Galaxy of Oz - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: A Bad Dream - Part II

"Well there she is..." Said a familiar, friendly voice. "...Hard to believe she's still green."
I looked up from the console I was seated at and gazed out the viewport. A beautiful blue and green world floated before me. Bright cities could be seen dotting the dark side of the planet. A yellow star rising above the distant horizon.

Earth, capital of the Terran Union.

Uncle Henry stood from his seat and motioned for me to replace him at the helm. I grinned widely. Today was my fourteenth birthday, and as luck would have it, Henry received a cargo contract earlier in the morning. I was ecstatic that I was here in my uncle's freighter rather then having to sit though an ill-planed party with a horrifyingly bad cake, prepared by Em's loving hands. I adjusted the seat and restraints to accommodate my smaller body. A small voice began to protest.
"I can't believe he would trust you in that seat."
    "Come now Alice. Dorothy's a big girl now. I'm sure she can handle 100 tons of iron ore on her own."
Alice folded her arms. Truthfully, neither myself or Henry had invited her along. The sneaky little blonde had stowed away in the Y.B.R.'s cargo bay before the vessel left the dock. We weren't surprised to see her here. Alice was a guilty of many counts of being an uninvited guest, whether it be aboard ship or station.
"Yeah Alice." I added. "It not like I haven't flown before..."
"Training simulators don't count!"
I had gone with Henry on almost every job for the past 5 years. Most of that time was spent as a passenger along for the ride, but more recently my role had begun to change. I had begun to be a useful (and only) member of the crew. Simple repairs and jobs around the ship had become my responsibility. I was however concerned by Uncle Henry's choice on the matter. Could it mean that his age was finally starting to catch up with him?
"Alright 'Captain' Dorothy, run the details by me again." Henry would occasionally throw this kind of question at me while on a job.
"100 tons of iron ore, shipment is to be delivered to Tonawanda Corp's Tau-7 Orbital Manufacturing Plant, geo-synchronous above Sweden!" I replied, adding a mockery of a salute.
"Cut the salute, this ain't the navy."
"But the Pacific Alliance needs our help." I stroked the top of the forward console, my statement was directed more towards the ship then my uncle.
"The war is long over dear... I doubt you'll become a famous fighter ace."
"Besides!" Alice added. "Your too much of a whackadoodle! They wouldn't let you NEAR a fighter!"
"MEANIE!"
"Bring it on, GREASEMONKEY!"
"HEY!" Uncle Henry added. "Stop fighting or I'm not going to GIVE you Yellow Brick Road when you get your license!"
My eyes lit up.  "You really mean it?!"
"Sure do!"
SCORE!!!
I leapt out of the pilot's seat and embraced my uncle tightly. I had always hoped that I would one day have a ship of my own. My own pair of wings to sore through the stars on.

The happy moment was interrupted by a thick Scandinavian accent.
"Yellow Brick Road, this is Tau-7 station, please vector to 23.10.45917 and reduce speed for docking."
I shoved an oversized headset over my ears and fixed the microphone's position.
"Roger that, please verify cargo to be delivered."
"Yellow Brick Road, delivery of 100 tons of methane is confirmed. Proceed to the outer marker and hold."
...
...methane?!

A voice over the wireless snapped me out of my daze. Sat-dock was only 100km away.
"Yellow Brick Road, this is Saturn Dockyard control tower. You hearin' me Dorothy?"
I straightened in my seat and shock my head to a more alert status.
"Yeah, was just thinking about something..."
I scanned the sensor display. Sure enough Sat-dock was closing fast, how lucky I was that it's orbit should bring it within spitting distance of Kansas today.
"Sending docking codes, I brought your methane, nice and chilly."
There was a pause as the traffic controller verified the codes.

"Sweet deal, you codes have cleared. Please proceed to the outer marker and await further instructions."
"Aye, outer marker and hold."   I adjusted my trajectory and applied the braking thrusters.
Looks like this will go way quicker then I thought.

The Saturn Dockyard always impressed me. It wasn't just another distribution hub or orbital colony, it was a true orbital habitat. Large transparent domes housed several varieties of environment and ecosystem. I'd been to all of them, they were designed for people to visit and feel at home rather then on some metal space station, too bad for me that the feel of cold metal was what home felt like. Since my parent's untimely demise I've only been back to Earth several times, only a handful of those did I actually go down to the surface. It felt too alien to me.

Ahead of me were the docks, massive hanger bays and open-vacuum racks for managing all manner of freighters and other vessels, a few passenger liners and some orbital transports were hanging around. Strangely I didn't see any military vessels, normally the T.U. had a battalion here for policing and other governmental dirty work. The only trace of military activity was from a shipyard constructing a new frigate. Beyond that, civil traffic was all over the place, anti-collision lights flickered all about me as freighters danced about the massive installation. Finally the message I'd been waiting for came though.

"Optical approach granted, try not to break anything this time..." The controller must have remembered my last landing here. He offered me floss to help pick the forklift I ran over out of my teeth.
I sighed and backed towards a row of green lights laid out at my feet, all I'd have to do to follow them and land in the assigned loading dock, easy as sneezing.
I was lined up perfectly but decided that I'd flaunt my amazing stick behind the stick. I yawed Yellow Brick Road sideways and drifted into the hanger, the landing struts skidding briefly across the metal deck. I quickly threw a pressure suit over my clothes and jogged down to the cargobay. With the hatch sealed behind me, I depressurized the bay door and lowered it for the waiting foreman. Bill had been married to Aunt Em's sister, his nephew Zebediah, Zeb for short, is my distant cousin... I've never really figured out how, but the relation is there somewhere... not that I care, the arrogant little prick went and joined the defense academy then rubbed my nose in it. Bill scowled at me though his helmet visor.
"You know you could have killed everyone with that stunt... that said, nice flying." His frown inverted. "Been getting into much trouble these days?"
"Thanks Bill," I replied "And I try to keep my nose clean. I prefer to avoid the Union as much as I can."
Bill looked away for a moment. "You see that Trondheim sittin' pretty over near your place? Well I've got a little dilemma."
Oh bugger, this doesn't sound fun.
"I've got a bunch of crates here that need to be shipped to em as soon as possible, the next scheduled tug would be leaving in about an hour and a half, but since your going that way would you mind taking the load?"
I frowned at the thought of doing a job for the Union. Even if you do a good job they just treat you like shit, if you do a bad job they treat you even worse.
"...just add this to what you already owe me." I said reluctantly, looks like I'd be losing the bet after all.
"Great!" he said, he quickly waved at a dockhand in a cargo loader. "Alright Jim! Unload the methane and bring up the military's loot!"
The loader driver nodded as he disappeared into the Y.B.R.'s cargo area. The whole process wouldn't take all that long.
"Again, you owe me for this."
"Yeah, I know how you work. Give my regards to the family."
I didn't bother to respond, I just strode up the boarding ramp and into the bay's airlock at the back.

I sat and stared at the bustling loading area from the Y.B.R's dining area on the top of the vessel, there was also a kitchen, a small medical bay and a few storage compartments up here. I'd only used the med lab a couple of times but it'd proved useful on both occasions, so I always kept it stocked... same with the kitchen.
I scanned the channels on the local Saturn televison station, I'd heard that Earth used to have similar broadcasting, but with many channels. Out in space there were only a few available but they server their purposes. I was browsing local planetary weather readings when a message came though from Bill, I changed the display on the table over to the communications systems, a label displaying "SOUND ONLY" appeared.
"Hey Dorothy! We're all done, you can seal up and be on your way again."
I leaned back in my chair. "Thanks Bill, I'll be seeing ya around."
"You too." The line went dead.

Being paranoid as usual I turned on the cargobay security cameras and made sure that nobody tried to dive into the ship's closing door at the last second. I'd already had enough trouble with stowaways in my past. After the quick thermal scan I made my way back to the control deck and restarted the engines. My bulky vessel lifted effortlessly of the deck and slide into open space. After a quick check of the traffic I opened the throttle until I was once again racing though the vacuum of space at lethal speeds.

A few ships were heading the same general direction as me. Most vessels stick to the main shipping lanes... too bad that would take me an hour out of my way. Shortest distance between two objects is a straight line, the only curve I'd have to make is one orbit to the other side of Titan. The planet loomed large in my viewports, its simple yellow colour scheme was actually kinda pretty. There was another freighter ahead of me about a kilometer. I flipped over to the shipping traffic's frequency and listened in, a habit of mine. With my big girl on autopilot and plenty of time to spare, I leaned back a took and brief nap. The voices and sounds of other ships acting as my lullaby.

I'd heard lots of strange things on these channels over the years. The Saturn gravity well was full of mining outposts and trade ports, meaning there was always a sizable amount of ships near the planet. But I heard something strange, it didn't sound right. It was a faint crackling noise, like something was interfering with the radios.
Curious like a young cat, I held an earpiece hard against my skull and scanned the radio frequencies, listening to the random chatter. I closed my eyes and waited for something interesting to pop up....... something did.
Amidst the idle chatter, way point codes and static I heard something rather odd, I even flipped the channel on and off a few times just to make sure the system was actually working properly. A far distant ship's transmitter was throwing out static, a frantic voice, then....a faint scream, quickly cut short by silence.

My face turned white like snow, my blood became ice. Something was very wrong!
I quickly ran the transmission though the computer and targeting array, it had come from somewhere behind me.
"Yellow Brick Road to anyone within range!" I shouted over the trade channels. "Did anybody else hear that scream?!" I waited, praying I was only hearing things.
"Titan Shuttle 338 to Yellow, we heard it too, our sensors aren't picking up anything out there. Does anyone know what the hell is going on?!"
Several ships called in, they were equally clueless.
"Terran Union heavy cruiser Prince Eugen here, we've detected a large explosion on the far side of Titan. We've also picked up a massive...wave, its headed toward Titan at high speed!"
I was just coming around the dark side of Titan when I heard that. It didn't take me long to spot what the Eugen was talking about. My initial panic quickly became paralyzing terror. It was a storm! A moving nebula was barreling down on me with mind-numbing speed. The storm had to be at least an entire AU across and static electricity lit the cloud in bright flashes... it looked like a doorway to hell itself. I immediately checked my radar, the storm was only a thousand kilometers away and closing FAST. There was no way I'd make it home before it got there, Kansas only had seconds left before impact.

I punched in the frequency of Kansas' Control Tower as rapidly and my fingers could move.
"Kansas Control, its Dorothy. What the hell is that thing?!"
heard a familiar voice answered... it was Tomoko.
"Your guess is as good as mine! What ever it is this thing is trashing everything in its path! I... Ah!?" Screams of pure terror rose up above the static, then... nothing. I looked up from the controls just in time to see the faint dot of my home against the red glow vanish in a bright white and yellow flash...
I quickly checked the sensors, only to be greeted by a horrifying discovery, the Kansas' sensor signal vanished. No wreck, no escape pods, not even debris....... it was just, gone.

   My family......my friends...................my home..........

I spun my ship around on a reflex and gunned the throttle, but even with full afterburner there was no way I could outrun that thing!
I began to cry, cry like I used to my parents died... but this was different, It was also my turn to die.

...no
I won't settle for that! I won't have my fate decided for me! I WILL FIGHT!!!
My last chance to escape now lay in the ABBR's onboard Phase Drive. A Phase Drive system works by opening a temporary wormhole between one point in space to another. Sadly, there was a hitch... the drive's targeting dish had been acting up since it was dented by a meteor 2 weeks ago...... I had been waiting on a replacement.
Without a properly working disk I could end up inside Old Sol or a nice soft rock but at this point it didn't matter where in the Sol System I jumped, just as long as it wasn't here.

I quickly ran the calculations as the demon cloud approached, the freighter that had been ahead of me disappeared from my sensor displays. Another victim.
The navigation system flashed green and a clock began to run backwards. The drive would take 60 seconds to charge, according to the massive blip on my radar, the nebula would run me down in 50....
"10 seconds in hell, eh? ........I've had worse!"
If all went well, I'd end up in Mars orbit. It seemed reasonable, plus it was on the far side of the star system, well beyond the range of the wave. I braced myself and closed the viewport blast shields. The ride was about to get bumpy. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best.

As the jump clock reached 11.39 seconds the nebula caught up with me, I could feel the ship shake from the impacts of static discharges against the hull. The roar was like a gigantic, deafening tiger mauling a helpless animal. I began to count along with the clock in my head.

"8...7...6...5...4...3.."    
A sudden jolt made me stop, it felt like I had just lost my main engines. The lights inside the ship flickered as power was directed towards the firing system for the jumpdrive. By now the miniature particle accelerator was at full speed and the Phase Core discharge system was ready. I grinned slightly as the clock reached zero, but it was cut short when a massive discharge struck the Y.B.R. just as the jump drive activated. I fell forward, smashing my head against the navigation display. As my eyesight faded, I felt the familiar sensation of entry into a wormhole...

I had made the jump to phase space.


...
...
..."Ow..."
When I regained consciousness. I found herself floating near the Y.B.R.'s ceiling, along with a box of donuts. While I was out, I had the same dream about my parents...
"Damn seatbelts really were worth 20 credits a set... never trust flight equipment made by a corporation that also sells tissues..." I said to myself as I looked around the nearly pitch black command deck.
I was surrounded by droplets of my own blood, my forehead probably had an unsightly gash. I pushed off from the roof and floated over to my pilot's seat. Restarting the gravity plating was my first step, though I was immediately hit in the head with a honey cruller. I examined the nav. panel. Though it was a little glitchy and was covered in my blood, it displayed a successful jump. Something about the display looked odd though, I used bottom of my dress to wipe the blood off the panel.
"Ah, much better..."
I smiled a bit, the display showed a successful jump to...
My jaw dropped in disbelief.
The navigation displayed the chilling phrase "Position unknown, unable to calculate."
I quickly retracted the blast shields but had to protect my eyes from the brightness outside. As my eyes slowly began to adjust, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Before me was a lush green world with deep cerulean oceans. It looked like the blue world I had left so long ago. However, I didn't know what it was...but some thing felt odd. The planet looked normal enough, but it wasn't until I looked elsewhere that my confusion was replaced by terror. It wasn't the fact that this planet was in a binary system, many of the known worlds were binary systems. Nor was it because this rock has multiple moons, that was common...  What really caught my attention was that a few of the moons were just as green as the planet they orbited and the planet itself was orbiting a large gas giant. I had seen many terraformed moons around similar gaseous worlds before, but nothing on such a massive scale had even been thought of, this was not a Terran Union world!

I quickly dashed to the engineering controls to review my navigation logs and charts, hoping that I may have just not been to this part of the Union yet. However, according to the computer.... I had jumped far beyond the reaches of known space. If the measurement was accurate... I wasn't even in my own galaxy anymore.
I fell to my knees, overcome by shock.
"Th....that's impossible!"

I looked back at the blue planet that hung above me.


".......Is...is this a dream???"