Peggy Sue (The T'aafhal Inheritance)

Peggy Sue

Doug L. Hoffman

Copyright © 2013 by Doug L. Hoffman

All rights reserved.

ISBN
978-0-9884588-5-7 

Published by

The Resilient Earth Press

http://resilientearthpress.com
 

Books By Doug L. Hoffman

The T’aafhal Inheritance Trilogy

Parker’s Folly

Peggy Sue

M’tak Ka’fek

Non-fiction (with Allen Simmons)

The Resilient Earth

The Energy Gap

Preface

Peggy Sue
is the second book of the T’aafhal Inheritance series and the sequel to
Parker’s Folly
. It should come as no surprise that there is a sequel to my first book, since the epilogue of
Parker’s Folly
hinted that the dark ones took exception to the actions of Captain Jack and his crew (and the preface said that this book was already finished). The first part of
Peggy Sue
has its roots in questions from readers of its predecessor. Specifically, what happened when the Peggy Sue returned to Earth?

The stage for this book is also expanded, including many new worlds and new alien races, as the characters from the first book stretch their wings and travel into the wider Galaxy. Relationships deepen and bonds between crewmembers grow stronger as the intrepid band of explorers face a future that they did not ask for. Indeed, the mysterious T’aafhal will finally be revealed—raising even more questions about the ancient war between warm life and the Dark Lords, and naturally setting the scene for book three.

 Again I would like to thank my early readers: Brandon Willis, Clayton Ward and Rik Faith in particular for their useful and in depth critiques. Thanks to my family for putting up with my obsessive prattling about trisexual, hermaphroditic, intelligent plants and other oddities. The book was written using OpenOffice and the cover art done using the GIMP. I hope you enjoy Peggy Sue.

Doug L Hoffman
20 January, 2013
Conway, Arkansas

Prologue

AFTAC, Patrick AFB, Florida

Senior Airman Robinson was manning AFTAC’s sensor array when he was roused from his daydreaming by an alarm. AFTAC, the Air Force Technical Applications Center, is a not quite secret organization that monitors Earth and nearby space for nuclear detonations. A burst of gamma rays had been picked up by several satellite detectors. Slight differences in arrival times, combined with the positions of the satellites in space, allowed the source of the radiation to be pinpointed. “Man, that is way out there. It’s also off the plane of the ecliptic by quite a bit,” he said to himself.

This triggered a memory regarding the recent Texas spaceship brouhaha. Three weeks ago, a spaceship, supposedly built in the wastelands of West Texas, blasted off from Earth and rendezvoused with the International Space Station. According to the deep space tracking network it then visited the Moon. That was followed shortly by some kind of lunar eruption and the appearance of a moving source of radiation that headed away from Earth.

The Texas ship followed and, at a point approximately 665,000 km from Earth and 322,000 km above the ecliptic plane, both tracks ended. It was as though both objects vanished into thin air—well, thin space. At first, Robinson had entertained the wild thought that one of the objects might have returned, but this new point was more than 50 million kilometers away from the point of disappearance.

More alarms sounded as the particle detectors provided confirmation of the radiation source’s location. Whatever caused this was a long way away.
I guess I’ll just log it under the strange readings category,
thought Robinson,
the last thing I need to do is stir up a hornet’s nest like last time. I think the Colonel still blames me for that one.
 

What SrA Robinson did not realize was that the burst of radiation his instruments picked up had, in fact, occurred at the same point where the two objects had disappeared twenty two days ago. Robinson was judging the distance relative to Earth, and that was the wrong frame of reference. Earth travels in orbit around the Sun with a mean orbital velocity of 29.783 kilometers per second. Since the initial incident, humanity’s home moved almost 57 million kilometers along its orbital track. 

The location in 3-space where these comings and goings were taking place, however, had remained fixed in a different frame of reference. This was because it was the terminus of an alter-space transit line between the Sun and a distant star nearly 30 light-years away, Beta Comae Berenices. While Earth’s position within the solar system had changed, the relative positions of the stars varied little during the brief interval between incidents. The burst of radiation SrA Robinson dismissed marked the return of humanity’s first and only starship.

* * * * *

TK Parker, an oil billionaire in his late 70s, was at his ranch in West Texas. He was maintaining residence not because he liked the place—it consisted of flat scrub and a now partially demolished WWII era dirigible hangar. He was staying at the ranch to aggravate the authorities. The government had tried to seize the property three weeks ago, after the launch of his pride and joy—a spaceship secretly built in the old hangar.

In the final stages of testing, the ship’s reactors emitted enough radiation to draw the attention of the Air Force’s monitoring satellites. Thinking they had uncovered a nuclear plot against the nation, the authorities sent all manner of law enforcement officers to seize the ranch and whatever equipment was emitting the radiation. They even sent a squad of Marines to capture the hangar.

This forced Parker’s hand and he ordered the ship’s crew to take off, even though they were not ready. That was more than three weeks ago, and there had been no word from the ship since. So TK and his housekeeper, Maria, occupied the ranch house to keep federal agents from having free access to the property while Parker’s phalanx of lawyers blocked the government in the courts.

“Maria. How about rustling up some more coffee?” TK called over the intercom. Maria had been his cook and housekeeper for more than two decades and was the only real family he had. At times they argued with each other like a couple long married, though there was no physical intimacy involved in their relationship.

“Si, Senor Parker,” came the reply, “I will make another pot.”

Thank God for Maria,
TK thought,
at least there is one person left on the planet I can trust.
He had kept himself busy getting the ranch house fixed back up after the spaceship’s unexpectedly energetic departure, that and prodding his lawyers to file more suits and injunctions against every agency from the DOD to the U.S. Marshals to the Texas Rangers. Still, worrying over the fate of the crew on board Parker’s Folly kept him up most nights. 

Parker’s Folly was the name the construction workers had pinned on the spaceship. Secretly, TK was rather proud of that name. The workers thought the ship was a joke, but they all stopped laughing after the ship actually flew, reaching orbit, the Moon and beyond.

At first the news media couldn’t get enough of the spaceship story, clamoring for interviews and filling their broadcasts with uninformed speculation. But since the media has the attention span of an untrained puppy, the spotlight soon faded. Now the only ones left interested in TK and Parker’s Folly belonged to the government bureaucracy.

The satellite phone on TK’s desk chirped, a sound he had not heard before. It was not one of the ringtones he had programmed. Picking the phone up, he looked curiously at the display, trying to figure out what caused the strange audible signal. There on the display was a text message:

WE R BACK. SHIP & CREW OK. MEET SOON. JACK

TK’s eyes misted over as he read the message from his captain. “I knew you were the man for the job, Jack my boy,” TK said out loud. Then, shouting to his housekeeper, “Maria! Start packing. We gotta make a trip to Australia.”

Part One

Keep Your Friends Close, And Your Enemies Closer

Chapter 1

Bridge, Peggy Sue, Earth Orbit

Jack Sutton sat in the captain’s chair, pensively watching the blue and white globe turning slowly beneath his ship. After a week in alter-space, they had spent the following month flitting about the asteroid belt storing antimatter containers acquired while blowing up the alien refueling station at Beta Comae. Now the Captain could no longer put off the inevitable—he knew from the outset that some of the people on board the Peggy Sue would need to be repatriated.

As much as it pained him to see friends and colleagues from the last voyage scatter to the winds, the crew deserved some shore leave and some form of closure was necessary for those who participated involuntarily. He needed to return the squad of Marines that he had “borrowed” to the United States, and the two surviving cosmonauts, rescued from the International Space Station, needed to at least contact their countries of origin.

The first of the crew ashore was Lt. Bear, the ship’s Master-at-arms. Bear was now up north for some R&R, mostly hunting and maybe an attempt at recruiting a few of his fellows to the cause. He also mentioned something about looking up his old flame, Isbjørn.
Hopefully he will find the food more to his liking in Norway,
Jack thought moodily. 

The source of Jack’s discontent was not Lt. Bear’s epicurean preferences but the insistence of Ludmilla Tropsha, Russian ISS cosmonaut and acting ship’s medical doctor, that she must report in person to officials of ROSCOSMOS, the Russian Federal Space Agency. Despite his argument that she might not be allowed to return Ludmilla would have none of it—she would report and then come back to the ship. The fact that she shared the Captain’s cabin and held sole possession of his heart could not sway her.

“Permission to enter the bridge, Captain?” It was Lt. Gretchen Curtis, Jack’s second in command. She had just returned from dropping Bear off and was set to transfer the Marines planetside. The tall red haired First Officer was wearing a standard, skintight spacesuit that showed off her trim athletic figure.

“Permission granted, Lieutenant, welcome back. Was Lt. Bear happy to be back on Earth?”

“Thank you, Sir. He certainly was, but I think he’s starting to go soft in his old age. He actually hugged me before getting off the shuttle.”

The three of them, Lt. Curtis, Lt. Bear and Captain Sutton, had been together for more than five years, working on the spaceship that they now voyaged in. Over that time the trio became as close as brothers and sister. Of course, being in combat together did tend to create bonds, even between the most unlikely souls.

“He’ll have a good time, I’m sure,” Jack replied. “I just hope he finds us some more recruits, we are certainly going to need them.” On the ship’s maiden voyage, after a brief stop to rescue a trio of stranded cosmonauts from the ISS, Captain Jack and company discovered the presence of hostile aliens on the Moon. Drawn to an anomalous cavern beneath a lunar crater in the hope of find an alien device left by ancient visitors, a surface party led by Lt. Curtis came across a hidden probe ship and a swarm of belligerent, spider-like cybernetic creatures.

After a short firefight and a harrowing escape from the probe ship’s violent blastoff, Parker’s Folly followed the fleeing alien vessel into the hidden dimensions of alter-space. This came as quite a surprise to all on board the Earth ship, since no one suspected the Folly could enter alter-space or that alter-space itself even existed. Another mystery revealed with suspicious timing by the ship’s computer, which was interfaced to the ancient alien data storage device known only as “the artifact.”

After catching and destroying the alien probe ship and then staging a daring raid on an enemy refueling station orbiting a devastated planet, Earth’s lone starship returned home. Though their mission was a success the price they paid was high—four expedition members were lost while escaping and then blowing up the alien space station, five if the traitorous Col. Kondratov was included. That action led directly to the renaming of the ship, now officially christened the Peggy Sue.

“Did you talk with the Marines, Sir?” Gretchen asked. The next mission was going to be a bit touchier than simply dropping a single passenger off on the desolate shores of Norway. “They are all intent on returning, even though the Corps was throwing them out?”