Chapter 05

Chapter 5

            The Batpooh came out of hyperspeed at the outer fringe of the system.  There wasn’t anything to see on the viewscreen, just a few rogue asteroids, none of which posed any danger to the ship at the moment.  Without any prompting, Spot ordered Marshy to bring the ship to a stop.

            “Let’s do a complete scan and see what we find,” Buster said.

            “Yes, sir,” Spot said. 

            A full sensor sweep of the system would take at least an hour even with the modifications Dr. Ruff and his team had made.  Buster forced himself to lean back in his chair, to project an air of calm to his crew.  There was no reason to be anxious, not now.

            He studied his new command chair, looking for the intercom button to the lab Dr. Ruff had set up in what had been a storage room.  “Are you getting our readings?” Buster asked.

            “Yes, Captain.  We can see what you can,” Dr. Ruff said, although Buster figured the cyborg could see much more than them.  “I’ll alert you if we find anything.”

            “Thank you, Doctor.”

            Buster had to resist the urge to fidget in his seat as he waited.  Patience had never been his strong suit.  Then he remembered how calm Captain Barker had been, always in control of the situation.  “A good captain can’t afford to get rattled,” he had said to Buster once.

            Now that he was in command, Buster was the one who couldn’t get rattled.  No matter what they found—or didn’t find—he would have to maintain his cool.  With a grunt he shifted in his chair.  The chair still didn’t feel right, despite the long journey from Batpooh State.  Maybe Dr. Ruff could do something about that too once they had time.

            After fifteen minutes of boredom, the intercom on Buster’s chair beeped.  “We’ve found something of interest, Captain,” Dr. Ruff said.

            “What is it?”

            “There’s a planetoid approximately two million kilometers away.  From our readings of its composition and orbit path the planetoid is hollow.”

            “Hollow?”

            “There may be something inside that our sensors can’t penetrate, but from its profile, the object is not completely solid.”

            “Any signs of weapons?”

            “Nothing, Captain.  On the surface it is an ordinary planetoid.”

            Buster considered this for a moment.  This was his first real test as a captain.  “Lieutenant Ruff, bring us in closer, about two hundred thousand kilometers.  Commander Mutt, take a transport and get a closer look at it.”

            “Yes, sir,” they said in unison.  Spot stood up and then walked over to the elevator far more calmly than Buster would have under the circumstances.

            “Lieutenant Bulldog, raise the shields and arm all weapons,” Buster said.  He wasn’t going to take any chances that this strange planetoid Dr. Ruff had spotted could be a weapon.  He tried not to lean forward in his seat as the Batpooh began to move forward slowly, creeping towards a potato-shaped chunk of rock floating in space.

            “Three hundred thousand kilometers,” Marshy called out.  “Two hundred fifty.”

            The deck beneath Buster’s boots trembled for a second as the engines died out.  “Prepare to launch the transport,” Buster said.  He punched intercom button to Dr. Ruff.  “Any sign of activity yet?”

            “Nothing, Captain.  It appears to be inert.”

            “Thank Dog for small favors,” Buster grumbled. 

            “Two hundred thousand kilometers, sir,” Marshy said.  “All stop.”

            “Good.  Launch the transport.”

            Buster forced himself to lean back in the chair again.  There was nothing he could do now but wait.

#

            Spot looked over at his copilot in the transport, a terrier with a bushy gray snout.  As he prepared the transport for launch, Spot said, “I don’t remember seeing you before.”

            “Ensign Terrier, sir.  I transferred before we launched.”

            “Really?  I didn’t see your name on the roster.”

            “Forgive me for being so bold, sir, but you must be mistaken.”

            Spot met Ensign Terrier’s eyes.  They were not the eyes of an ensign.  There was something else in them, something hard and cold.  This wasn’t a dog Spot would want to meet in a back alley.  He looked away as his control panel beeped.  “You might be right,” he said.  “Time to launch.”

            Spot brought the transport out of the hangar, slowly at first and then gaining speed.  The asteroid was straight ahead, looking like just another piece of rock floating around space.  Maybe Dr. Ruff was wrong about it being hollow.  “Keep your eyes sharp for anything unusual,” Spot said, though he wasn’t sure what that might be.

            He guided the transport beneath the asteroid first, keeping his speed low so that the sensors could collect as much data as possible.  The data would go back to the Batpooh and Dr. Ruff to be analyzed for anything out of the ordinary.  From what Spot could see with his eyes, though, it was an ordinary asteroid.

            That was until they came around to the other side of the asteroid.  What appeared at first to ordinary crater at first wasn’t upon closer inspection.  Bringing the transport in as close as he dared, Spot saw the faint outline of a seam along the edges of the crate.  The seam was far too regular to be artificially created.  “See that?” he asked Ensign Terrier.

            “Could be a hatch,” the ensign said.

            “My thought exactly.  Are we getting any energy readings?”

            “Nothing—wait,” the ensign’s paws flew across the keyboard.  “Trace electrical readings.  Definitely not natural.”

            “Commander Mutt to Batpooh.  Are you seeing what we’re seeing?”

            “Affirmative, Commander,” Buster said.  “Hold your position while Dr. Ruff comes up with a solution.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “We could hit it with the lasers,” Ensign Terrier said.  “A low-powered burst just to see what it does.”

            “Negative, Ensign.  We’ll wait for Dr. Ruff and the captain.”

            “Yes, sir,” the ensign said, though he didn’t sound happy about it.

            “If you want to have any kind of career in the fleet, you have to learn to respect orders when they’re given,” Spot said.

            “I understand.”  Spot doubted the ensign did, but maybe he would in time.  At least Spot hoped so; they didn’t need to have any loose cannons running around the ship.

            As they hovered near the asteroid, Spot kept his eyes on the strange crater, waiting for any sign that it might open.  From all reports he had read, the separatist raccoons didn’t have the manufacturing capabilities for designing their own ships or weapons.  Maybe those reports were wrong.  Maybe the raccoons had been secretly building a station out here in uncharted space.  Maybe they had even devised a way to destabilize meteors so that they would wipe out planets.

            “Transport, this is the Batpooh.  Dr. Ruff has a target for you.  Low-powered lasers only.”

            Spot saw the coordinates come in from the Batpooh while next to him Ensign Terrier snickered.  “What an ingenious idea,” he grumbled.

            “Pipe down, Ensign.”  Spot fed the coordinates into the transport’s weapons systems.  When everything was ready, he slapped the firing button with his paw.  A pair of sapphire lasers stabbed into the seam of the crater.  As Spot watched, the seam turned bright orange.

            “Cease fire,” Buster ordered.

            As Spot did so, he noticed the crater begin to shift.  The rock at the bottom of the crater pulled back like a curtain, revealing a metal skin underneath.  One the rock inside the crater had completely disappeared, the metal began pulling back as well.  “It’s a hatch,” Ensign Terrier said.

            But to what?  And where?  “Transport, this is the Batpooh.  You’re cleared to go inside the object but take all necessary precautions.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            Spot made sure the lasers were ready at full power and that the shields were fully charged.  Then he took a deep breath.  The sensors still weren’t giving them a picture of what was inside, which meant it could be anything.  Whatever it was, he doubted it would be friendly.

            “Here we go,” he said and then eased the transport forward.

            The transport drifted through the opening, the hatch as Ensign Terrier had called it.  Darkness enveloped the transport, the only light coming from the transport’s instruments.  The sensors were just as blind, showing nothing but a void around them.

            “The hatch is closing!” Ensign Terrier said.

            Spot checked the instruments and saw the ensign was right.  The hatch that had opened to let them in was now yawning shut.  Spot put the engines into full reverse, trying to back out of the opening.  The transport wasn’t fast enough, though.  With far more speed than when it had opened, the hatch sealed shut.  Spot had to fire the emergency jets to keep the transport from backing into the hatch. 

            He cut the engines then and tried to raise the Batpooh.  There was no response.  They were trapped!

#

            “What happened?” Buster said into the intercom to Dr. Ruff.

            “Unsure, Captain.  The transport disappeared from our sensors once the opening closed.”

            “Are they destroyed?”

            “I can’t ascertain that.”

            Buster wanted to scream at the doctor that he had to know something.  He wanted to pound the armrest of his chair.  He wanted to demand Jake fire everything the Batpooh had into the asteroid to blow the hatch open.  Then he remembered Captain Barker and took a deep breath.  “Keep me posted, Doctor,” he said.

            “What do we do now, sir?” Marshy asked.

            “We wait and see.”  Buster turned to face Dash’s communications station.  “Keep trying to raise them.  Let me know the second you hear anything.”

            “Will do, sir.”

            Buster hated the idea of waiting while his best friend might be dying or even dead, but he had no choice.  A real captain didn’t let emotions get the better of him.  He stayed control of himself and the situation at all times. 

            “We can’t leave them in there,” Jake said.

            “We won’t.  But we can’t go off half-cocked either.”

            “Buster—”

            “That’s enough, Lieutenant.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            Buster didn’t like snapping at his brother, but he had to maintain order.  Dr. Ruff would find a way to get the hatch open again; he had to find a way.  Otherwise Buster would take apart the asteroid piece by piece until he found the transport.

            A warning buzzer went off on his armrest.  Buster saw an alert from the sensors.  Energy readings in the area were climbing at an alarming rate.  At first he thought it must be coming from the asteroid as some kind of weapon incinerated the transport, but then he saw the readings were coming from outside—from all around the Batpooh. 

            As Buster watched, the energy readings began to form three cohesive shapes.  These looked like ships, though not like any Buster had ever seen.  They had sleek, tapered fronts that led to a long, curving back.  Graceful wings sprouted on either side, giving the shapes a bird-like appearance.

            “Lieutenant Bulldog, arm all weapons and track those signatures.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            One of the shapes appeared in the viewscreen.  From its gray bulk it was clearly a starship of some variety.  But whose?  Certainly not a Bloc ship.  “Ensign Mutt, open all channels.”

            “I’m on it, sir,” Dash said.  “Ready.”

            “Unidentified starships, this is Captain Buster Bulldog of the Bloc of Planetary States starship Batpooh.  We mean you no harm—”

            “Silence!” a voice hissed.  “You are intruding in the territory of the Imperial Queendom of Cattatonia.  Leave or be destroyed.”

            “We are on an exploratory mission,” Buster said.  “One of our transports is inside that asteroid.  We can’t leave until it’s recovered.”

            “They have trespassed on our property.”

            “That may be, but I assure you we knew nothing—”

            “Leave or be destroyed!”

            “They’re charging weapons,” Jake called out.

            “Brace for impact,” Buster said.  “Prepare to return fire.”  He wasn’t going to leave Spot behind, no matter what.