer looked like a mad bush that you could hide bird’s nests in, but it was still messy. He sat studying a vid-screen with the readouts from the engine’s disappearance. Wickede sat opposite, a look of fascinated horror on his face as he watched each sip Frank took of the tomato soup. It had been found on board one of the dreadnoughts that had been used to transport a diplomat from Earth. The soup machine that it had been found in had been disconnected and jettisoned into space. The Ick disgust at tomato soup was such that it could never be used again once contaminated.
“That’s it,” he said excitedly. “It’s not just a propulsion drive, it’s so much more!” He looked up at Wickede, a look of amazement on his face. “My machine and the Alienbutt fuel booster doesn’t just improve the engine’s running performance; if large amounts of the essence are used, it creates a looped warp duality feedback tunnel that projects forward, creating a destabilisation in the fabric of the space dimension reality matter, which in turn, creates a tunnel through the very fabric of reality. Although, when I forgot to carry the one when T equalled JH to the power of one, I came up with scrambled eggs.”
“Scrambled eggs?” asked Wickede, grabbing onto the only words he had understood.
Frank grinned. “Duality feedback joke, the chicken and the egg?” Wickede continued to look blank, so Frank pressed on. “I always wanted the chance to use that, but you're a hard audience. You didn't even smile. Right I'll just press on then. It took me a while to work out what the strange readings generated as the engine ripped free of the table meant, but I remembered reading a thesis about its possibility.”
Wickede looked blank, he prided himself on being intelligent and understanding everything put before him. Spending two hours with Professor Frank had rid him of all such notions of his own intelligence. But then, he couldn’t concentrate properly while watching someone drink tomato soup. It was just so disgusting; especially the large amounts that were trapped in his beard and moustache that he kept licking clean with his tongue. Frank looked over and saw the still blank expression on the Ick leader’s face. “Or you could say it produces a field ahead of itself that allows you to jump dimension,” Professor Frank added, and then a grin came to his face. “I’ve a spare propulsion drive and I’ve some more refined Alienbutt fuel, if you had a spare ship we could rig it up to. A live test with a ship would prove this and if I get the mix correct then we will have a ship able to fly to any part of the universe within minutes rather than weeks, and jump to new dimensions too. It's only when you use too much that you get the dimension jump I think. I'll work out why later.”
Wickede returned the grin, as he started to plot how to get around Snoodgrass so he could test fly the ship himself.
“If you're gonna test it on a ship then you need a top class pilot, namely me. Best if we don’t mention all this dimension stuff to Snoodgrass, it would only upset him. He’s a little cautious about things like that. If we just mentioned the flying fast part and a short test flight we should get away with it.”
It had taken only half a day to fit the propulsion drive to the shuttle. Wickede had sat and let Snoodgrass voice his concerns over him piloting the ship. Smiling, Wickede had pointed out that he hadn’t missed his date last night so he could watch someone else fly a ship. Professor Frank was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat inspecting the computer that monitored the drive, while Wickede piloted the shuttle out of the hangar bay of the dreadnought. Six other dreadnoughts sat in orbit, while Ick fighters patrolled the area. It had been decided that for the first couple of flights that the propulsion drive would get just a tiny boost of Alienbutt infusion, to see how the engines and ship reacted.
Wickede started to accelerate; two Ick fighters went with him. As he reached maximum impulse speed, Professor Frank gave the smallest boost to the drive. The ship shot forward just as a spread of torpedoes shot through the space where the ship had been, destroying one of the Ick fighters. Wickede reacted on instinct and started to spin the ship taking evasive action in case of a second wave of torpedoes. Four unmarked ships sped from their hiding place behind the moon of the planet they orbited. The jump had taken Wickede’s ship into the midst of this new force.
Already Ick fighters flew in to intercept. Having little shields and no weaponry, Wickede chose to run for it as more unknown ships came into range. The Ick were reacting to the sudden threat and the dreadnoughts opened fire on the ships coming from the planet’s moon. Then the new ships opened fire, singling out one of the dreadnoughts that exploded under their combined attack.
“Frank, we need out of here!” shouted Wickede.
As more torpedoes came in at them, Wickede suddenly spun the shuttle avoiding the approaching torpedoes and buying more time.
“I need two minutes to make the calculations, Wickede.” Already he was punching buttons on the computer keyboard.
Wickede threw the shuttle around but still the torpedoes followed, getting closer as they out-raced the little ship. “Frank I can’t shake them. We have a few seconds until impact!
Snoodgrass ignored the battle going on as the dreadnought exchanged shots with the new arrivals. Instead he watched the shuttle as Wickede tried every trick he knew to shake off the torpedoes that bore down on it. His dreadnought took a direct hit and Snoodgrass was almost knocked from his feet. In the split seconds that he took his eyes from the shuttle the torpedoes struck, the explosion destroying everything. Their job completed, the attacking ships immediately started to veer away and retreat.
As the Ick dreadnoughts concentrated fire on the leading attacking ship, explosions began to rip through it. Snoodgrass took no notice as he stood in shock. Wickede was gone. They knew a war was coming; even without the book, they would have known that one. Now it was here and they had just lost their leader and the only man who could unify them. Without him the high council would spend months discussing his replacement and killing each other as they tried to get their own man there. The fallout from these events would rip apart their empire.
How could he be dead? The Book said he would be their leader, the one who would be there at the end. How could things suddenly go so wrong, how could the book be so wrong? Snoodgrass slumped down into the captain’s chair in shock and despair.
To be continued.
Thanks for reading, all images are mine.