Fiction River: Moonscapes (14 page)

He only hesitated for a moment, then he leaned in serious-like, one of his hands already massaging my massive melons ever so nice. This was gonna be damn fun.

Jen and me both broke off for just a second and I told her the end.

“I had this one medicinal bottle left of Pap’s old moonshine. By the time I was done with it…” I shrugged.

“The moon was shining!” Jen always had a great laugh.

I joined in.

Then we both turned to more important concerns.

Introduction to “
Dreams of a Moon”

Since I last appeared in Fiction River, all of two months ago, I started a few crazy experiments. I’m blogging my daily writing progress on my website deanwesleysmith.com. I’m also doing my own magazine,
Smith’s Monthly
, which features a new novel as well as two serialized novels, a serialized nonfiction book, and several short stories. As if that’s not enough to keep me busy, my latest thriller
Dead Money
just appeared from WMG Publishing.

My Brian Saber stories tend to be popular so, with the topic of a moon, I thought I would have Captain Brian Saber defend Earth against a moon used as a weapon. A pretty good task for an 85-year-old man from a nursing home.

Dreams of a Moon

Dean Wesley Smith

One

The young, strong lieutenant gently nudged Captain Brian Saber in his nursing home bed, pulled back the blanket and sheet covering him, and then easily picked Brian up with strong arms. His name was Lieutenant Magusson, but he had told Brian one night that some people called him Big Ed.

Brian was going on a mission.

Brian could feel the excitement surge through his old body.

A mission, a chance to live again, to be young again.

He made himself take as deep a breath as he could without setting off a fit of coughing.

The Shady Valley Nursing Home room hadn’t changed since Brian fell asleep at 10 p.m. Now his old clock on his dresser told him it was a little after one in the morning. If he survived this mission, he would be back in fifteen minutes. But he might be out there in space for a month or more, if he was lucky.

Big Ed turned for the room’s sliding glass door. Behind him Brian saw Captain Dorothy “Dot” Leeds being carried from her room across the hall and through his room. The young woman carrying her was Lieutenant Sherrie and she followed Brian and Big Ed out into the cold night air of a Chicago winter.

The light nightshirt Brian wore to bed was no match for the biting cold air, but he didn’t mind. He wouldn’t be out in the cold long enough for it to matter.

Overhead he could see the full moon, bright in the night sky. He and Dot were both far too old to ever walk under that moon. But at some point they would be together, staring up at some moon, somewhere.

No one talked.

No one said a word.

They were on a mission for the Earth Protection League. Something had happened on the border a long ways from Earth, which is why the League needed Brian and Dot. The League needed their ships, needed the two of them young and willing to fight.

All over the country right now his crew and Dot’s crew were going through the same routine.

Damn he was excited.

He always felt this way going on a mission.

The four of them neared the center of the courtyard of the nursing home. The frozen snow crunched under the boots of the two lieutenants and Brain could see his shallow breath in the dim light.

The full moon was so beautiful on a clear winter night. He hoped he would see it again tonight.

Then a yellow beam struck them from above and lifted all four of them up easily into the big intergalactic transport ship.

The warm air of the ship covered him and behind him he heard Dot say softly, “See you on the other side.”

He would have answered her, but he couldn’t talk louder than a whisper. He couldn’t walk or even lift his arms much at all either. A stroke had taken most of those skills a few years earlier.

She knew that and didn’t expect an answer from him. He was eighty-eight, she was eighty-seven. Both of them were captains of major starships for the Earth Protection League.

They had been friends in the nursing home and one night she had seen him being carried out to go on a mission. So the next day he got permission to recruit her, and she had risen quickly to the rank of captain as well, in just under twenty missions. She was that good.

And they were both very much in love. At some point soon they would get married and live out on the frontier, not ever having to return to earth and their old bodies.

But right now they were still frontline fighters. And clearly they were needed.

Big Ed laid Brian down in what looked like a coffin in a private cabin off to one side of the big hallway.

That coffin was a sleep chamber that knocked Brian out during the trip at Trans-Galactic speeds toward the frontier of the Earth Protection League. And during that sleep, because of the nature of space and time and matter, his body would regress to being young and healthy again.

He had no idea how or why it worked that way. A couple of people had tried to explain it to him once. Something about matter being at a fixed point in time and space, so if a person flew faster than light, everyone on board regressed in age in relationship to the distance traveled.

They had figured out a way to help the brain hold the memories of being old, and the experiences during the trip.

Brian was just glad it worked the way it did, because otherwise he would be stuck in that nursing home and in the stroke-damaged body just waiting to die. Now he could actually do something constructive, help defend Earth and its allies.

Big Ed stepped back and snapped off a salute. “Good luck, sir,” he said.

Then he lowered the lid until it latched over Brian and the light went out.

Brain would have loved to salute the young man back, but he couldn’t.

Instead he just lay there thinking of seeing Dot again in her young and youthful body.

And he thought of them dancing as they always did after a mission.

But first they had to survive whatever faced them in deep space this time.

A faint orange smell seeped into the coffin and Captain Brian Saber dozed off.

Two

Captain Saber awoke what seemed like just an instant later.

He reached up and easily pushed the coffin lid open. Then he levered his young body out of the sleep chamber.

He never got tired of that feeling after being trapped in that wheelchair and bed what seemed like just moments before. The magic of the Trans-Galactic speed had done it to him again; given him his young body back.

He had sure taken this body for granted when he had been young.

He quickly slipped off the old nightshirt and tossed it back in the coffin. He would need that for the return trip back.

If he survived.

If he didn’t, his son would be called in the middle of the night and there would be a funeral for a body that was a fake of his. And no one but those in the Earth Protection League would know Brian Saber of Chicago died in space, fighting for all humanity.

And he didn’t honestly care if anyone knew. He just loved doing this, getting a chance to be young again.

He quickly dressed in his tight brown pants and tall black leather boots over the pants. He put on a loose white-silk blouse and a brown vest over that with a logo on it that read EPL. He strapped his two photon blasters on his hips with a wide black-leather belt and then looked at himself in the mirror.

This trip they had gone a little farther out. He looked to be about twenty-five. Often he ended up closer to thirty on missions.

So that meant they were very, very close to the EPL border, more than likely the border with the Dogs, one of the nastiest alien races to ever exist.

And a race set on the destruction at any cost of the EPL and Earth.

He turned and left his room, turning right and heading for the command center. He was on his own warship, the
Bad Business
.

Dot would have been transferred to her ship as well, the
Blooming Rose
. He wished he could see her now, kiss her, hold her with his young strong arms. But there would be time for that later.

Right now he had to focus on the mission they faced.

He got to the control room just a few seconds before his other two command crew arrived. Marion Knudson, a striking redhead from Wisconsin took her second chair. The two of them had been a team for a dozen missions now.

She was tough, all business, and smart as they came.

This time she had her red hair long and down over her shoulders. Usually she kept it up tight against her head.

Behind them Kip Butcher dropped into his chair with a “Damn this feels good.”

Kip was from Southern California and lived in a nursing home there. When he was young he had been a surfer and now, even in his uniform, he still looked the part with his tan skin and blonde hair.

Back in Wisconsin, Marion lived alone, even at the age of ninety. As Kip had said once, she was too damn mean to die.

Marion had not argued with that, only smiled that smile that let Brian know that at some point Kip would pay for the remark.

“So any news as to the mission, Captain?” Marion asked, her fingers running over the board in front of her. “We are within striking distance of the Dog border. Much closer than normal, actually. No sign at all of Dog warships.”

“And there are six other EPL warships with us,” Kip said. “One is the
Blooming Rose.”

Everyone knew about his and Dot’s relationship.

“No word yet,” Brian said. “But I suspect we don’t have long to wait.”

He pointed to the board and as he did, a red light started blinking, meaning an emergency message was coming in.

“You creep me out every time you do that,” Kip said, shaking his head and turning back to his board.

Brian just smiled at Marion. The brass had a certain timetable that they allowed the crews to get into positions on their ships, and that never varied.

“Message on screen,” Kip said a moment later.

General Dan Holmes’s face appeared, his frown causing his middle-aged face to wrinkle even more than it already was.

“Captains,” he said, nodding. “I’m afraid this is as bad as it gets.”

Brain said nothing, as did the other captains of the other six warships, so the general went on.

“The Dogs have launched a moon at Earth.”

Brian sat there hoping that General Holmes would take back that statement.

He didn’t.

The General just kept frowning.

“The moon is accelerating from deep in Dog space and will be at the border at your position in about six hours.”

“Fleet of ships with it, I assume?” Saber asked.

The General shook his head. “They don’t think they need ships on this one. The moon they have launched is as big as our moon around Earth.”

Brian sat back and tried to imagine what it would take to get a moon like that actually moving, what kind of power and how the moon would even hold together. And how they would even aim it from such a long distance through space.

And how many thousands of years at real-space travel it would take to get to Earth.

“I’m sending all the data we have on it through to you,” the general said. “We want you to investigate the moon the moment it crosses into our space, pass on the data to our scientists.”

With that he clicked off, leaving the screen blank.

“Why do I think there’s something he flat omitted from that briefing,” Kip said.

Marion’s fingers flew over the keys as Brian sat there, waiting. He knew Kip was right. The General wasn’t telling them everything. There was something more.

“Oh, shit,” Marion said.

Brian looked over at her. She never swore.

She put up the report that made her swear on the main screen in front of Brain so that they could all see it.

“One hour after the moon crosses into our space,” Marion said, “it reaches Trans-Galactic speed and will be protected by the Trans-Galactic shields. Nothing will be able to change its course until it plows into Earth.”

“They built a TG drive big enough to power a moon,” Kip said, shaking his head. “Wow! That’s impressive.”

Brian had to admit, it was impressive. But there was only one problem. Once something was in Trans-Galactic drive, it couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t in real time and the shields that formed with the drive could plow through anything.

So they had to figure out a way to stop a speeding moon.

Or Earth would be destroyed very, very shortly.