Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 26 - A Little Levity

"When you have nothing else, you can always laugh." - Imperial saying

I came to Zedra for a cup of coffee - I heard they had the greatest cup of java this side of the quadrant. I vectored my ship in and landed down, camouflaged of course, and set down on the east side of...ah, what was this place?

Looking down at my viewplate, it read ‘Polpax, New Province’. 

“Nice name.” I thought to myself, landing and being fully cloaked next to this great green statue of a human woman holding a great flaming trident.

Oh yeah, my name is Mauhim, how could I be so inconsiderate to not tell you great readers such a thing, I suppose it’s the Rathusian blood I get from my second mother’s side, it makes me rude sometimes.

I exited the limited cloak field of my ship and tapped on my anti-grav boots and began to float across the bay towards this city proper. I liked the way they stacked their buildings high on top of each other, much unlike my own people’s underground cities.

These things in the water, boats, yes..that’s them, ah, when they saw me they began with the overbloated blat of their horns, and you’d think they’d never seen a Rexian prince before; geez, some people.

I made my way across the water and stepped on the sandy beach, only to be met by a contingent of what I think are theirversion of Interceptors, they wore blue uniforms with shiny badges and they had these clumsy projectile weapons.

I wasn’t armed, of course, I was out for a cup of coffee, so they had me at a disadvantage.

“Hey!” I began, wanting to tell them I was here for coffee, my universal translator would decipher it down into their language, but before I could get past that first word, I was hit by some primitive electrical shocking device and an old fashioned syringe was shoved into my neck and I went to sleep.

I mean, it wasn’t coffee, but sleep is good in itself; I always have beautiful dreams. There were the floating ether clouds with winged crystalline shapes and the voice of my fathers, always warning me to put on warmer clothes before I went outside to play with the other princes.

I awoke in a white room, bright fluorescence in my double lensed eyes; oh how it hurt - and they had this mechanism in my mouth and down my throat so I couldn’t talk. Various bags of fluids were connected to my body, both pumping and draining things into and from me.

There were men in dark suits and slighter men in white jackets, clipboards, and very serious faces, all asking questions about what our war-plan was, did I think that I could just land on this planet as a recon agent and just not get caught.

I tried to explain I just wanted coffee, but all that came out was “Glaaggh glurrrgh.” because of the tube stuffed down my throat.

The men in the white jackets talked about what they could learn from me, and the men in the dark suits wanted to know where my ship was located. 

Oh, barbarians, wanting to steal secrets and technology when it would be free for the asking; for some Provincian Coffee (which I had heard was especially tasty) I would have given them cures for their worst diseases and provided them with the knowledge to start them building their first warp ship.

But they wanted to take it, their pinched serious faces jabbing into mine with revulsion and disgust, and me just sitting there wanting a cup of coffee. I even saw a few of the people drinking the stuff out of small glasses and other containers, but they offered me none.

They took my blood, they opened me up to look at my guts, and then sat back amazed when I zipped myself back up automatically afterwards; apparently something they could not do.

So they did it again and again, wounding me and then watching my body zip back together. I would have smiled, but then again, there was the tube. I dont know what it was for, to see what was in my gullet or to keep me silent?

I decided to take a small nap, my eyes closing and blocking out all of the things they were pumping into and pulling out of me. It didn’t take but a second for me to rest, but the men..and now women I could see as well, they were slightly different than the males I now realized, I had been confusing their genders...once again that rudeness....but were amazed when I sat straight up in the bed they had put my insectile (that was the word they used for me) frame in and phased my body through the bed and floor, floating gently to the bottom floor.

Still phased, I walked across the bay, only barely visible, and oh how they tried to stop me, but when you place yourself between dimensions, it’s hard to get a hold on you.

I made it back to my ship, and they fired their clumsy weapons, even these flying machines that lobbed weak missiles towards me.

As I lifted off, I wasn’t that irate, but sometimes a lesson has to be learned.

“Hmm.” I said to myself, pressing a few buttons on my console as I lifted off - pulling my black storage tank from the 8th dimension. This tank could contain an entire planet, but I didn’t want that much.

So as I headed back home to Grondax 8 after setting my mass teleportation beam and scanning it across the land, I looked back to the storage tank again, all of the coffee of Zedra, the bagged beans, the tins, even the trees in the ground that grew the beans themselves.

I kinda feel bad for taking all of their coffee, but I have enough for myself for a million cycles, and maybe when their crops grow back, they’ll learn not to unzip a prince.