Family Matters

by S E Zbasnik

"Well..." she gestured to the comm line.

  Orn waved his stump about and answered, "Is your hand missing? I didn't think so."

  She rolled her eyes, wishing she could go back to the early days when he tried to hide his shame by bursts of over productive energy. But once she caught him trying to fish the dropped limb out of a toilet the metaphorical gloves were off, and any semblance of professionalism went right down the drain. Punching into the comm line, less than two inches away from Orn's real hand, Variel called out, "Hello?"

  "Is this Captain Variel Tuffman of the registered star line Consultation Cruise?"

  She frowned at the bungling of her ship's name, mentally reminding herself to officially change the shortened name on some dwarven paperwork and just as quickly forgetting, "More or less."

  "Beg pardon?" the voice was stern, far more competent than anything Wheezer ever managed. He was a simple man, who simply needed some legal things moved into an illegal area. This, in turn, caused the middle aged middle man to break down into gasping spurts at the pause in each sentence. Speaking with him required three times the length and a poncho.

  Variel nudged Orn in the ribs and mouthed "This isn't Wheezer."

  He saw "Have you seen the tweezers?" and shrugged his shoulders before miming their orc doctor, his fingers splaying open for the horns.

  "Sorry," Variel announced to the air, "Yes, I am Captain Variel."

  "Very good," a small snap resonated across the transmission and their friend introduced himself, "I am with Hydra, Hydra, Hydra and Brown."

  "Sounds like an indecisive super villain," Orn cut in as he picked something sticky off his twitching glove.

  "I see," Variel answered, trying to fill the silence and cover her ex-pilot's aside.

  "I am authorized to serve you," Hydra, Hydra, or Brown said solemnly. "A locking mechanism has already been downloaded into your system. Attempting to break it shall constitute a guilty plea on the dwarven homeworld Brasa and a hefty fine from the elven judiciary."

  "Wait, what? You can't do this. Who do you think you are?" Variel argued into thin air, briefly wishing the viewscreen she punched months ago was actually working just so she could spit at it.

  "As previously stated, I am with Hydra, Hydra, Hydra..."

  "And Brown, yeah got that bit. It's the locking my ship down in space I'm having some trouble with."

  Mr. Hydra ignored her and continued to read from his script, "A representative is being dispatched. He or she shall attend to the current charges leveled against you from our client. At that time, the locking mechanism will be released baring an agreement is reached in an acceptable manner. Attempts to maul, explode, or decompress the representative or client shall result in murder charges on Arda, a hefty fine from the dwarven hegemony, sanctions from the gargoyle quarry..."

  "Are you going to tell me what I'm being charged with?"

  The lawyer paused in reading off the charges against anyone who killed one of its own kind, "I am not legally required to, no."

  "Fan-fucking-tastic," Variel's head hung down as she tried to gather the strength to not blow this automated ship out of the sky. It helped that the only weapons an ancient starline came equipped with were the "rainy day" board games in the old cruise director's office. "How long are we...am I saddled with this lockdown?"

  "A representative is being dispatched. He or she will reach your vessel within one to seven business days. Please remain within your ship at all times or a hefty fine will be assessed."

  "You can drop out of the ether, lock down my ship for up to a week, and all without telling me why? What if we were carrying life saving medicine to the famine stricken orphans on Rigel XIV?"

  Hydra paused, mentally searching for precedent, "Are you?"

  "No, but..."

  "The representative shall attend to your situation in one to seven days. Thank you and have a pleasant day," he announced before cutting off the line.

  As it severed, the entire panel hummed a disturbing red and fell dark. Silence followed as the heartbeat of the ship stopped, a constant noise giving way to deafening absence. Orn's hand flopped off the charging station, only half finished but not getting anymore juice from the nav panel.

  "Great, just...rampaging Dilong lickers!" Variel kicked against the dark console.

  "Whoa there Cap, language," Orn chided, despite any self preservation instincts he might have once possessed.

  As Variel turned her wrath upon him, he waved his hand up, "Can't kill me, who else will talk Fer down when she hears about this one?"

  "A week!" she shifted her vitriol back to that formless voice, "And that bastard cut off all the comms too. We can't tell Wheezer we'll be late even if he'd believe it wasn't all some corps trick to trap him and his crates of creme filled sponge cakes."

  "Probably don't want us warning the superheroes that Hydro's on the loose," Orn spun about in his chair. He never had much to do on the bridge when they plowed through normal space. Mind the asteroids, try to not get into an ion storm, and if he came across any time dilation phenomena he'd make certain to not kill his own grandfather. But now it was a giant "Orn has nothing" to do sign; a dangerous bit for someone who was technically sill freelance.

  Variel rubbed her forehead, summoning up a courage she rarely needed outside of battle, "Come on, we best go tell the others."

  "Ferra's going to go absolutely spare." Orn hopped down from his chair and inserted his half charged hand into the slot. The fingers flexed as he asked his captain, "Should I bring a shield or five?"

  Smoke wafted across the kitchen. Monde waved his lab coat against the wall, trying to keep WEST out of the little accident. But the crazed computer watched from its lazy red eye as the Orc placed a half charred, half frozen dough slice upon a plate and tried to get rid of the evidence. Monde ate by himself but was not alone, as Brena etched another line into her notebook. The feathery ends of her quill were half masticated into wet goo as the muse failed to find purchase.

  The galley door slammed open and the engineer entered, her fingers blacker than Monde's breakfast. She eyed up the few in the galley, but needed something in her stomach despite the company. Fishing free her mug built from a hollowed out oxygen recycler, Ferra poured a fair amount of the burnt coffee in. Taking a long swig of the putrid stuff, she collapsed into a chair.

  "Good..." Brena started, before falling silent as the dark elf held her hand up.

  "Not until I've finished my coffee," Ferra mumbled, holding her nose and plunging her esophagus into another round.

  "Oh," Brena answered softly.

  "Entire empires have fallen because someone asked a question before coffee," Ferra said, still trying to get her brain to normal. There wasn't enough caffeine in the galaxy, but short of swiping a stim from Monde's heavily guarded stash, this sludge would have to do.

  "Long night?" the orc asked, afraid the two female elves were about to launch into a fight at any moment.

  Ferra slammed her cup down, the condensation chewing into the table, "3 in the morning I get it in my head, Oh what if I rebalance the MGC injectors so the flow breaks up. It's an old technique when the ancient turbines couldn't handle a steady stream. I'm half inside one of the damn things when everything cuts out. Engines, air, lights. The only reason we didn't lose gravity is because I jammed it."

  Brena looked up from her notes and smiled, "That would explain why the door refused to allow me exit."

  "Where?" Far as Ferra knew, all emergency doors should have a second breakable seal in the event someone was stupid enough to do what she just did.

  "The port side lavatories," Brena said nonchalantly, but the tennen barked a laugh at the snooty dulcen trapped inside a single stall crapper.

  "Took me almost two hours to get the systems to talk to me," Ferra laughed to Brena.

  "Yes, that sounds accurate."

  "What did you do in the facilities for two hours in the dark?" Monde had to know.

  Brena shrugged her shoulders, her now pink do
tted hair falling across a tatter-laced shoulder, "I raised the light option on my PALM and corrected the atrocious grammar and plot holes in the stall graffiti."

  "And you were as useful as a Sea Elf at a shoe convention, you bucket of insane algorithms," Ferra chided the still silent WEST. "Bloody thing ignored me for twenty minutes. I had to crawl out through the induction tubes into a stalled air duct before it chimed in to inform me my blood pressure levels were peaking. I'd have ripped every last chip of its brain out with my bare hands if I wasn't still inside the damn engines."

  As Ferra finished her tale the doors opened silently, depositing Taliesin into the mix. The quiet elf was the only one of the bunch fully dressed for his day of skulking in the shadows. He cracked open the narrow pantry hunting for elven breakfast soup.

  "Good morning, brother," Brena's voice was as cheerful as always, "have you been keeping busy this morning?"

  "Stretching my legs," he didn't entirely lie.

  "It's a lucky thing you weren't sucked out a gaping airlock," Ferra muttered. She didn't care for either of the dulcens on board, but she didn't want to be actively blamed for their deaths either.

  The assassin let the clanging of his small soup pan cover his recalculations, "Oh?"

  "Our engineer was regaling us with the tale of how she shut down the grid and climbed up through the ship's exit port," Monde grinned into Ferra's face, trying to get a rise out of her for all those extra popped ribs he wearied of setting.

  But, despite the night spent inching along the interior of the ship, Ferra was in a bright mood for her. After all, in the end she got it working again. She rolled her massive eyes at the orc, "We can't all unleash a ravenous horde of undead lava flies upon the crew."

  "It was one time," Monde exasperated, "and they hatched out of a jombi fruit. How was I to know they were in there?"

  "Does all of your food buzz?"

  "Some of it," the orc admitted. His people's delicacies never took hold across the galaxy the way elven, dwarven, human, or goblin did. He suspected it was either due to the unlikable nature of a species that declares war as part of tradition, or that so much of it had to be eaten raw and occasionally alive.

  Taliesin stopped stirring his pot as he turned his head to the side, "And did you repair your mistake, Lady Lidoffad?" He never called Ferra by her given name, it was rude. He also hated to call her by her family name for fear her head would split in twain and devour his soul, but his game wasn't just off this morning, it fell behind the checkers box.

  "Why do you ask?" her tone would be at home with the frost goblins.

  As the words left her lips the lights dimmed across the mess, sputtering up and down as one section tried to regain power from the others. "By all the roasting winds of fiery avalanches in a testicle stew!" Ferra cursed, jumping to her feet and then freezing as the war of power finally gave out.

  Darkness engulfed the spaceship. Every breakfasting crew member paused, afraid that in the sudden descent of light the furniture took on a life of its own and zipped about the galley, waiting to smash into every unguarded knee. Ferra was the first to flip on her PALM followed by Brena, her blue light landing upon Monde, the only member of a species that didn't go in for an embedded personal computers. He shrugged his shrouded shoulders at the two elves as Ferra dashed towards a panel, her fingers trying to beat some life into it.

  "Orn, I swear to Neutron himself, if you left your damn hand plugged in again..."

  The panel hummed beneath her fingers and the twisting eyes of WEST appeared. It opened its jaw, now armed with three rows of teeth for reasons no one wanted to ask. Shifting the barbed monstrosity a few times to see if it could move, the computer shrieked out "Error error!" but due to the uncontrolled shutdown it sounded like "Rawrer! Rawrer!" As this was not entirely beyond the norm of a computer left to stew alone in its own backup generator juices for a century, Ferra ignored it.

  A louder hum replaced the first as the floor vibrations began anew. You never noticed they were there until they weren't and then suddenly were again. The emergency lights lifted, bathing the galley in soothing red like the lava pits of a dwarven home decorating catalog. A grunt resounded from behind the airlock door, as it cracked and wheeled slowly back. The elves and orc gathered at the far side of the room watching the airlock door. In theory, no one else new could be on the ship, but after the lights fall and the engines fail, it seemed prudent to prepare for a face eating alien to latch onto their hull and burrow its way in with acidic urine. Taliesin grasped the first handle he could find, which would have been more impressive if it weren't a spatula. Still, it wouldn't be the first time he'd had to kill with kitchen utensils.

  A gap appeared between the door and bright blue light shot out, blinding the eaters. "Damn it, Orn!" a voice escaped around the blinding light, "Get that thing back in here so I can see what I'm doing."

  "Sorry," the light muttered before disappearing back into the bridge airlock. After a few more very non-face-eating-alien curses the door finally shifted back, and a harried human and harrier dwarf stood before them. "Hi guys," the dwarf called cheerily.

  "You!" Ferra raced past the assassin trying to put the spatula down, and knit her fingers around her husband's shirt collar, "What did you do?"

  "Me?" Orn squeaked, glancing towards his captain.

  "I have bad news, and potentially badder news," Variel admitted. Three PALM lights landed on her face as she blinked into the inquisition. "We've been placed on lockdown."

  "What?" Ferra shrieked, dropping her husband. No one messed with her engines, especially not some lawyer whipped-up super computer bug.

  "You cannot be serious," Brena seemed to be absorbing the rage in the room, her rare hackles up.

  Taliesin said nothing as he contemplated the situation, it was what he was best at. One of the things he was best at. Only Monde coughed into his unlighted fist and asked, "Not to play the part of captain exposition, but what is a lockdown?"

  "Bastards launched a bug straight at WEST's brain, killing the engines," Ferra punched her own palm as she dreamed of what she'd do to most lawyers. "We ain't moving 'til one of their own 'clears' us."

  "I was hoping you might have some ideas how to restore most of the power," Variel said to her engineer.

  "Perhaps. I'm gonna have to defrag the entire hard drive room first. Why we let WEST put explosives in the first place..."

  "I can assist, most of them are duds anyway," Variel said.

  "Most?"

  "Apparently, he got himself a subscription to Explosions & Bombs monthly at one point."

  "Why?"

  The voice was soft, and clearly had nothing to do with her insane computer ordering bombs with a stolen credit line. Taliesin lifted his calculating eyes to the captain and continued, "Why were we placed on a legal lockdown?"

  "I don't know, the lawyer refused to say. He only asked if this was the right ship then zapped over the virus."

  "But that's a good question to ask ourselves. Why are lawyers interested in this bucket of space rust?" Orn piped up, happy to have all the ire in the room off him for once. "This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain knight we left orbiting a mile above an orc colony, would it?"

  Variel shook her head, "If this was in reference to Sovann we'd all be in lockup a month ago. The Crests wouldn't waste a civil law firm on that."

  "You'd know all about that wouldn't you?" Orn said in what he thought was a cheeky fashion.

  Variel only sighed. It'd been this way ever since she had to confess to her past, that before her life as a mild mannered occasional smuggler and petty criminal she served as a knight -- a rare soldier given a dangerous amount of power in a distrustful galaxy. For two weeks Orn would pull up the Crest code of conduct and ask everyone around the meal table if they knew that the regulation weaponry of a knight consisted of not only the fabled sword, but also two daggers, a pistol, and the occasional ogre buster? He wouldn't stop until someone agreed, and she'd shake her head giving
him the perfect opportunity of, "And you'd know all about that."

  Looking at her pilot, a man born to never tell the same truth twice, she bobbed her head and admitted, "Yes, I do know all about it. This is not about Sovann."

  "What of me?" Monde spoke up. "My own past is not sparkling either." The Doc never talked about his own problems that sent him scattering away from any orc controlled world and everyone was grateful for it. The captain being an ex-Knight who once carried a magical sword was one thing, the ex-med student who used some medical mumbo jumbo to keep himself from knocking up a woman that landed him a death sentence was another. It was confusing enough for the rest of the not matriarchal societies to deal with female orcs making all the big decisions. Add in death because of not baby making and sense flew out the window. They preferred to pretend he was really about to be killed for jaywalking.

  Variel shook her head, the voice could have been human or dwarven, but it was certainly not orc.

  "Orcs use a lot of lawyers?" Orn asked, curious.

  "We have something approaching your kind. If the dispute is not decided upon by a judicious panel, or is of a civil nature, then the prosecution and defense climb inside a gravity-less ball and battle to the death. Law shows are very popular."

  "You don't think it's about any particular pile of parking tickets do you? To send a lockdown ship out here for that would be a waste?" Orn blubbered, taking into account his own sins.

  Ferra seemed momentarily quiet as she ticked over her own lifetime of crosses with the nebulous laws of space. Even Brena mumbled under her breath about once failing to return a library tome. Only Taliesin stood tall, his eyes watching Variel as she tried to not let any gnawing concerns take claim. Apparently one need not worry about breaking the law when employed as a state sanctioned assassin.

  "Well, whatever it is, we have somewhere between one to seven days to find out," Variel said.

  "Seven days?" Brena complained, "We shall miss the celebrations of time on Tempuras."

  "First things first, we need to get the power back to something livable," Variel said, rubbing her hands together. "If we're going to be dead in space for a few days we're going to need something to help pass the time. An endless game of hide and seek won't do."