-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Twenty One

Aboard the United States Space Ship Obama, Captain Janet Browne turned to Lt. Commander Stevenson, her executive officer. “What do you make of this, Mack?” she asked him.

Her XO had no words of wisdom to offer her.

Captain Browne was proud to be one of the youngest officers in the Navy to ever command a war vessel. She was particularly proud of her brand new ship, the first space-going warship ever launched by her planet. Its design and building had been something of a hasty secret, and though she wouldn’t want it to become common knowledge, her ship had no weapons which could be fired at an enemy vessel or planet, unless you counted the rifles her Marines were carrying. At least not yet. But command had one drawback. It left the decision making squarely on her shoulders.

“Lieutenant,” she said, turning to the young officer manning the communication gear, “let’s try contacting the Hub again.” The young officer did some flicking of her own, and said, “You’re on, Captain.”

“This is U. S. S. S. Obama to Hub control,” she stated clearly. She was hoping that a comm tech had showed up and placed that lunatic under detention. Instead all she heard was the lunatic’s voice saying, “Not now, Captain, I’m very busy.”

“Sir,” she continued, trying desperately to sound polite and professional, “what was your name again?”

Rufus sighed. “Rufus Blacke. With an ‘e’ on the end. A silent ‘e’, on the end of the Blacke, not the Rufus. And on the back end, not the front. It’s pronounced Black.”

Captain Browne accidentally and unexpectedly found herself smiling. She quickly covered it up. Her last name also had a silent ‘e’ on the end, and she couldn’t count how many times she had been called Janet Brownie during her lifetime. And the really funny thing was that, according to family lore, when her relatives had moved from England to the U. S. their last name had had no ‘e’ on the end. By the time all the paperwork had been filled out, the ‘e’ had mysteriously appeared. It would have been too much trouble to fix it, so, so back to business she suddenly decided.

“Uh, Mr. Blacke, is there a comm tech there that I could speak to?” she started to say, but once again the lunatic cut her off.

“This is really not a good time, Captain, and we are not giving you permission to land, or dock, or whatever.”

Captain Browne was stunned. “By what authority do you deny me…?”

“Listen, Captain, I am in charge of this Hub until the so called emergency is over. It just ended up that way,” Rufus said scathingly.

But the Naval Captain had the final word, as they so often do. “I do not recognize your authority,” said Captain Browne in an icy voice. “And we are going to come aboard. At least my Marine security detachment is. Have I clarified matters, Mr. Blacke?”

Rufus cupped his hand over the tip of the wand and asked Gup, “Can she do that? Can we stop her?”

Gup considered the question. “If she docks at the ring that we just jettisoned, then we can’t do anything. It’s sort of a one shot deal until you replace the small explosive charges. So no, I don’t see any way we can really stop her.

Great, thought Rufus, that means the Marines are going to be coming down the boarding ramp with loaded weapons, and between them and the pirates was nothing but a huge herd of frightened hostages.

Wait a minute, Beeltee suddenly recalled, there was one other gun. It was an old Smith and Wesson revolver, something that the punks in L.A. called a Saturday night special. He and Oratee bought it from some street kid. Where was it now? Oh, yeah. He called one of his crewmembers over, a particularly skinny fellow named Jeetar. He knew Rufus was watching him and listening to him, but he thought he could risk a low whisper if he didn’t move his mouth as he talked. “Jeetar, you still have that other gun, right?”

“Yeah, Captain, it’s in my belt,” the junior pirate whispered back. Jeetar was wearing a belt and a pirate hat that he had purchased in the gift shop outside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. This belt was wrapped multiple times around his torso due to his extreme thinness.

“Okay,” Beeltee answered quietly, “I am going to go out and talk to this human. Give me about five minutes, and then see if you can slip out that door over there as casually as you can.” Here he gave the slightest head nod towards a farther set of doors leading out to Mainstreet. “I don’t know if they will be watching me, but I hope so. If you can get behind this Rufus guy and get a shot at him, that’s great. At least we might be able to grab him, and use him to get Winnse back.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” said Jeetar, but he didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the idea.

Ssseeeet poked and eye around the corner, peeking out of the door and up and down Mainstreet. It was the same door that Rufus had run through when he narrowly missed being French kissed by the oversized tongue. The tongue that may have dragged poor Asa to his doom. Ssseeeet could see the two pirates that were glued to the floor a little ways away.

Then a voice, sounding strangely muffled, spoke above his head, startling the Slug so badly that he popped his eyes all the way back into their skull cavities. “Hep me,” the voice had said. Ssseeeet unpopped one eye half way and glanced up. There, stuck sideways to the wall a good five feet off the floor, was Asa.

Rufus had about one minute left before he had to leave to meet the pirate. He got back on the comm and Gup switched him over.

“Captain,” he asked into the wand, “How many Marines do you have?”

“40, but I’m only sending 20,” came the reply.

“There are two scared kids with guns over here, and a few more with knives. And a whole lot of hostages. Nobody has to die today. Give me time, please,” he pleaded. “Why do you even have Marines on board anyway?”

“Dictated by Naval doctrine. They are used to maintain order aboard ship, guard sensitive areas and weapons, and if needed, to board enemy vessels or repel boarders,” she quoted.

“Repel boarders? This isn’t the high seas and you aren’t on a man-o-war.” But then he had to stop. She was the Captain of a man-o-war, and pirates, well, that must be where the idea of repelling boarders originally came from. “How did you know about the pirates?” he asked, time only for one last question.

“There was a Reporter on the ship when they hijacked it. Those idiot pirates of yours rode their little ship right up to the star liner and boarded like they were passengers. Then they pulled out the guns. The whole thing was broadcast live. Hell, it’s still being broadcast as we speak. The whole Earth, maybe even most of the universe is watching this live right now.” The Captain didn’t sound pleased to be delivering this news.

Rufus realized that his ignominious about-faced-withdrawal had most likely been captured for posterity, and he felt himself blush. And now he had to resolve this crisis on a very tight schedule, while the universe watched.

No pressure, he decided. Well, let’s get this over with, he concluded.