The judge of the evidence trial resembled a second generation Eagolim with a bald two-eyed humanoid head and gray skin. He probably had been much older than he appeared. “People of this evidence trial down sit and silence. I people down sit and silence repeat.”
Everyone obeyed the judge of the trial. “We today in the face of a formal accusation by none other than the great Admiral Mull that Captain Mynervood his own ship now twice in his ship Captain career sabotaged are here.”
The proceedings opened with video news footage from the planet Nephrica that orbited the star Ea. The video news actually reached Holdus-2 long before The Beyonder had got there. It showed Admiral Mull accusing his life-long friend and colleague of being a sick psychopathic mad-Nephrican determined to destroy his own ship.
Then the prosecutor opened with questions for Captain Mynervood, which basically got him to admit that he had indeed been the Captain responsible during two consecutive space missions that were indeed sabotaged. “I my case on that established fact conclude,” said the zealous prosecuter.
The Trial of Captain Mynervood.
“That just true not is!” shouted Tyallor Nudeowon before the judge shouted for everyone to be silent again.
From there the trial seemed to present the evidence more fairly. Some passengers took the stand to testify on the Captain’s good character. Among them the very tall fully-grown child named Trunlio who had flown on that journey stood up to testify. “I a fully grown Nephrican here before you am, but in truth I only 9 Nephrican years old am, and only seven years old when I The Beyonder from Nephrica to here boarded was. In ship time I barely still not much more than 7 years old am. Yet it Captain Mynervood who after me looked was, and me the difficult growing pains that me the grown up Eagolim you today see made through saw. Captain Mynervood like a father and a friend has been, and I to him honor do intend, and a member of the Nephapricus Space Corporation to someday a Captain of a spaceship like Captain Mynervood be become.”
Captain Mynervood looked flattered to tears that flowed freely from his single Nephrican eye. Then his eye quickly dried to peer across the courtroom when he had just noticed Jaden and Fluisudal whom he saw following him and Aineemadin the other day. They had actually showed up there to testify on behalf of the Captain, which would have even probably have blown their Pripican spy cover. The general feeling of the courtroom with the exception of the uptight prosecutor however, had been that the Captain wasn’t guilty of anything. Therefore Jaden and Fluisudal decided they didn’t need to reveal that they were spies for the Pripican Empire who were mingling with the Nephrican side of this budding star cluster culture that existed way back in the 2nd Age of Magphoreus.
Captain Mynervood’s son Adma had got all better and ready to testify to the mind control attempts used on him to make him kill his own father. The circumstantial evidence of his case tended to strengthen the defense that Admiral Mull had been the real murderous psychopath that needed to be apprehended. Then the court watched the message sent from Nephrica by the Captain’s wife Hagan Hiedalli, which pretty much became a final vindication for the Captain.
The defense closed with Geben Lockfreedow’s evidence, which he received from Admiral Mull himself. He had been able to prove that what the Admiral gave him triggered the quanta-nanocode virus sabotage that nearly vaporized The Beyonder in the middle of hyper-acceleration somewhere between Holdus and Ea. The judge wasted no time to deliberate before returning the command of The Beyonder back to Captain Mynervood, and issuing an arrest warrant with his trial’s evidence attached to apprehend Admiral Mull who had now become accused of sabotage and over 500 counts of attempted murder.
*
Captain Mynervood said a final farewell to his wife Aineemadin as the crew of The Beyonder loaded supplies for the research facility on the planet Caleb that orbited the star Yat. There were also special crews loading cargo for the science being done at that research facility, which the Glokodox authorities didn’t want any of the crew of The Beyonder to handle. Aineemadin mentioned that the nature of his supply load suggested a deeper space mission beyond the star Yat. Captain Mynervood still refused to acknowledge his secret orders to take The Beyonder to the star Dol, even though his attempted murderer had issued those orders.
After the Captain denied any such thing and left her, Aineemadin concluded that her husband probably did have secret orders to travel to Dol. She wondered what she could do with her microwave broadcasts to the star Dol in order to help one of her most beloved husbands.
Eventually the crew of The Beyonder had all come back on board from the brief vacation on the colony of Holdus-2 also known as Glokodox. Holdus-2 had been the planet destined to actually become the capital of the galactic empire of Nephapricus in the future. Glokodox would endure as the capital of Nephapricus for hundreds of millions of Earth years. Even Ulusu came back on board The Beyonder on his own two Eagolim feet, rested and practically back to normal after his brush with radioactive death. Even at the time of this highly advanced culture Ulusu’s survival had been considered a medical miracle. Then The Beyonder took off from the orbiting space station to once again generate a fusion plume, and hyper-accelerate the ship and crew across the 2.3 light years from the star Holdus to the star Yat.
When the ship got well on its way, and even after the centrifuges successfully created nuclear material for the fusion plume as The Beyonder approached half the speed of light, Lockfreedow examined the equipment with quanta-nanocoded devices. As expected, he found evidence of the quanta-nanocode virus programmed to cause the centrifuges to turn the nuclear material into explosions of sub-atomic instability. Then Lockfreedow discovered a new type of quanta-nanocode like nothing he had ever seen before. This new kind of sub-atomic quantum-bit technology evidently attacked the virus and redefined its perceptions of existence with a symphony of holographic realities that it had been designed capable of generating. Lockfreedow became dazed with amazement as he gathered a sample of the quanta-optic-nanocode that Begalius had left behind after deleting the virus. Lockfreedow had four years of just traveling the two light years to the star Yat for learning more about this strange sub-atomic discovery that had been like nothing he had ever seen before. The half-speed-of-light velocity of the ship- however, would make that 4 years of travel seem like only a couple years.
Chapter 8
The Beyonder hyper-accelerated towards the turnaround point halfway between the stars Holdus and Yat. Captain Mynervood enjoyed the glowing 2nd Age galactic bar that filled the galactic skies with its own ambience. Captain Mynervood always enjoyed the majesty of the universe as only the view portal of a hyper-accelerating spacecraft could present.
Eventually he decided to wander the hallways of his ship. The truth of the matter had been that in Captain Mynervood’s experience of hyper-acceleration, there would occur a period when a ship approached maximum speed when the walls of the ship hallways would appear to breath. It made a walk around empty hallways as entertaining as the galactic bar of Magphoreus. The Captain theorized that it had been the ship speed’s effect on the way photons travel as the ship catches up to light’s impossible speed. Perhaps this reflects a flaw in Relativity physics regarding the nature of light after all?
Very little would be spoken of about this phenomenon, and as far as Captain Mynervood knew he had been the only one on the ship who actually saw the walls breath. The Captain used to ask other crewmembers if they saw this, but it had been obvious that they would deny it out of fear of being relieved of duty for admitting to hyper-acceleration hallucinations. That would actually be all the answer Captain Mynervood needed to conclude that they did in fact notice this special distortion due to photons coming into an angle that makes the speed of the ship appear to bend the light, or so he thought. The Captain learned to just relax during these times, and take long walks through empty ship hallways to enjoy the visual show.
Captain Mynervood walked along empty halls of the orbit side of the ship that not too long ago
housed half of five hundred passengers. The surrounding emptiness sent the Captain’s mind far away in the past when he and his attempted murderer Admiral Mull were the best of friends.
It had been the time of the Great War between the two star systems of Ea and Poa, the war between Cyclopes and Centaur. Almost two thousand Earth years in the past Space Cadet Joberk Mynervood and Cadet Lenor Mull were stationed on the Nephrican Battleship called the Nephrautalus. It had been a gigantic nuclear powered dreadnought with launching pads that released swarms of small fighter craft that were driven by young Space Cadets like Joberk and Lenor.
The battleship Nephrautalus had been a spearhead craft that flew through the worse fighting of the Great War. They confronted many Pripican war craft that were always smaller and less powerful. The Pripicans were more careful with nuclear power, and they had perfected a low-level nuclear reaction technology that produced no nuclear waste. Their ships were also powered this way and relied on being faster and more agile in battle than the Nephrican approach that always featured some ham-handed strategy of overkill.
Confronting the faster Pripican spacecraft would be where the Space Cadet fighter craft came into play. Cadet Mynervood and Cadet Mull always flew together as a team. They had a strategy to lure Pripican craft away with false vulnerability by using Joberk’s craft. Then just before it appeared that the Pripicans were to pounce upon Joberk’s stray Nephrican craft, Lenor would shoot down the Pripican craft before they could attack the decoy. They were blown up without even knowing what hit them.
Captain Mynervood recalled one Pripican attack that happened during that Great War. Joberk and Lenor used to play a game called Chetard in the recreation area on the Nephrautalus. Joberk and Lenor both knocked the Chetard disk across the surface of a round table trying to score a goal on the other.
Chetard had been very similar to air hockey except it had been played on a circular table that opened two or more goals to be defended depending on how many wanted to play. Predetermining how many disks floated on the circular table changed difficulty, and points were accumulated to 9 when the goal automatically closed to disqualify the player that failed to stop 9 goals.
Lenor had always been annoyingly over confidant in all forms of competition. “My two points to you by the fortune of luck were lost. I soon my 9th goal upon you score will.”
He hit the disk across the circular table at a small hole in front of Joberk’s Chetard weapon held on the table in defense of the goal.
Captain Mynervood recalled that Lenor’s overconfidence always taunted him to want to teach his fellow cadet some humility. “The game’s final win at the end is determined.” Cadet Joberk had stopped the disk with his weapon. “Before not.”
Joberk then hit the disk back at his opponent. Lenor skillfully hit it back, and the disk began going back and forth across the blanket of air that covered the round table.
That particular game would never be finished because it suddenly became interrupted by an attack from Pripican fighters that were defending that area of the Poa star system, which the Nephrautalus had invaded. Joberk and Lenor started waddling rapidly toward the launch pad before the ship’s red alert warning horn even began sounding. They each mounted the small heavily armed fighter craft that were launched out in space almost instantly. The Nephrican space fighters shot out of the sides of the Nephrautalus like hornets out of a disturbed nest.
“Us close until we them out Joberk thin stay let.” Lenor and Joberk always kept in close communication.
Most of the other Cadets just broadcast what they were doing to everybody. “Like three Pripican fighters looks,” said the voice of another Cadet flying in the response swarm. “One in the attack with the other two to defend used.”
Nephrican fighters began closing in on the three Pripican fighters. One of the enemy craft had been an older heavily armed low level nuclear reaction powered ship hammering into the fortified side of the Nephrautalus with concentrated meson plasma blasts. A precursor to virtual particle technology that created a super-charged electromagnetic field of positrons deflected much of the super-heated meson particles. The other two ships fired laser pulses, and were saucer shaped. These two ships of unknown technology confronted the Nephrican fighters in defense of the attacking craft.
“I hit am!” had been all one of the Nephrican craft broadcasted before a saucer shot the craft out of existence. Nephrican Cadets flew fighters that were so heavily armed with mini-nuke bombs and missiles that they were nicknamed death vehicles since almost any indirect hit would set them off in a blaze of explosions. Cadets were taught to use this final ship moment to explode as close to the enemy as possible.
Joberk became quick to shift gears into his decoy maneuvers in order to lure one of the saucers away from its formation. Lenor saw this and began to take a wide rout towards Joberk’s craft as practiced many times before during previous battles. Joberk had a hard time staying far enough away from these faster, more maneuverable saucer craft. That happened to be his first encounter with virtual particle technologies that were just being developed by Pripicans. Counter-oscillating mercurial based gyroscopic energies surrounded the saucers with fields of controlled gravity.
Joberk could feel the laser pulses about to catch up with him when Lenor once again saved his decoy partner. The saucer became engulfed in a gloriously bright explosion. “That one Pripican craft out of existence shot is!” broadcast Lenor as he proved that mini-nukes were still effective against this new saucer technology.
The rest of the Nephrican Cadets were able to force the older Pripican ship away from The Nephrautalus before both remaining ships retreated once Lenor Mull shot the other saucer into tiny bits.
Cadet Lenor Mull had been promoted after that and always stayed at least a rank ahead of Captain Mynervood ever since. They both gained rank quickly, and Lenor always insisted that Joberk accompany him as part of his team. Soon Lenor became a General First Rank when Joberk had been a General Second Rank. Fusion antimatter bombs were being developed, and both Joberk and Lenor were together on the war decision committee. Fusion bombs were the precursors of the hyper-acceleration age that used concentrated nuclear explosions to produce a fusion-powered energy plume. This technology also led to phantom matter bombs, and the process had been fairly similar to how a fission blast is used in a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb to cause fusion to happen that turns hydrogen isotopes into helium.
It had been towards the end of the war when, in spite of the heroic fighting of Nephricans, the Pripicans were still pushing the Nephrican space navy back to the Ea star system. The Nephricans had planned a fusion bomb trip to the Poa system in order to bombard the planet with enough destructive fusion bombs to split the planet Pripica into three large asteroids.
There had been a special meeting of the decision council to determine if they should carry out this mission. If it succeeded it would have turned the war around and without it the Nephricans would probably be forced into a truce on the terms of Pripicans. There occurred a vote where General Mull voted to carry out the attack, but General Mynervood cast the deciding vote to not carry this operation out.
Captain Mynervood still considered it the right decision even though Admiral Mull always took that as a betrayal. The Captain even still believed that the Pripicans would have fought even more viciously after such an attack, and would have waged war on Nephrica with newly developed hyper-acceleration spacecraft till one or the other species were all eradicated from the galaxy. He even thought it would give Pripicans no other choice but to take over the planet Nephrica. Still he also knew that Admiral Mull never forgave him for that vote, and he often implied through the years that the war had been lost by Captain Mynervood’s vote that day. At the time Captain Mynervood’s mind already looked beyond the war about how they were going to be able to live together in peace.
Captain Mynervood became drawn out of his recollection by something out of place on the walls of The Beyonder. It struck his attention while t
he walls continued to breathe with the strange hyper-acceleration photon effect. It had been a small flat circular object up on the ceiling next to a corner of the hallway. Captain Mynervood gave the object a closer inspection. He could see in the intricate patterns that covered the object’s surface that this had been made with quanta-nanocoded technology.
He pulled on the object to see how fixed it had really been to the corner. It turned out to be magnetically fixed, but not hard to pull off of the ceiling with two tentacles. He thought it might be some technology left behind by the Agents of Ea who flew to Holdus with the intention to have the Captain killed. His First Mate Geben Lockfreedow had been a student of quanta-nanocode technologies. The Captain headed to Lockfreedow’s room to show him the strange quarter-shaped object.
Lockfreedow had been immersed in his own quanta-nanocode research when Captain Mynervood arrived. His eye looked into a quanta-nanocode scope to observe the amazing multi-dimensional quantum-bit arrangements that were the quanta-optic-nanocode remnants of what Begalius invented to dispense of a nasty quanta-nanocode virus in the reactor section of The Beyonder.
“First Mate Lockfreedow I in may come?”
Lockfreedow suddenly pulled away from the quanta-nanocode device, startled by the Captain’s entrance. “Captain in come do. I at some research just was looking.”
Lockfreedow pushed aside the quanta-nanocode scope and stood in a pose of respect for the Captain. He was not sure yet if he had been ready to tell the Captain about his quanta-optic-nanocode discovery.
Captain Mynervood gestured for Lockfreedow to be at ease, and produced the small circular object he had just found. Lockfreedow’s eye showed instant interest while he scanned the quanta-nanocode designs that were almost too small for the naked eye to identify. “I the Agents of Ea we this behind may have left arrested think.”