Arcadia 2 swept silently through space, it’s fusion engines unable to find some molecules to vibrate sound through. Through all the drama Crane and the team had met thus far, it was the a group quiet Vorisiens who had turned round Crane and the crew’s fortunes. Arcadia 2 had been a con, an old ship patched to make it look like the newest, bested, fastest, armamest ship in the whole galaxy. Exar, Trest and Bloorp, born on Voris, a planet somewhere out there, had been taken captive by Earth, stuck in laboratories for 5 years, never spoke during the whole time, and dumped as part of the Arcadia 2 crew as a way to get rid of some useless aliens. The thing was, they were not useless. In fact, they were the cleverest cleverest aliens ever to sit and do nothing on planet Earth for 5 years. Arcadia 2’s bulkhead, engines, weapons and the garden had all been overhauled by Exar and his friends. Arcadia 2 was now better, faster and potentially nastier than any of Earth’s Elite fleet, which was now several light years away, unwittingly walking into the trap of all traps.

Christopher Crane sat on his bed. In his left hand he held a picture of his family, in his right a picture of the beach hut where he and his family spent their holidays. He’d always wanted to follow his father into space but now he’d do anything to be back on that beach. His *EyeCom flashed a message…….

*EyeCom. a tiny nano molecule inserted into the brain that allowed messages or pictures to be transmitted in front of the eye. It could be switched off by a password, which in Crane’s case was ‘Get lost Alexa’

‘Come to the gardens. We have something to show you’

Crane laid down the pictures on his bed and headed out into the corridor.

The Drekken ship landed on Taupu. Within minutes Frak was standing in front of he forcefield which held his Kreta. He replayed the images and sound immediately before his Kreta had been tricked into the forcefield in the first place. It repeated Crane’s words. Within a second it’s Kreta was freed. This also freed the one hundred Greks from the cave who’d been camped on the other side of the forcefield in the cave. As they approached the Drekken and it’s Kreta, they prepared themselves to hypnotise their new prey. Seconds later they were carbon………

As Crane walked into the Hydroponic garden, he was blissfully unaware that not only was Commodore Higgins travelling very quickly, in the ship Crane should have had, to kill him, a very very very enraged Drekken was also seeking to carbonise him.

‘Wow!’

Crane stood in Dome 1, which not that long ago, had been an empty shell. Now it was a sea of green as far as the eye could see.

‘Strawberries, oranges………..and whatever they are……..’

‘Cantaloupe Mr Crane’

‘Amazing. How did you do all this in such a short time? It’s beautiful’

‘I had a lot of help from our Vorisian friends. We now have enough fresh food growing to keep us going for the next millennium, and wait to you see the other domes. We’ve named this one ‘The Garden’. We have a tropical dome called The Amazon, a sports Dome without a name yet and the Ocean zone. It would take weeks to tour it all but if you follow me I think there’s something you might be interested in’

Crane jumped into a HoverGlide bug beside Mr Tumpkins.

‘Take us to the beach’

The modern version of Siri appeared as a hologram on the HoverGlide’s dashboard.

‘A pleasure and a good choice. Estimated time to arrive at the beach twenty minutes’

Some 15 days space travel away, the ES NewYork sat still in space. An engine malfunction had resulted in the ship being separated from the other 19 EarthFleet ships. The 500+ crew went about their day viewing the delay as a holiday. There was little to do for most of the crew. The captain had given the teams 3 days off while the engineering team frantically worked to make the repairs and allow the ES New York to catch up with the fleet.

Sanjay Naris was the navigation Team Leader. He wasn’t too happy. While his co-workers enjoyed time off, he was covering 12 hr shifts monitoring the far sensor array for anything from stray asteroids to ship traffic. The only consolation was he had only 15 minutes before Traiton would appear to relieve him. He rubbed his tired eyes for the twentieth time. Just as he imagined bed and a cold beer a holoalarm appeared in front of him. Startled, he took a couple of seconds to take in the 3D image ahead of him. Three triangular spinning objects were heading toward the ship. He pressed the amber warning button….

The Drekken ships closed in on the ES New York. Tipped off about its predicament, they spun toward their prey.

Sanjay Naris was just about to press the red alert button, when he saw the the flash of light in front of him. Before he could speak, the panel in front of him disintegrated, and, in an instant, the ES New York was no more. The fun had just stopped…………….

The Hoverglide gently stopped at its destination. The crew had obviously been busy.

‘Let’s go Mr Crane. I think you’ll like this’

Mr Tumpkins opened his door and stepped down, followed by Christopher Crane, who was about to be very very very surprised.

The automatic doors to Dome 3 opened. Crane stepped out onto sand. Real beachy beachy type sand. As he followed Mr Tumpkins, things started to look familiar.

‘Wow. This looks just like the……..’

As he reached the top of the sand dune, his eyes widened. Ahead of him was a beach, the ocean and………what looked like the blue Beach Hut, he, his brother and father used to visit when he was a boy.

He stepped into the hut. He couldn’t believe it. It was an exact replica of the hut which had given him and his family so many happy days.

‘How did you do this…..?’

‘We have our ways Mr Crane……we have our ways….’

Crane climbed the ladder to the bedroom above. He tugged the rope just as he’d done all those years ago and the roof opened. He lay on the bed staring at the stars. He could smell the sea. All that was missing was his family. Within two minutes he’d fallen asleep.

‘Admiral Manus…..could you come to the command centre, we’ve lost contact with the ES New York……………’

Crane-The Voyage of Ineptitude Episode VIII The Revelation was brought to you by David Linden and Dodo Productions ©️ 2020 follow me on Twitter @qosfc1919 and email me davidlinden4@gmail.com

All seven other episodes are available in the archives on this website.