Planet of The Banshees

“What’s happening?” Nathaniel shouts over the deafening sound.

“There’s a rupture in the antigravity pump,” Doctor Bill yells. The fluid level surrounding the gazebos drops visibly. One spot near the wall churns violently.

“We are re-entering the time stream!” Haticat yells. Pop! The ship appears in empty space and immediately begins to dump fuel. Still reacting, the fuel expands space around it. The ship is jerked this way and that and finally thrown back towards the center of the explosion by different bubbles of expanding space. The explorers slide across the floor and struggle back to their stations.

“Why aren’t the inertial dividers operating?” Nathaniel says. Some of them are. The water does not slosh, yet the spacemass tech that divides the physics on the bridge from the physics of the outside universe has failed.

“I got it,” Haticat says, flipping a blue switch on the edge of the control station. “The electrical surge from the pump malfunction flipped the polarity of the bridge and bedroom divider.” Nathaniel looks across the way to his bedroom gazebo and sees his bed leaning up against the railing.

“The automatic patching mechanisms have kicked in,” Doctor Bill says. The noise and shaking start to subside as the fuel dissipates and quits reacting.

“Captain, we’re very close to a planet,” Fred says. “And on a collision course! There isn’t time to divert.”

“Can we land safely and take off again?” Nathaniel asks.

“Yes,” Fred says. “The damage is small.”

“The planet is a terrestrial silicate planet of moderate gravity and breathable air,” Haticat reports.

“Okay, slow us down. We will worry about repairs after we land,” Nathaniel orders. The ship sets down in a forest of gigantic trees. They have smooth, brown bark and red leaves resembling wigs or clumps of hair. “Okay, now can someone tell me where and when we are?”

Doctor Bill struggles with the navigation computer for a moment. “It looks like we’re on the planet Demanda sometime during the boy-girl war. There may be girls around.”

“Oh no,” Nathaniel says, scratching his head. “All right, let’s do repairs as fast as possible and hope we weren’t noticed. No time to explore.”

“It should only take three hours,” Haticat says.

“Good,” Nathaniel replies.

Fred and Doctor Bill step outside the ship and start welding the hole while Nathaniel swims to the bottom of the water reservoir to repair the pump. Haticat feeds him a breathing tube. He resurfaces and hands him back the prybar. “Now I need a wrench.”

“What size?” Haticat asks.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s one of those bolts that shrinks and grows to match any wrench around it,” Nathaniel says.

“Here you go,” Haticat says. Nathaniel grabs the wrench and submerges again.

Outside the ship, Fred holds the permanent patch steady while Doctor Bill controls the laser welder. “There, that looks better,” Doctor Bill says.

They walk around the perimeter of the ship to the door, but stop when they see a Humanoid figure. She wears a tube-like dress up to her armpits and has wild hair. The creature looks away from the ship wall and sees Fred and Doctor Bill for the first time. “Eww! Boys!” she screams and runs away. “Captain, we have to hurry,” Fred speaks into the radio. “The girls found us.”

“Yikes!” Haticat comments.

They hurry inside and are doing a last-minute safety check when there is a loud bang and a new hole opens in the hull. The metal turns to flakes and falls into the water. Before they can take off, two girls in tube dresses fire glitter plasma into the control station and it explodes. The boys surrender soon afterward. “Take them to the questioner!”

Half an hour later the boys are in a cage in the forest surrounded by girls. “Why did you come here?” a girl asks.

“It was an accident; our ship is broken,” Nathaniel answers.

“Wait,” the girl says, handing him a notepad and pen. “Write it down.” Nathaniel writes his answer while the girls wave their hands at each other in what must be some sort of code.

“And what do you know about our secret weapon?” the girl asks.

“Until two seconds ago, nothing,” Nathaniel writes.

“What do you know now?” she asks.

“Only that it’s secret and that it’s a weapon,” he writes.

The girls wave their hands even more animatedly. “He knows too much!” a girl screams.

“Next, he’ll learn it’s from the future!” another says.

“He can’t be allowed to tell others! We need to keep him here!” another says.

“What if he escapes? We need to kill him!” another says.

“Wait, we still need to test the weapon on a person. We can test it on them,” another girl says.

“Yes, that’s a good idea. All your ideas are cute and pretty,” another says.

“You’re cute and pretty,” the previous girl says.

“We are all cute and pretty together,” another girl says.

“Oh, shut up!” Haticat yells, but no girl can hear him. They are all deaf.

Ten minutes later another girl in a green tube dress is escorted in front of the cage. She stands silently as she is introduced. “Here is our new weapon.”

Nathaniel looks her over. “What are you going to do? Catapult her at the boys?”

No one hears him. “Since you are going to die anyways, I’ll describe her power. On Demanda, we have long perfected surgery to give us prettier lips and better singing voices. Then Meleana arrived from the future with the power to scream and the surgical technique to give others this power. Her screams can travel in compacted form as soliton waves for ten kilometers or more and shatter stones. Once enough of us have been converted into screamers we will drop into the atmosphere of the nearest boy planet and scream them all to death.”

“You monsters! Fred yells.

The new girl in green waves her hands around. “You’re right, he is comically ugly,” the girl beside her agrees.

“You’ll lose. Boys are more resilient than you think,” Nathaniel says.

“Whatever you just said will be your last words!” the girl says before waving for the one in green to begin the screaming. What comes out is more of a screech. It is horrific. It is the most annoying sound Nathaniel has ever heard. It gets inside his ear canals and bounces around until his eardrums burst. Then he gets a headache. Then his nose bleeds. Then he blacks out.

When Nathaniel wakes it is dark. Everything hurts. Wait, why is he still alive? Oh, the girls wouldn’t have known about his healing power. He tries to move and finds he is very weak. He has lost a lot of weight. He must’ve been healing for weeks. Dragging his limbs around, he finds that the reason it is so dark is because he is inside a box. It takes hours to cut his way out of the box, dig his way out of the ground, rescue his Stuffian friends in the box with him, flattened by the sound waves, and then find something in the forest to eat. Not having not having a working scanner, he risks eating some red berries. Another couple days pass as he regains his strength and figures out where he is relative to his ship. He tries soaking Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill in the creek to loosen up their fibers so he can stretch them back into shape. It works and by nightfall they are at least conscious if lethargic.

Finally, they re-enter the pool-ship. Birds have built nests atop the gazebos. Daggertails swim in the water. They patch up the hole in the hull and make the other necessary repairs. Nathaniel gobbles down a peanut-butter-bologna-carrot sandwich and drinks a liter of milk.

“A sound-based weapon could change the course of the war. If the boys can’t hear each other to communicate, how will they be able to counterattack?” Haticat asks.

“Right,” Nathaniel comments. “We need to stop Meleana from changing history before she teaches the rest of the galaxy to do the enhancement surgery.”

The girls are relatively easy to track. Their ships leave particularly messy antigravity wakes even when diffused by several days of time, leaving their mark of polarization on the background radiation. They are followed to planet Dishma, an Earth-like boy planet occupied mostly by Ninos. The boys are nearly wiped out. A few hundred survive on submarines that dive anytime girls are detected. Thousands more wander the land alone with no way to understand each other. It is too late to teach them the handwaving code of the girls since they will not understand what they are being told. Some hide in soundproof bunkers underground while they slowly run out of air. Teams of Banshees wait outside for them to open the doors. One ship remains safe in orbit, the crew too scared to get involved.

When they arrive in orbit, Nathaniel is already writing a program to hack every view screen on the planet. He sends the boys messages on where to go and what to do. They are skeptical at first but have no better ideas. Eventually, they get the idea to text each other and learn to hit the buttons rapidly.

At the same time, Doctor Bill sends the girls messages to confuse them. They soon learn to ignore all unknown numbers and eventually track the signals to Nathaniel’s ship. They send six ships to attack. Haticat pilots evasively while Fred fires the laser cannons and muon accelerators. The ship veers right, left, up, and down. The girls finally score a direct hit, weakening the hull by five percent. Fred returns fire.

Although their futuristic ship has stronger shielding, more powerful guns, and Fred has better aim than the girls, the girls outnumber them six to one – and two more girls ships are approaching. Seeing what is happening and already having figured out who had been sending the texts, the lone boy ship in orbit comes to help. Their programmed smart missiles destroy one of the already weakened girl ships, but it is still seven against two.

Nathaniel’s spaceship has six guns equally spaced around the surface of the ellipsoid. The girls have been systematically destroying them, forcing Haticat to re-orient the ship to keep at least one gun pointed at the girls. Finally, they destroy the last gun. “Doctor Bill, take over troop commands!” Nathaniel yells just before he runs the walkway to the force field generator station. “Let the girls get close.”

“I know you must have a good plan,” Haticat says. “Right?”

“Oh, it’s fantastic,” Nathaniel says. “Project their positions.” Haticat projects a view of the outside onto the inner hull of the ship so Nathaniel can see what’s going on. Five girl ships get closer and closer. Then they all open fire. Nathaniel asserts a second force field about two kilometers outside the first. It cuts the farthest ship in half. “Evasive flying!” Nathaniel orders. Haticat swerves the ship randomly, causing the girls to miss most of their shots. Any laser passing by the ship hits the inside of the outer force field and reflects multiple times until hitting one of the girl ships. Every time Haticat moves the pool-ship, the perfectly spherical force field follows it so that they are always in the exact center. Because light travels so fast, the crisscrossing network of lasers practically follows them, never touching the pool-ship, but traveling through every other point in space inside the sphere. The girls make a few direct hits, but with every miss they are hitting themselves. Two more of the ships are immobilized. The remaining two cease firing and retreat. Nathaniel shuts off the field so they will not collide with it and cause his generator to explode.

“Chase them!” The girls speed into the dust ring around the planet, perhaps looking for cover. Nathaniel turns the field back on and spins the generator. He even finds a drill to spin it as fast as mechanically possible. When they follow the girls into the dust ring the spinning ball of energy around the ship catches grains and tosses them at a tangent to its rotation. A ring of plasma forms around the ship and it is gaining on them. Finally, the girl ships split up. Haticat chooses one to chase down until all of its electrical systems are fried to a crisp. The high-velocity plasma melts away at the hull on one side and breaches several windows.

Haticat then pursues the other ship. This last girl ship leaves the ring and returns to the site of the battle between the boy ship and the other two girls ships, one of which has already been neutralized. The boy ship is leaking air and fuel but still fighting. Haticat hangs back. “Yikes times infinity!”

Nathaniel looks up to see forty more girl ships leaving the atmosphere. They are five minutes away. “Yikes times infinity.”

“What do I do?” Haticat asks.

“Prepare to dump the anti-gravity fuel,” Nathaniel says.

Haticat flies toward the oncoming fleet. Just outside the ship where the fuel is dumped, space expands violently, knocking the pool-ship clear from the battle – and the solar system. Most of the girl ships are caught between the two streams of fuel traveling one-sixth the speed of light and are crushed. The rest are thrown in the opposite direction, some crashing into the planet.

Several hours later, Nathaniel and crew are adrift in interstellar space. They have too-little fuel to sustain a reaction. They have enough stored electricity to run most systems but not the time machine or force field. They call for help, but no one arrives. “We can still use the time crystals to slow ourselves down, experiencing only days during the two hundred thousand years it will take to reach the next inhabited planet,” Nathaniel says.

“No good, the Marthon will find us,” Fred complains.

“Maybe not, we can always turn on stealth mode,” Nathaniel suggests.

“Two hundred thousand years from now there might not be anyone left to help us,” Doctor Bill points out.

“Nathaniel, there’s a ship approaching!” Haticat announces.

“Show me,” Nathaniel orders.

Finally, one of the boy ships has found them. They are towed back to Dishma, refueled, and given a heroes’ welcome. “With your help we were able to defeat the Banshees of Demanda and drive them from our planet.”

“Well, I felt it was my job,” Nathaniel says.

“Wait,” the boy says, handing him a notepad and pen. “Write it down; I can’t hear a thing.”

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