A Faint Glimmer of Metal - Chapter 02: General Quock
Metallic Genealogy: Book One.
A lone blip sparked onto the screen: A tiny, white dot which was barely visible on the empty background of space.
"Shall I let him come, sir?" the communications officer asked. Jeeps was intense and minute: heavy in responsibilities, light in stature. About her head was attached a permanent set of comm-1 rated headphones. Through these she could access any like-rated interface and earlier and translate any language known or yet to be discovered. They also reduced that annoying hiss which very often accompanied disconnected channels. All of these features, sadly, seemed to impress no one but her. “There’s no response from the object,” she said. “It’s likely derelict.”
Beyond the general description noted above, Jeeps was just a normal girl from Bellingklek, who had, like many of her peers, simply checked the wrong box at an orientation and ended up in military service for an undisclosed number of years. She was dark-skinned, probably too attractive by current society’s perception to be stuck out in the wilderness of the Galaxy. She was thoroughly independent and somewhat disappointed in her current predicament, which she would complain about to anyone who might happen upon her in the break room before her morning cup of simple.
Her superior, General Quock, by contrast, was a loud, round, horribly smelly man who’s unappealing features made him hard to look at directly. It was only out of the corner of one’s eye that his countenance could be fully appreciated. His grim face misshapen as if from some terrible confrontation with a large industrial dough mixer; every inch of it jowly and stretched as to appear melted like a bust of wax .
The general looked around the office, and grimaced. The room was a vast mess of entanglements: Computers and equipment lined the walls, cords scattered about desks and the floor like unconscious snakes, boxes piled everywhere as though remnants from a recent move.
"How can a man think in this clutter?" he said at an annoyingly loud volume. He then smiled broadly at his assessment of the room as though a farmer proud of his new genetically slurried brood of Mantifurs, for using his brain, his father had always told him, had never been Quock’s strength. Quock had always been much better at following orders. Giving them was to teeter between insanity and stupidity. Once he noticed Jeeps staring at him, Quock cleared his throat, and changed the subject to small talk about the weather.
Suddenly Quock went stiff. Those who knew him were aware that this happened on occasion. He would appear almost to fall asleep while standing, sometimes his body moving in a herky-jerky way as though he were happily chasing naked human prey on some off-world setting.
From Quock’s point of view, it was a sort of squishy darkness into which he would topple into, much like slipping and hitting one’s head on a rock, and having adventures in the netherworld; all of it well beyond his control. In his younger days, Quock would fight the feeling, but that merely marshaled his body into awkward contortions. When he awoke, Quock would find himself in a great deal of pain, sometimes even exhausted to the point of incapacitation; bedridden for weeks at a time. But now, he simply allowed the feeling to overcome him, letting his body go limp, though still perpendicular.
Into placid thought he went, beyond Jeeps, and the uncertain troubles at hand. Everything went black once he succumbed, but soon enough became bright again as if he had traveled to another point in time.
"Haligan," said Quock's younger brother, Fendripth. "I’m afraid our bird is dead." The boy was just as Quock had remembered: Small in stature, pale as a sheet, frail and perfect and beloved by their mother.
"I believe so, too," Quock heard himself say. His voice diminutive and much less commanding than in his current existence.
"What do you think we should do?" Fendripth looked frantic, nearly at the edge of tears. The trails of the salty eye drippings causing delicate pink streaks on his otherwise perfect cheeks.
Of all of his "spells", the General's mind had never traveled back this early in life. The farthest previous when he relived his misadventures during the 21st war of Pitspit in his late teens; here he had taken part in a number of unorthodox and embarrassing acts he would really like to forget. But when a spell came on him -- usually no more than once or twice per day -- it would almost always have some pertinence to his current situation. He failed to see how anything to do with his brother and a dead bird could have with a dot or two on a monitor screen, however. As always, no matter how embarrassing or painful the vision, he was locked into it, unable to escape until it's conclusion.
The young Quock thought for a minute, and said finally, "It may just be pretending." He looked into the confused face of his younger brother. "Close the cage and we'll hide behind the curtains and we shall see if this is but a ruse. Yes," he said, his eyes wild and dancing. "I believe there's still some life in this bird yet!"
General Quock, snapped out of his reverie and squinted at the screen. He noticed nothing out of the ordinary, but his vision seemed a cautionary tale.
Jeeps stared at her commanding officer for a few moments. She was used to Quock's frequent trances, but this was the closest she had been to her commanding officer when one was actually occurring. It had been the general's eyes that had alerted Jeeps' to the change. As Quock drifted away, the man's pupils shriveled slowly to small points before simply disappearing, leaving only glistening white orbs behind. While in his trance, Quock's body swayed back and forth rhythmically as though cradling a sleepy infant. And once the man had returned to reality, Quock's pupils returned like the quickly widening iris of a camera.
"Ring them again," the general said in a rough, whiny voice. "If it’s truly an abandoned ship, we could certainly use the salvage."
Jeeps nodded slightly before cuing up the antenna, which she did by pressing a vast assortment of buttons. Suddenly a thought struck her and she cupped her hand over the microphone. "What if they've come to attack us?"
"With only one ship?!" The general threw back his head and laughed akin to a witch's cackle. Jeeps had heard this laugh before. The first time she just assumed that Quock was engaging in some holiday-appropriate mimicry -- it had been only a week shy of Burn the Spell Caster's day, after all. However, since then she had come to discover that this was in fact Quock's true laugh. As she found it wholly disturbing, Jeeps took care to tell few jokes in Quock's presence. "That would be suicide, Jeeps. Even with our barely equipped defenses."
Jeeps removed her hand from the small, metal mesh of the comm and tapped a button on the panel in front of her. "Unknown ship," she said into the device, "you are approaching the planet, Siniss 10. Security locks are in place. What are your intentions, please?"
Jeeps pushed another button and a fine static came through a larger receiving mesh which was set into the ceiling. She squinted at the sound, and wished for the hiss-free comfort her own headset provided.
"Perhaps they didn't hear you," Quock offered, peering over his officer's shoulders. "Try a different frequency."
"I know all that," Jeeps muttered under her breath, being quite careful not to be heard. She had already earlier switched to a higher set of frequencies, and received the same response. Jeeps knew her duties, and this equipment, and it annoyed her to no end when officers threw out obvious suggestions in an attempt to make themselves sound important.
"Well, pretty soon," the general shouted excitedly, "they'll be close enough to ask them in person."
Jeeps exploded. "THE FREQUENCY SCANNERS, OF WHICH THERE ARE ONLY TWO...!"
The general started to take off his belt and Jeeps tried desperately to calm herself. So many are the time she had seen her leader lash out severely at the insolence of a crew member, slapping out eyes and ripping off noses with hardly a change of expression. This belt was, in fact, a hunk of steel-lined leather feared the planet over.
"It scans all possible frequencies, sir! In rapid succession! If there's anyone aboard that ship, they're deliberately not responding!" Jeeps had been inching away, ever so slowly during this explanation, and by the time she had finished this last sentence she was standing behind one of the file cabinets.
"Well then," Quock said, his voice civil under the circumstances, " Very good. More metal for the pile, eh."
To Jeeps' relief, the heavy leader had just been tucking in his shirt.
"Jeeps...!" The general looked at the control board and found his communications officer absent from her post. "JEEPS?!"
"Over here, sir."
"But for the reverence of Burnt Toast, get up off of the floor!"
Jeeps, pretending to have retrieved a fallen pencil, scooted over to her chair and sat down.
"Have a retriever ship go out there to...well, retrieve whatever that ship is carrying."
"And if it's an ambush, sir?"
"Then have the retriever accompanied by someone with a gun. Veebus Neebus, Jeeps. Use your head, woman."
General Quock stood erect suddenly, forcing Jeeps and the other crew to stand at attention, saluted feebly and tromped out of the room.
Once he was free of the eyes of his men, the General quickly ran to an escape pod and closed the door securely behind him. As his vision had ended before showing him the final outcome, he felt it best to be prepared for anything. Switching on the security viewer, Quock grabbed a brundle stick from the food storage and waited to see with almost eager anticipation if this bird had some life in it.