Tenchi Muyo!: Unfinished Business (tentative title)

A fanfic by Dennis Carr and Karmin St. Jean

Chapter 0:3 - MIA

Relative earth time: September 23, 1993

"Day 8,423, GP casefile 8455997a2, also known as `slave chain'.
Commander Hikaru Moriyata reporting.  Current position is in a
stationary orbit at the northern pole of Sanctuary 14's fifth
planet."  He hit the pause button, thought a moment while staring
at the sunset colored gas giant "below" him, and hit the pause
button again to continue.  "Nothing to report."

After entering the commands to file and transmit the log entry,
he sat back, sighed, and disgustedly verbalized a thought that
has crossed his mind more than once on this mission as he planted
his chin in his right hand.

"This sucks."

He took another look at Jupiter, which was now beginning to more
closely resemble vomit, and decided to start his extra vehicular
exercises.

"Funahari, take us out of orbit and put us somewhere closer to
the fourth rock.  I need to get outside for some fresh air," he
said wryly.

An orb popped up from the upper console, and eyed him, as the
ship lurched on its new course towards Mars.  "Hikaru, you need
a vacation."

"Yes, I do, you damn chunk of silicon.  When does this one end?
I've been out in this system for...aw, dammit, I lost track."

The computer was quick to reply. "Since your last vacation, one
year, four days, seventeen hours, eight minutes and fourteen
seconds.  By the way, where would you like to go today?"

The Juraian sighed.  "Bring us to a stationary orbit at the
rock's northern pole, and bring up subspace repeater frequency
twenty one in the meantime."

"Certainly," the computer replied, and brought up another window
display, obscuring a passing view of Io and Ganymede.  "Which
mode would you like to use?"

"Voice vid, naturally.  Gotta hear another living being."

Another display was brought up, displaying the faces and last
names of another three GP's on the "chat" frequency, with an
empty box where his face would go when he signed in.  "You know
what to do, Hikaru."

"Thanks, Funahari.  By the way, care to make me come coffee?"

As the computer started the coveted beverage, he touched a
blinking green button on his console,which brought his face into
the chat display, and brought the audio portion of the frequency
to life just as an elfin-looking blonde officer pulled her eyelid
down and said "Biiiiiiiii-dah!"

"Well, Kurumitsu, it's good to see that somebody's in high
spirits this morning," Hikaru quipped, putting his hands
behind his head and leaning into his chair while grinning
smugly.

Greetings ensued, and Mihoshi continued, smiling.  "Nah, I just
drank Shiro here under the table the other night.  He wants a
rematch," she said, as Shiro, also a Kazakian, proceeded to
roll his eyes and look embarrassed.

The long haired knight smiled and laughed in spite.  "You know,
I'm just gonna have to go up against you on my leave.  So how
goes it over there in the land of exitement?"

It was Trakal's turn to roll his eyes.  "Nothing.  Usual gang of
idiots, and Mihoshi just finished her first assignment.  Nuked a
ship for 97a2 when she bailed out, and now she's reassigned on
traffic detail."

He brought up the GP files on Ratala IV, his old homeworld and
went over them, not really paying attention to the conversation.
Truth was, he wasn't fond of Mihoshi. She reeked of nepotism as
far as he was concerned, and that meant that there was a very
good detective out there somewhere who had been turned down
so the Grand Marshall could get his granddaughter a job. He
considered giving her "The Finger", something he'd learned while
studying Earth customs, under the table. Then he thought better
of it. The last time he'd done that was when he'd first got the
pulse-beam gun adaptation to his cybernetic hand. He'd forgotten
about it and had shot a hole through both the table and the
computer.

"Mihoshi, how come I wasn't notified of this?"

The blond shrugged.  "You didn't ask?"  As Moriyata face faulted,
she quickly inserted, "Don't worry, I'll have it transmitted to
you over the subnet."

"Well, Mihoshi, best hurry up about it.  I need something to keep
my brain from melting before I go on vacation."

"Mihoshi's reports usually *make* people's brains melt." Trakal
offered, cheerfully unable to resist to opportunity to razz
Mihoshi.  This induced laughter from all four officers on the
frequency.

An arm popped up out from behind the red head, holding a
ceramic cup of hot black liquid.  The humanoid took it, and
drank deeply, ignoring the heat from his coffee, and the
fact that he had neglected to add sweetener to the beverage.


---

Somewhere by the rim of the Solar system, another ship got a lock
on the police ship, and turned to intercept.

---

"Two *cases* of that terran brandy?" Trakal inquired.

"Trakal, when you hang around here as long as I do, you gotta do
something to keep yourself busy," Hikaru replied. "Besides,
there's kind of a liason organization down there to keep the
natives from getting restless.  Weird bunch of guys, dress in
black and carry some sort of memory erasure device."

"Hmmm.. So that's what happened to Mihoshi..." Trakal muttered to
himself taking yet another opportunity to cut down The Ditzy
Detective, as he liked to call her.

At that moment, a yellow light went off, and a local scanner came
up to his right.  "Oh, dammit, I got a proximity aler-" he got a
closer look at the caption on the scanner, and switched views to
reveal an Argelian fighter - "shit.  I got a fighter here,
somebody in the area?"

Before anybody could reply, the screen went blank, replaced by
the words "Link cut".

Trakal tapped his computer a few times. "Hikaru? You there?
Come in! Do you read me! Please confirm if you can hear me!
Hikaru!" He tried, several times, to re-establish the link. "
HIKARU!!!" He cried out in rage.

---

"Funahari, try to reestablish that link.  How many are out
there?"

"Just the fighter," replied the computer.  "Anything else would
be out of range."

"Good enough.  Let's see if we can keep him busy.  Open a
frequency to him."  A moment later, "Argelian fighter, this is
commander Moriyata of the Galaxy Police.  Disarm your weapons
immediately, this is a sanctioned area."

---

On board the Argelian fighter, a lupine face smiled as it fired
upon the GP cruiser, intentionally missing him by inches.

---

Hikaru watched with horror as the shots flew past, brought up his
shields and powered up his guns.  It was time to play hardball.

"Funahari, prepare an antimatter torpedo, and lock the laser
cannons onto his weapons array."

"Weapons armed."

Another pressed button sent the ship's weapons array into a
frenzy, completely disabling the Argelian's main weapons.  The
Argelian ship, in turn, fired a single missle in the general
direction of the cruiser, exploding just behind the engines.  It
barely missed, but now Hikaru was navigationally disabled.

Inside the cruiser, sirens started sounding.

Right.  One more button pressed, and this sent the now armed
torpedo on a guided collision course with the Argelian -
completely obliterating it, and sending Hikaru's ship reeling out
of control.

After a few minutes of reeling, somehow - he wasn't quite sure
how - he managed to stop the ship, and found himself staring
right at Earth, just inside the range of the outer sattelite
rings.  He further found his cup of coffee floating all over the
place in various sized drops due to the fact that the artificial
gravity on the ship was now offline.

"Funahari, clean up the coffee and get me a damage report."

"Main engines are disabled," the computer replied, sending out a
small tube to suck up the floating beads of liquid. "Life support
system is at critical.  Engine core is stable.  Weapons array is
offline.  Cloaking device operational and engaged due to
proximity to inhabited planet.  Do I need to explain that gravity
is now defunct?

*Damn personality profiles*. "What's status on self-repair?"

"Self repair batteries are depleted.  Estimated recharge time is
ten minutes."

"Time to completion of self-repair?"

"Approximately one year."

He felt his stomach fall despite the lack of gravity.  "And how
long until I can start returning?"

"Approximately one year."

He placed his forehand in the palm of his left hand, grabbing a
bit of his red hair with it. So much for that vacation.  "Dump
all logs into a probe and get that thing out of here.  Send a
distress call on upper sideband seven zero four dot niner five
five five, encryption scheme four eight niner.  Address to `Men
in Black.'"

---

Lt. Trakal landed on Earth, unaware of any of these facts, and
went to access a computer terminal that he had access to there.
He was in disguise as a human, even though he didn't need to be
where he was going. These guys worked for a local agency and if
there was one thing he knew it was that if cops on one force knew
you worked for cops on another force, they tended not to tell you
everything, just in case you called your boys in and took over
the case and stole all the credit. He wasn't about to jeopardize
his ability to do his job with that, so he kept very quiet about
who he really was.

He had identified himself when he first encountered the group as
"Alex Hopewell",  presenting them with all the appropriate papers.
Now they simply called him:

"Operative A! Nice to see you back."

"Thanks, G." He replied with a brisk nod as he strolled over to
his private terminal and tapped in all the information he needed
to locate Hikaru.

A holographic display in colors that humans couldn't see, but
which Draalthi could see fine, appeared before him indicating
where Hikaru was and also showing him the fighter Hikaru had come
up against.

"Damn it!" He swore. "Argelians." He switched the computer off
and rushed out of the building. He knew what he was up against
now. But what to do. He remembered that Bugs were the prime enemy
of the Argelians and rushed into a local five and dime store to
pick up a few dozen little plastic toy bugs before he returned to
his ship. "I just hope this works." He told himself.