Science Fiction Smack Down 2017

Festering Malevolence

Author's Note:  For this challenge, I used images 5, 6, 7,and 8.

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Nazis. After World War II, the residents of planet Earth thought they were done with them. Splinter groups had popped up here and there, waving flags, shouting hate-filled obscenities, and trying to step on anyone who got in their way, but the coordinated military power threatening to overtake the world by force was gone, or at least everyone thought it was gone.

In the first months of the year 2178, the Nazis returned again, and they were more dangerous than ever. As I walked down the corridor to the conference room of the star battlecruiser Relentless, I held in my hand a datachip with the horrifying information our covert operative had discovered.

The doors parted with a hiss of hydraulics, and I was greeted by an assembly of my highest ranked officers. Like me, they wore royal blue uniforms with sparkling gold epaulets on their shoulders to designate their positions in the chain of command.

The conference room was wide with a rectangular table centered in the space. Every chair but one was occupied as my officers waited for me. They all knew the basic orders we'd received, but they didn't know the particulars or the reasons behind them. The unknown possibilities were clearly making them uncomfortable as some of them shifted in their seats or fidgeted with the fit of their uniforms, but they maintained their military discipline and waited for me to inform them of what I knew.

"Officers of the Relentless," I began, trying to maintain an even tone. The crew looked to me for direction, so I had to be in control, or at least appear to be. "As you know, per our orders, we're on course to the fourth planet of the Baruke system. It's on the outer edge of the galactic arm and until now believed to be uninhabited."

I slotted the datachip into the reader mounted near the edge of the table's top. The holoprojector in the center of the conference room ceiling activated, creating a transparent image of colored light, hovering in the space above the table.

"This image was transmitted by an agent working undercover," I explained with a gesture to the hologram floating an inch above the table's polished surface.

The hologram showed a research laboratory none of my officers had ever seen before. Technological equipment had been built up around four curving ribs of metal. The ribs, two on one side of the room and two on the other, arched over of the heads of the lab coat wearing scientists working in the room and almost touched at their ends. Standing in the center of the room, looking down through the length of the pathway made by the arches, a figure faced away from the camera with hands on hips.

"Is that what I think it is?" my second officer, Commander Erika Addison, asked. She stabbed a finger into the hologram and disrupted it for a second until the image realigned. Hanging on the wall shown in the image was a red flag with a swastika prominently positioned in the center.

"I'm afraid so," I confirmed. "The facility is under the command of the Nazis. They've apparently been working on this project secretly for years and are nearing completion."

"What is it?" science officer Donald Portman asked. His brown eyes were currently covered by the reflective green of his optical lenses. Although vision correction was currently done with retinal synthesis. Portman preferred to wear the lenses for any enhancement needed and keep his eyes natural. "I recognize the power transfer conduits, energy matrix stabilizers, and the distortion field compensators, but I've never seen them in this setup before."

"It's a time portal," I explained. "The Nazis are planning to go back in time, taking all their modern technological equipment with them for the purpose of re-fighting World War II."