Leo closed his eyes repeating the number to himself. Seven days. That’s all it would take to save Eaglehaven. After that, everything would go back to normal. He’d been stuck on the Jaynkee Spacedock for six months. Surely he could survive this ship for only seven days. He just needed to stay positive.
He took a deep, steadying breath and opened his eyes to a spider the size of a grizzly bear.
“Whaaaaaaaaaaa—”
His terrified scream was silenced by a blast of sticky webbing across his face. In an instant he was bound from his shoulders to his ankles. His feet whipped out from under him, throwing him down on the metal grating. His head swam and his eyes throbbed. He felt light. Light and wrong and heavy-headed.
He blinked and tried to pull a breath through the mesh wrapped around his mouth and nose. Everything was upside down. No. He was upside down, slowly swinging from a strand of silk slung around a pipe in the ceiling.
The spider scuttled below him, hissing and clicking. From this vantage point Leo could fully appreciate the creature’s terrifying scale. Its enormous thorax was supported by four insectoid legs—scarred and gray, ending in points the size of traffic cones. A second body segment curved upright from the front, armored in overlapping, chitinous plates. Four more limbs sprouted from its sides, hinged like the arms of a mantis.
The spider-thing’s elongated face stared at Leo with eight eyes—two large ones, each rimmed along the top by three smaller ones, like hideous eyeball eyebrows. All of them were sunken black pits with a single dot of glowing red peering from their centers. Four clawed mandibles pulled back from the lower part of its face, pushing away mottled gray flesh to reveal rows of jagged teeth sticking out of its gums like porcupine quills.
It let out a sickening, ear-piercing screech. As the noise echoed off the walls, six more spiders gracefully descended from the shadowy recesses of the ceiling on strands of web.
Leo squealed and thrashed as the creatures closed in on him from all sides, but his bindings did not loosen. It was like being wrapped four inches deep in elastic soaked in glue. His head throbbed and his eyes went fuzzy, partially from terror, partially from the blood pooling in his skull. He gritted his teeth and concentrated on staying conscious. Because he knew if he blacked out, he’d never wake up again. Though, as the chattering spiders crept closer, he thought he might not want to be awake for what was about to happen.
Below him, at the edge of his field of vision, a horned, orange scalp entered the room.
“MacGavin?” Burlock shouted. “Where are you, boy? I’m not your gahdamn babysitter.”
Leo tried to scream. Tried to cry for help or warn his first officer to run. But his voice was smothered in the webbing strapped over his jaw. The creatures turned their attention to the Ba’lux as he walked directly into their murder den.
The biggest spider scuttled out of the shadows and screeched in Burlock’s face hard enough to jiggle the flesh of his cheeks. The commander didn’t even flinch. He just raised a finger and wiped a drop of insect spittle off his prosthetic eye lens.
“Soldier, I can’t understand a damn thing you’re saying.”
The spider lifted one of its limbs, and its pointed tip split along a set of grooves, separating into six spindly fingers. It reached for a metal band around its neck with a round, colorless gem at its throat. The bladelike digits gave the jewel a quarter turn, causing it to illuminate with a pale golden light.
“It apologizes, Commander Burlock,” the spider said. Leo shook his clouded head. The creature’s mandibles still flexed its hideous mouth, but the screeching was dull and muted, like an argument through a hotel room wall. Layered on top was an androgynous voice speaking in a clear, enunciated monotone. “It deactivated its translator to coordinate with hive.” The spider pinched its fingers back into a point and jabbed it at Leo. “It must alert exterminator. Ship is infested with invasive rodent.”
Burlock’s lips curled into the vaguest hint of a smile as he looked up at Leo, hanging there like a piñata. “Well, well. Seems you’ve captured yourself a tasty little morsel.” He strolled into the room, his boots clicking on the metal floor. “The good news is, it’s not an infestation. There’s only one of them on board. The bad news is, this rodent is our new captain.”
The monster turned back to Leo, the pinpricks of light in its eyes twitching in their cavernous sockets. “He is the captain?”
“He is.” Burlock waved a hand toward Leo. “Why don’t you cut him down so we can have a little chat?”
The spider clicked at the six arachnids still hanging from the ceiling. Its collar intoned “No translation available,” but the smaller spiders swarmed Leo, grasping him with their bristled limbs and blasting him with their rancid breath. The world spun and his head throbbed with disorientation. Razor-like fingers slashed at his muzzled face. Leo screamed and the sound echoed off the walls of the otherwise silent cargo bay.
Everything stopped moving. Leo blinked and oriented himself. He was now sitting on a chair, still bound, but with the strands that had been gagging his mouth hanging in a neatly cut mass around his throat.
The largest spider approached. “It apologizes for error, sir. It has never seen one of your species.”
“I’ve never seen one of your species either,” Leo stammered. “Where are you from? Because I never want to go there.”
The spider straightened, towering over him. “In galactic-standard Quipp, its planet is known as Dred. Its race is designated Dreda. It is chief security officer of this vessel, commanding three hives of drones.”
Burlock nodded at the smaller creatures. “They have complete and total loyalty to it.”
“To what?” Leo asked.
“To it,” the large spider said, tapping a claw on its chest.
“Oh! You’re it. Right. Sorry.” He shook his head. “It’s just, most beings prefer one of the four gender pronouns.”
“Concept of gender is irrelevant unless one wishes to mate.” The beast leaned in close to Leo’s face. “Do you wish to mate with it?”
Leo swallowed hard and flinched away from the hot breath and translated screech. “I, uh… wow. I mean, we just met and…” You’re a hideous monster straight from the blackened nightmare pits of a lunatic’s damaged psyche. “I’m not that kind of guy.”
The spider nodded. “Then ‘it’ is sufficient.” It backed away. “Its name is unpronounceable with most species’ mouth parts, so it has adopted appropriate alias. You may refer to it as Lieutenant Commander Marshmallow Hug Dilly Dilly.”
“Well. That’s a mouthful.” Leo shifted uncomfortably in his bindings. “Lieutenant Commander Marshmallow Hug Dilly Dilly, could you do me a favor and maybe untie me?”
The creature turned to Burlock. “Do you wish him released, sir?”
“Hey, I’m the captain,” Leo said. “Why are you asking him?”
He yelped as Burlock lifted a heavy boot and slammed it on the front edge of his chair.
“Because I’ve earned Dilly’s respect. We fought in the war together.” The commander thumped a mechanical fist on his chest. “It knows what I’m capable of. But you?” He leaned in and his voice went cold. “We both know a rank issued by a civilian is not the same as a rank forged by valor.”
Leo blinked. “I, uh… what?”
“Admiral Skardon saved my life on the nightmare planet Rankorrdar. To him, I owe a blood debt. To you, I owe nothing.” Burlock’s eye lens twitched. “You’re just a little boy-toy who’s fallen into the heiress’s favor.”
“Look, I didn’t ask to be—”
“I was assigned to this ship because I know what I’m doing,” Burlock continued. “Dilly knows what it’s doing. Everyone on this ship knows what they’re doing except for one person. Do you know who that person is?”
“The chief engineer seems kind of sketchy.”
“It’s you, MacGavin.” Burlock extended his leg, tilting the chair backwards. Leo sucked a br
eath as it neared its tipping point. “I think it’s best for the mission if you stay out of the way and let me handle things. Do you agree?”
Leo frowned. “Well, I don’t disagree…”
“Then we understand each other.” Burlock removed his foot and the chair crashed back down onto its legs, rattling Leo’s teeth in his skull. “Cut him loose.”
Dilly flicked open the tips of its four front limbs into spindly claws. “Sit still.”
Before Leo could react, a whirlwind of ten-inch blades spun around his body, snipping and slashing. His breath caught in his throat and every reflex screamed at him to flinch, but he was too terrified to move. Three seconds later, the spider backed away from Leo, surrounded by a circle of finely-shredded webbing. He sprang out of the chair, his heart hammering.
“Yow, that was…” He pulled a shuddering breath. “I need a drink. And a change of pants.”
“And I need to get back to the bridge,” Burlock growled. “Dilly will drop you off someplace you can’t hurt yourself. I heard there’s a bouncy castle in the children’s playroom.”
Leo gritted his teeth. “Hey, buddy. You may be the one with the experience, and the commanding presence, and the respect of the crew, but don’t forget, I’m the captain.”
Burlock picked a stray bit of webbing from Leo’s shirt and gave him a pat on the chest. “For now.”
Chapter Four
Leo breathed in the salty artificial atmosphere as he stood at the rail of an upper-level sundeck, gazing out over a swimming pool below. When he and Varlowe had arrived, the Lido Deck had been an eerie, abandoned ghost town of bamboo cabanas. Now it was packed rail-to-rail with alien passengers, laughing and dancing and reveling in a thrum of party music. From up here, Leo had a perfect view of a large, poolside stage with a green-skinned DJ spinning tunes. Above her, an enormous holographic canopy blinked WELCOME ABOARD, GALAXY CRUISERS!
“Well, don’t you clean up nice?”
Leo turned to see Varlowe approaching, devouring him with the shiny domes of her eyes. He suddenly felt naked, despite his excess of clothes. He looked down at himself and gave a tiny shrug. “I kinda do, don’t I?”
After the debacle of his orientation tour, Leo had been dropped off in his stateroom with the suggestion it would be best if he never came back out. His instinct had been to flop down on the bed and have a nice little mental breakdown, but he’d been thwarted by a neatly laid-out uniform with a hand-written note.
The clothes make the commander. See you tonight, my Captain.
— Varlowe
She wasn’t wrong. Putting on the full regalia had been strangely transformative. Like a fresh start. A do-over. He admired his own reflection in Varlowe’s hungry eyes. The crisp white jacket with its snug band collar made his lanky form look broad and elegantly long-necked. Two rows of gleaming buttons ran in a wide V shape down the front, and space-black epaulets rested on the shoulders. A badge was pinned to the chest with the WTF logo above the five white chevrons of command. Even his scruffy black hair looked somewhat regal tucked into his captain’s peaked cap—a mountain of unblemished white topping him like a dollop of whipped cream.
Varlowe leaned on the rail at his side, practically drooling. “So, Captain Leo, how is everything going so far?”
Well, the first officer hates me, the hospitality chief thinks I’m a speciest, the engineering chief thinks I’m a pet, and the security chief almost liquefied and devoured my innards.
“Everything’s going great,” Leo lied. “But there is one problem.” He pulled back his sleeve and held up the band on his wrist. “For some reason I seem to have a kid’s tabloyd instead of the captain’s.”
“That’s weird. The box had your name on it.”
“Maybe there was some kind of mix up,” Leo offered. “Could you fix it?”
“Of course! I mean, technically no, but…” Varlowe shook her head. “Senior credentials can only be issued at the staffing office on Ba’luxi Prime. I’ll have them flash a new tabloyd and express it to the dock at Halii Bai. We can pick it up when we get into port tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks.” Leo scratched the back of his neck. “It’s just, I kinda can’t open doors without—”
Varlowe gasped and squealed as the lights on the deck below dramatically blacked out in sequence. “Shhh! It’s starting!”
The DJ’s party jams cut off, replaced with a wave of majestic brass and rumbling tympanis. Red, white, and blue spotlights blazed through the darkness. Varlowe grinned ear to ear as a reverent voice boomed from the speakers, drowning out the cheering crowd.
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a strange people left their home to seek out new life and new civilizations. Boldly going where no one had gone before. They called themselves… Americans.” The music swelled as the holographic canopy over the stage transformed into a rippling red-white-and-blue flag. “Americans. Huck yeah.”
The crowd laughed and cheered and whistled at the star-spangled banner. Leo looked on in bewilderment. “What is this?”
“It’s the Bon Voyage Show, silly,” Varlowe said. “We do them on all WTF cruises. A spectacular shock-and-awe campaign to set the mood for the adventure ahead.” She smiled proudly. “Normally they’re produced by the hospitality crew, but this cruise is very personal to me, so I put the show together myself. You’re gonna love it.”
The flag morphed into a model of the NASA Star Freedom. The sleeper ship looked like a row of enormous, titanium-colored tires with a ramscoop generator at one end and six glowing engines at the other. Its pock-marked hull bore the scars of four-thousand years in space. The vessel slowly revolved on its axis as the voice continued.
“Our story begins with the founding fathers of the planet America, and their quest for a new life in the stars.”
The ship dissolved as a cylindrical platform rose from the stage, carrying a Gellicle actor. The cat wore a black suit with a tailcoat and stovepipe hat. A beard and fake mole were glued to his furry face. He gripped his lapels and puffed out his chest.
“Four score and seven years ago, the planet America faced an existential crisis. And I, President Abraham Lincoln, had to save my people. With the survival of our species at stake, I called upon the advice of my most trusted advisor.” A second platform appeared, carrying a tall Ba’lux man in a red basketball uniform. Lincoln nodded reverently. “His Royal Airness, Michael Jordan.”
The Ba’lux raised one arm, lifting a glowing orange sphere above his head. “As Monarch of the Atmosphere, I see only one solution. We must leave the surface of our tiny blue and white and red planet.”
“To live in the sky?” furry Lincoln asked.
“Far beyond the sky,” Jordan said. “We must go dancing… with the stars.”
They looked up as the canopy over the stage glittered into a panorama of twinkling galaxies and nebulas. Lincoln stroked his beard. “Space. The final frontier. But is it possible?”
Jordan shrugged. “Let us consult our planet’s greatest ship builder, Noah.”
A third riser lifted, carrying a slug-like man in a nineteenth-century suit with wide lapels with a ruffled white cravat. He consulted an oversized dictionary before snapping it shut with a nod. “I shall construct a great space ark. It shall take me forty days and forty nights.”
“Most excellent, Mr. Webster,” Lincoln said. “But how will we power such a ship?”
The slug raised a finger. “We must call upon America’s secretary of energy!”
Another platform lifted, carrying a Krubb in a form-fitting dress, sequined with a Union Jack pattern. With her tubular exoskeleton, she looked like a can of soup in a tube sock. A flowing red wig was fastened to her domed head.
“I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want,” the Krubb announced. “I want to fuel this vessel with the planet America’s last untapped resource: Our vast reserves of girl power!”
Lincoln clutched his paws. “But will it
be sufficient to carry us across the galaxy?”
“More than sufficient, Mr. President,” the Krubb said. “She who controls the Ginger Spice controls the universe!”
Leo gaped at the spectacle, his eyes wide and mouth slack. “Wow. Just… wow.”
Varlowe clapped her hands excitedly. “I knew you’d like it! I spent hours in the Geiko Archives making sure everything was totally historically accurate.”
Leo frowned. “I can see that.”
Varlowe’s proud expression dimmed. “You don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Leo sighed. “Maybe the Geiko Archives aren’t the best reference material to work from.”
“But they were the ones who made first contact with your people.” Varlowe looked bewildered. “Their records have been the gold standard of American history for over two hundred years. How can they be wrong?”
Leo leaned on the rail and blew out a long breath. “Okay, so when the Geiko discovered the NASA Star Freedom adrift in space it was in pretty bad shape. They studied the ship’s computers and published their findings before they even bothered to wake the colonists from cryosleep. Things got lost in translation.” He crossed his arms. “To this day, all the galaxy knows about my people is the Geiko’s messed-up version of us.”
Varlowe’s face went slack with surprise then tight with humiliation. “I, uh… I didn’t know that.”
“Nobody outside of Eaglehaven does.” Leo shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is, actually. It’s not cool that you’ve been misrepresented for generations.” A smile bloomed through her chagrin. “And it’s time someone did something about it.”
Leo shook his head. “You don’t have to.”
Varlowe laughed. “Not me, dummy. You.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re the captain of this ship. In command of every aspect of this cruise. This is your chance to introduce the galaxy to your culture and set the record straight.”
“Yeah, no,” Leo mumbled. “I’m really more of a ‘keep my head down and muddle through it’ kind of guy.”
Galaxy Cruise: The Maiden Voyage Page 6