Interstellar: Titans of Ardana, #3

By J.S. Frankel

Martin Calder and his girlfriend Dana—no last name given—are back. Their powers are now known to the general public, and their wish is to help out those who need it.

However, those in the law enforcement world aren’t so accepting. Reduced to starring in their own reality show—and messing it up—other, more urgent matters take precedence. The weather has changed, and the sun has started to turn blue. Although it’s a physical impossibility, it has happened. The Earth will freeze in a matter of weeks if nothing is done, and only Martin and Dana can help.

Their journey takes them back to Ardana, Dana’s home world, in search for answers, and subsequent searches send them on a quest across the galaxy where they meet vampires, energy-sapping rays, cat-mole people, and a boy-not-a-boy who may be the answer to everyone’s prayers.

Sometimes, giving everything isn’t enough. Sometimes, you have to give more than that—even your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eXtasy Books Inc
• Release date: Nov 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781487416126

Book preview

Dedication

As always, to my wife, Akiko, and to my children, Kai and Ray, thank you for making every single day of my life my greatest adventure. As well, thanks to my sister, Nancy, for backing me in my quest. Finally, to Sara Beth, Eva, Safa, Paula, Beth, Steve and Linie, and too many more people to mention, I thank you all.

Prologue

Downtown Baltimore, Smith’s Restaurant, evening, July, present day

Shrieks of fear split the air, and as I looked through the window, pedestrians were running for their lives. It wasn’t a sale, and the people fleeing sounded far from happy, so it had to be something else. Earthquake, fire, something the police couldn’t handle?

No, it had to be the only thing. The roar of something inhuman rose above their shrieks and interrupted my dinner, and why couldn’t this wait until after I’d finished eating?

With a sigh, I tossed my napkin down. Crisis time, and where were the police? They were doing their best to keep everyone away from the action. Naturally, a few dumbass bystanders just had to hang around, doing the snappy-snappy thing, recording the incident for posterity. Didn’t they realize they were in danger? Or perhaps they didn’t think anything would happen to them?

Whatever, there they were, lined up outside the restaurant window, smartphones ready. They were getting it all down to post on some social site later on, garner their fifteen minutes of manufactured fame that no one cared about. In the meantime, my girlfriend Dana, who was sitting across from me, would probably have to put our butts on the line—again.

Dana, a resident of the planet Ardana, had been my girlfriend for the past eight months. As an all-around ass-kicker extraordinaire with me acting as back-up, she and I had been sitting in this nice, comfortable restaurant, kicking back and looking forward to enjoying some private time together.

I looked down at my bodysuit. Black and tight-fitting, it seemed out of place among the other patrons who were casually dressed in jeans, shorts, t-shirts and so on. They’d given us a few furtive glances when we’d walked in, but then had gone back to their meals and their lives. Dana wore the same kind of attire I did, but on her, everything looked great. Call me biased, that’s how I felt.

As for our plans, we’d just returned from a far-flung world, wanted to wind down and relax before going to our suburban home and—

Guys, we got trouble!

A man in his twenties wearing a t-shirt, jeans, a wild afro and a look of total terror poked his head in the doorway to announce the obvious.

Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.

However, Dana beat me to it. Be specific, she answered nonchalantly while eating from a two-foot pile of donuts. Ardanians subsisted on sugar, so donuts were the perfect fix for her.

My sixteen-ounce New York sirloin sat on the table, three minuscule inches away, and the smell practically made me drool. A thing of beauty, it was rare, had garlic, onions, and a massive wedge of butter on top—and it called to me.

But that would have to wait. Reluctantly, I disengaged myself from my seat and ran outside with Dana, the man in the lead. He pointed in the general direction of the disturbance.

What do they look like? Dana’s question came out as though she’d been expecting things to go bad.

Um, there are three of them, they’re big, like eight by five, brown, sort of cockroach-like with feelers, and they’re eating through the buildings, he replied, shaking in his shoes. Fear-sweat ran down his face as he gibbered out, They also stink! You guys have to do something!

We will, I said, thinking about how to handle this. Hang back, don’t get involved, and don’t take any pictures. Got it?

Yeah.

Good enough for me. Dana took off, flying ten feet above the ground. As an alien, a titan, she’d been born with powers of flight, incredible strength, virtual invulnerability, and a willingness to mix it up with the baddest of the bad.

She also looked the part. Five-nine, with a head of long black hair, purple eyes that leaped out and seemed to swallow you up, a body most starlets would have killed for, and a total fearlessness in combat—she made one hot package.

On the other hand, while the same height, I carried maybe one hundred sixty pounds on a lean, rangy frame, along with a face best described as average. A pair of blue eyes, a long nose, and a mop of brown hair completed the picture. No cover model shoots for me.

Even though I didn’t look the part of a hero, I did possess the same qualities as Dana, courtesy of her twin brother, Van. He’d died tragically at the hands of an assassin, but before dying, he’d somehow transferred his powers to me. Call it magic or science, call it whatever you wanted, I had the ability to do the stuff of legends.

Martin, she said, cutting into my thoughts and bringing me back to reality. Get ready. It’s time for combat.

A rancid smell of garbage at high noon in the desert alerted me of the enemy’s position. The stink got stronger as we neared the source, and... sheesh! Roadkill would have smelled more pleasant.

I was sure our interplanetary visitors didn’t care, though. They were too busy chomping through brick and steel and turned dull black eyes on the humans standing by. Most of the men in blue were in the process of keeping everyone back, while a couple of them fired upon our non-native visitors. The bullets simply bounced off their hides.

They’re armor-plated, one cop yelled. They’re bulletproof!

As we neared the targets, I called out, We’re on it. Hang in there!

We don’t need your help, Calder, the lead cop yelled back, still blasting away ineffectively with his pistol. We need the SWAT team.

SWAT team, Dana muttered. I could have told them their weapons wouldn’t work, but no, they just have to say we can’t handle things. The police are never on our side.

Too true, they didn’t like anyone treading on their turf. However, Dana and I had sworn to help out, and right now, the roaches had overrun the police barricade and were in the process of chewing through the side of a dry cleaner’s establishment. Mass panic ensued, and if the spectators didn’t trample each other first, then the roaches would. Those roaches don’t eat people, do they? I asked.

No, just metal and brick, she answered, her eyes darting left and right, assessing the situation. But they aren’t very friendly. They’re Gokons, and they think they’re entitled. They’re not.

Our adversaries scuttled quickly along the road, tearing at anything they could, ripping it off in their massive jaws and swallowing their eats with gusto. The police kept up their barrage, but no way could they stop them, and one of them got kicked aside by the lead roach. He soared through the air and landed in a heap, stirred, and then lay still. We could use some help, another cop yelled out.

Oh, now they want our help, Dana said with only the faintest trace of sarcasm. Will wonders never cease?

Time to rock, I said and immediately cursed myself for not thinking of anything cleverer or pithier to say. Superheroes always had a line working. I’d have to work on mine.

Dana took the lead, landing in front of the alien triplets and hammering away at them. The first haymaker knocked the lead roach on its back. I didn’t know much about bugs, but it seemed that if we could get them off their feet, we’d have a chance.

As it turned out, flipping them on their backs proved to be the smartest thing to do, so I copied my girlfriend’s actions and quickly turned the other two over. They simply couldn’t get up, and lay there, wriggling their legs in the air. I think that’s that for now, I said.

An expression of immense distaste crossed her features. Gokons, she spat out. You guys never learn, do you?

She pulled out her transporter, a device capable of ferrying bodies and goods hither and yon throughout the universe. Our old one had burned out, but Dana had managed to rig up something, and until such time as we really needed an upgrade, this one would serve. Now, it served, and she repeated her earlier statement of our visitors not knowing much. The thing on its back grunted an incomprehensible reply.

What are you doing here? she asked the lead insect, this time giving it a hard kick to its side. If you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’ll leave you like this and let our scientists dissect you while you fry under the sun. Want that to happen?

I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not, but whatever, the alien chose that moment to cease wiggling around. When it spoke, its voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a trash can. We heard this world was easy for the taking. There was talk in the galaxy of a planet with good food. Our people need to feed.

Is that right? You want to take over my world? So you thought you could come here and have your fun, I said while walking over. And then just leave?

We... may have been in error.

Dana grabbed one of the feelers on its head and spun it around at high speed. The onlookers laughed, but she wasn’t amused. Pissed off didn’t half-describe her in situations like this. Even the word fierce was an understatement. Once the bug stopped doing the merry-go-round routine, she opened a portal and said, Get one thing straight. This world is off-limits. Understand?

Yes.

With a mighty kick, she sent the leader through the portal, and he bellowed his defiance to the last. I hefted two of the other suckers and tossed them in as well. The portal closed and all was well.

That was fun, Dana offered as she sat on the curb. Let’s not do it again.

Second the motion. While sitting beside her, the bystanders began to cheer, loud and long, and it was sort of nice to hear the applause. A cop in his forties, pasty-faced and with a large gut, walked over, holstering his gun as he did so. Nice job, you guys, but we could have handled it.

Spoken with an air of defensiveness, he seemed ready to read us the riot act. For what, for interfering? Dana got up to stare him right in the eye. No, you couldn’t have. We did. We like helping out, but don’t give us that crap. We don’t need it.

She strode away, and by now, the people had broken through the barricade, begging for autographs and selfies. Dana offered a grin. She genuinely loved interacting with the fans, even though we’d often been lectured by Angstrom, our FBI handler, to keep a low profile.

Hey, she called out. C’mon, the kids here want some pictures!

I joined them, and the snappy-snappy thing began again, but it was all very good-natured, and I had a good time. Once it was all over, Dana thanked everyone, and we walked back to the restaurant to finish off our meal. Well, Dana had already eaten half of hers. I had yet to start mine.

At the entrance, though, a short, extremely stout man in his mid-thirties intercepted us. With a happy grin plastered on his round, sweaty face, he introduced himself as Scotty Melbourne, television director. He got right to the point. You guys rock and rock hard. How would you like to star in your own show?

Chapter One: Not so Secret

Downtown Baltimore, eleven fifty-six at night, and counting. Late autumn, August twentieth, to be exact.

Lights, someone yelled, and while I waited patiently, arms folded across my chest, my girlfriend, Dana, tapped her foot something like thirty times before the director got the notion she was incredibly impatient.

Gee, whatever in the world had given him that idea? Could it have been the staccato one-two beat my girlfriend was doing, or perhaps it was the pissed-off expression she wore? Maybe it had something to do with her muttering under her breath, although she was muttering in a foreign language.

For all anyone knew, she could have been reciting the Constitution of the United States or tomorrow’s laundry list. That was the beauty of an alien language. No one ever understood what the other person was talking about, least of all our director who called out irritably, Where the hell is my camera?

Our director, Scotty Melbourne, stood in the parking lot of a warehouse, the place where all of this would start, stamping his feet and cursing the weather.

Had to admit, this was not the season I’d been expecting. It had turned unseasonably cold, as a rime of frost had already begun to coat the outer layers of the buildings and a few snowflakes drifted down. It was all very pretty, but a little early. It was August, not January, and snow wasn’t supposed to happen. Not yet, at any rate, or so the weather reports said.

The experts, the climatologists, had mentioned something about cold fronts and changes in geothermal weather patterns and whatnot, but did they know? Did they really know? I couldn’t tell and took any news given with a grain of salt and then some.

Dana looked over at me, briefly lost her expression of anger and flashed a smile, and I raised my hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. She offered a nod, and then went back to tapping her foot while checking our surroundings.

While she did her survey job, I surveyed her and thought myself as being Mr. Lucky. How did a guy like me rate a girl like her?

An autograph, it had all started over an autograph. My best friend—in fact, my only friend, Greg Foster—had begged me to get her autograph. Dana and her twin brother Van had been the stars of one of the hottest television shows around, The Metas.

Superheroes were all the rage, and I loved them as much as anyone else did. In the show, Dana and Van played mutant superheroes on the run from the government. The twins could do the incredible, lift tons and fly at supersonic speeds, and while all the female viewers loved Van—had to admit, the dude was a stud—the guys, including me, were hot for Dana.

With those purple eyes and a face beautiful enough to awaken a dormant volcano, she went beyond that. The show may have been ultra-cool, but she’d been the total package, and in my adolescent awkwardness, I naturally fell in love with her.

Here’s where the cliché came in. When I’d snuck over to the studio in my quest for that all-important piece of paper, sure enough, I found the twins—and found out they weren’t exactly from around here. They were aliens. Having a triangular belly button and pearl-sized bumps encircling their waists was proof enough for me.

Eventually, I found out—and found that the FBI had known about their existence long before I did—and Dana and Van had accepted me. Well, Dana had, but as for Van...

Do you see any movement out there?

The question cut into my thoughts. It came from the director. He waved his hand at me and repeated the question with an edge to his voice. Do you see anything?

I’ll look.

Good, because it’s damn cold out here and I want to get this show on the road.

I soared into the ether, and while hovering thirty feet above the ground, I thought about the events of the past few months. We’d lucked into this reality show— Interstellar Law—but that was because super powered beings such as myself and Dana—she didn’t have a last name—couldn’t get work doing anything else.

While I wasn’t an alien, Dana was. She’d come from Ardana as a refugee. Ardana was a planet so distant from Earth our telescopes couldn’t even find it as a tiny mote in the eye of the universe.

Call it a mind-bender, aliens existed, and yes, they’d come to Earth. Dana and her brother had escaped a warlord and tried to fit in with the rest of the human populace. They never had, not really, mainly due to having superpowers and a penchant for ingesting ten thousand calories a day per minimum of sugar. They lived on that, so eating was a priority.

The warlord had found them, and Van had died protecting us. Before doing so, he’d transferred his powers to me. I couldn’t explain how, but there were some things science couldn’t explain. All I knew was that now had the ability to fly, hear and see for distances up to a mile, was incredibly strong, and on the rare occasions when I concentrated hard enough, could send clones of my body to other locations, although it took a lot out of me physically.

And speaking of physically, why did I still have the body of an eleven-year-old stamp collector? Nothing against collecting stamps, but I wanted to at least look the part of a superhero. They all had massive chests, broad shoulders, ribbed abs, tree-trunk thighs, and twenty-plus inch arms.

I had none of those attributes, but not looking like a stud actually helped when someone tried to start trouble. A guy, very big, tattooed all over, mean and ornery, had jumped me one night while I was out food shopping. He didn’t know who I was, so I allowed him to manoeuvre me into an empty alleyway.

Once there, he demanded money and then said he’d cut me if I didn’t cough it up. To prove his point, he whipped out a switchblade. Go ahead, punk, he’d said. Make a move.

In a slow, deliberate motion, I put down my bags of groceries and folded my stick-like arms across my chest, composing my features into a mask of boredom. Mister, don’t try it. Your knife won’t work.

Uttering a bellow of rage, he stabbed me in the shoulder—tried to, anyway. The blade snapped as it hit me and he stared at the remnants of his weapon in a most stupid fashion, as if trying to connect the dots. You, you’re—

Let me help you, I interrupted while grabbing the front of his dirty and stained t-shirt. In a smooth motion, I lifted him three feet off the ground. You wanted to take out the garbage, right?

His legs dangled and he screamed in fear, What are you?

Someone who can take out the trash for you.

It wasn’t the pithiest line around. God, I’d have to think of something better. Too late, so I settled for tossing him face down into a nearby dumpster and taking my groceries home. At our house—given to us by the FBI in exchange for our services—Dana met me at the door. Have any trouble? she asked and flicked off a bit of banana peel from my shoulder.

Nothing I couldn’t handle.

She glanced at the banana peel and then at me. She knew, she most certainly knew, but had the good graces to say nothing save, Uh-huh.

Handling things was easy enough, but all the same, I wanted to look the part as well as being the part. When it came to actual crime-fighting, though, not vigilante work, once our secret was out, no one was interested in our services, least of all the police. We’re used to working alone, the local police chief had told me in no uncertain terms two months back. I know you’ve got powers, but this isn’t a comic book scenario. The streets are our territory.

Message received. In addition to not being able to work with the police, no endorsements had come our way. No one had asked us to tout the virtues of milk or washing detergent. I wouldn’t have minded doing commercials for beef, and chocolate was my girlfriend’s first love—after me, of course, or so I hoped.

A tap on my shoulder made me turn around. It was Dana, and she hovered next to me, her body giving out a blast of warmth. Her smile lit up the night, and she asked softly, "See