Atalan Adventure Pack: Books 4-6

by R. M. Hamrick

  On the screen, her granddaughter ate corn-spaghetti infused with real tomato flavoring, part of Donsanto’s Mess-Free Childhood agricultural line. Barbara Junior had light coloring, mischievous eyes, and very little interest in the weekly video calls from the half-robot person she’d never met in (half-robot) person, which were coordinated by Barbara Junior’s mother, Fala.

  Fala had come from Gail’s womb, but she looked so much like Gail’s late wife, Barbara. She had her minute features, and freckled fair skin. Her hair had a lot of texture, but nothing like Gail’s curls. As if Earth loved symmetry, the daughter born by Barbara looked a lot like Gail. Having no Y chromosome to offer their offspring, Gail’s and Barbara’s legacies were female. Fala herself had married a woman she met in post-tertiary school, and had taken her last name if only to introduce herself as Dr. Hurt to her patients. They too had a daughter.

  With the advent of all-female family planning, the tables had turned on Earth and eventually led to the revival of the Men’s Rights Movement demanding the banning of procreation without a male participant. Still struggling to overcome the challenges that generations of absent fathers had caused, the justice system—which was now largely female—decided men could not have their cake, and eat it too. This shift in nature, law, and culture revealed unwanted pregnancies were caused by men, and birth control efforts were redirected with much success, finally making the birth of a child a decision between two consenting parties, no matter the gender.

  Still, divorce remained at an all-time high.

  Barbara Junior gave a little cough. In response, the spaghetti discharged Albuterol to minimize the potential for food allergies during her nutritional-development phase.

  “What TV show, Granny?” she asked, while the medication settled.

  Unfortunately, Gail hadn’t really thought that far. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to tell her Cat the Bounty Hunter without hearing the featured lecture in Dr. Hurt: The I-know-what’s-good-for-you Daughter Audio Course. She could hear it now: Senior citizens should be kept safe and away from fugitives and extremely good-looking older men...

  “Oh, um, Cruise Rescue,” said Gail. The show was based on a very popular franchise in which failing businesses were exploited for entertainment. In return, the businesses received publicity and equipment that would be useless in their next endeavor.

  “What the hell is wrong with your cruise liner?” Fala said angrily. “We pay them buckets of loot every month to keep you in good health and appropriate assisted care.”

  Gail might have felt bad that ‘buckets of loot’ were being sent to a cruise liner Gail had never set foot upon, if it wasn’t for the fact that those buckets were her own retirement savings.

  “Mom wants you to stop spending all of my inheritance. She says that we won’t be able to afford college if you don’t die soon.”

  “Oh, three-year-olds. I don’t know where they come up with such things.”

  “I am five.”

  “Maybe, dear,” she replied in that not-listening, distracted parent way.

  “How many years of school do you have left?” Gail asked Barbara Junior.

  Barbara Junior performed Common Core techniques with a bit of twine and three gummy bears she had found in her pocket. “Twenty-two years to go.”

  “But Barbara Junior will go to post-tertiary school after that,” said Fala, wiping cochineal extract from her child’s jawline. Mess-Free, her ass.

  “What do you think she’s going to learn in post-tertiary she can’t learn in the first quarter-century?” asked Gail for the first time during this particular video call.

  “I never got a chance to go to post-quaternary, my daughter will. There, she’ll get a leg up and be able to jump-start her career.”

  “Y’know what would also jump-start her career? Entering—”

  “—the workforce. We know. You’re becoming repetitive in your old age, you know. Anyway, that does it. Cruise Rescue, my Earth god. We’re taking you off that ship. You remember your friend—what’s her name?” Fala asked of a friendship that was older than her. “Her children had her diagnosed with a terminal illness to get her out of the cruise contract.”

  “No—” Gail started.

  “Yeah, it’s called a Change in Life Circumstances. Specifically in the section 3E, There Ain’t Much Life Left. Did you know she had escaped her assisted-living cruise and was following a touring band. She thought she was a roadie!”

  “Sounds like she was a roadie.”

  “No, Rosie’s super old. Anyway, she flashed a Mindspace camera—can you believe that?—and so she’s being escorted back to Earth by the Intergalactic Police. I hear there was some altercation during her capture.”

  “Is she OK?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll swap out the broken parts. Anyway, our Earth furlough is coming up.”

  “Earth furlough? I didn’t know polystyrene needed breathing room.”

  “It passed a year or so ago. Everyone has to spend time off Earth in staggered rotation so the planet can recover environmentally or some crap like that. You should see people’s lawns when they come back. If that’s what the environment does, then maybe it should be stomped out by our carbon footprint, but never mind that. We’ll use the time to come get you. How great will that be for you to babysit the kids while we settle with the cruise company?”

  Her future—to be soon diagnosed as ‘short’—flashed in her mind’s eye. Her family arriving on the cruise ship. The cruise director explaining that she wasn’t on the ship, and that the money had been going to the Craps table with little luck. Her family getting her declared Senile and No Longer a Person. Her parts being traded for more “natural” parts limiting mobility—for the sake of the family.

  They had gotten Rosie, and now they were coming for her.

  Gail needed to do something, quick. “Actually, I’m not on the cruise ship.”

  And with that, the ship’s interfacing systems went dark and the video call was dropped. Gail shoved a fistful of coins into the swear jar.

  EIGHT

  Tarke was busy playing Candy Crush, which she had installed on the captain’s console, when the bridge door opened behind her. She hoped it was Gail. She needed someone to mess with. Lorav wasn’t really taking her crap anymore and was too focused on flying the ship, and Patav had already taken a great deal.

  Unfortunately it was Quaja, who slipped around her, touching all the surfaces as she went. “I’ve found some damage to the electrical system en route to the bridge controls. I’d like to switch off the power and fix it.”

  “No,” said Tarke. She didn’t fully understand Quaja’s request, but she did hear ‘switch off the power’. “Maybe you don’t remember. We are on a rescue mission, not a ‘float around and fix things up’ mission.”

  “I understand. I wouldn’t ask except that if we don’t fix it now, it could give out at a more inopportune time.”

  “Everything is working fine!” shouted Tarke. In the few short days she’d been captain, she realized arguments didn’t end until she got upset. And, being upset wasn’t something difficult to do, given their situation.

  On cue, the movie theater-style lights lining the room where the floor and wall met—as well as wall and ceiling, since in an emergency in space, you might be upside down—began to softly pulse amber.

  “Beginning orbital slingshot protocols,” said Lorav, who definitely appeared more engaged in piloting than she had earlier this morning.

  “What’s the warning?” asked Quaja.

  “It’s just the proximity alerts. It’s for people who can’t pilot ships,” said Lorav, not taking her eyes off her screen.

  Visible now on the windscreen, Beramuda was a blue planet with multi-colored lights dancing in its atmosphere.

  “You need to abort,” said Quaja, her eyes locked on the planet.

  The warning lights stopped pulsing amber and started flashing red. A siren began. The sound of which whirled around the compartment un
til it felt like the ship itself was spinning. Oh wait, the ship was spinning.

  “We have to abort, Tarke!” shouted Lorav over her shoulder.

  “No, we’re going to make it!” Tarke shouted back. “Do not abort!”

  The warning light system moved to the non-visible light spectrum, and Tarke felt the quick heat flashes. The lights on the console, solely there to reassure managers that the ship was functioning, began to slowly blink out.

  “We’ve lost thrusters,” said Lorav in a quiet voice as the ship went dark.

  “No, I think we’ve just lost control of the thrusters,” Quaja whispered back as if saying it out loud would show their hand to whatever great being was betting against their ship.

  Quaja and Lorav pulled apart the piloting console to manually activate the automatic pilot, even as the details of the planet’s surface began to resolve. The autopilot successfully executed landing protocols and the Atalanta Empress landed in the tall, soft grass in one of Beramuda’s many valleys.

  “If I had had my space suit on, I could’ve gone out there and manually turned the directional boosters and modulated the energy output for a better landing,” reported Lorav, who constantly trash-talked the programming that threatened her job.

  “What happened?” asked Tarke, fidgeting in her seat as if it had been filled with space ants.

  “A huge Van Allen radiation belt,” said Quaja, reassembling the console under the glow of the once again, amber emergency lights.

  “What does Van Halen have to do with it?” shot back Tarke.

  Arguing hadn’t helped, but they continued to do so, anyway.

  *You’ve Got Mail!* announced a default voice from the captain’s console. The loud, clear voice hinted systems were functioning, which wasn’t really true. The default notification hinted the console had been wiped of Frankie’s preferences, which was true.

  “Frankie emailed us to say she’s all right, and coming to rescue us?” joked Lorav.

  “No, it’s a past-due bill for the first mortgage—”

  “When’s the second one?”

  *You’ve Got Mail!* announced the default voice.

  “Today.”

  NINE

  It’s been highly debated whether the volcanic planet of Beramuda was composed of mostly fissures or mostly cliffs. Either way, the jagged edges of the planet’s surface were as intimidating as the lava-heated water that weaved through them. At the bottom of one such fissure or cliff, a shallow cave had been dug out, and water lapped at the edge of the cool respite at low tide, and filled the cave a few inches deep otherwise. The cliff hovered over as if to swallow the cave, creating an intimidating place of business. Steve’s Bar was open 32/3—available to all kinds at all times. That’s not to say that everyone always got along, but it did mean that everyone got a beer.

  Inside, the cave had been decorated like a 1990s Earth rendition of American-casual chain restaurants where unoriginal junk had been bolted to the walls for decoration. Here, every piece had a story Steve couldn’t remember. He often took things in exchange for an unpaid beer tab. He felt that if you didn’t have money for a beer, you probably needed a beer.

  At some undisclosed time because you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning, Lorav nursed a beer at the marble-slab bar. The barstools were tall, but Lorav was longer, and she propped her cankles on the neighboring stool, so they wouldn’t get wet with the incoming tide. Lorav did not like to get her feet wet. In a constantly open bar, the timing was a little fuzzy, but Lorav seemed to be the first customer of the day. This did not count the man passed out in the left-most booth. He had been the last customer of the night.

  “Why did you walk off?” someone thought behind her.

  “So I could make some money,” verbalized Lorav as Patav sat one stool over, and placed her cankles on the same stool where Lorav’s rested.

  “Are you making money by warming that beer?” asked Patav.

  Lorav smiled and handed it over. Patav guzzled it, and asked the bartender for two more. With that, at least some of their argument faded away. They could pick it up later.

  “I’m guarding the place from Tarke. She needs to figure out how to get us out of here.”

  Two icy mugs of malty goodness floated across the marble.

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said the bar owner in an apologetic voice.

  Before the sisters could ask clarifying questions or vehemently disagree, the third and fourth customers of the day arrived. They sat down on Lorav’s opposite side in that classic bar riddle “Does This Species Have Culturally Small Personal Spaces, or Is It Just Being Creepy?”

  The beings beside her were of the same species, else had evolved on planets with similar initial conditions. They were a deep, dark plum color, naked, with no genitalia to be seen. The two sat in silent defeat as Steve poured them a couple of cold ones to match the sisters’. They weren’t native. Any natives of this planet had previously perished in volcanic events or had left, because who wants to deal with that—even Steve was a transplant. Although they hadn’t asked them, it was assumed Steve was a retired military guy who got lost on his way to Florida.

  The sisters stared forward mysteriously as they spoke to the newcomers.

  “You’re lost. Confused,” said Patav.

  “You need a pilot,” said Lorav.

  “A pilot,” said Patav and Lorav in unison prior to sipping from their beers and otherwise ignoring their barstool neighbors.

  “Yes, are you pilots?” asked the thin, plum-colored alien.

  The question caught the sisters by surprise, which was rare.

  “I’m not, but she is,” said Patav, pointing to her sister awkwardly.

  “I can’t go with you though.”

  “Yeah, she can’t go with you.”

  “We’re trying to get our ship off this hot tamale of a planet.”

  “What’s a tamale?” asked the stone fruit-colored being.

  “I think it’s a spicy vegetable.” Lorav smiled, proud to have gotten her Gail-speak correct for once. “I can direct you to a pilot—for a finder’s fee.”

  Steve polished the beer glasses instead of cleaning them. The other equally plum and equally thin alien transferred thirteen EGRL through Mindspace—or within Mindspace—as there was no geo-tagged IGRL to have and to hold.

  “His name is Dodger Rodgers. He taxis ships out of the ionosphere, then sets them on their merry way. He lives in a shack in the Da-mevix-isdis Valley. Hmm, maybe that’s not the name.”

  “I believe what the lady is trying to say is the Ambelu Valley.” The rag circled inside the glass in the same direction the figurative wheels in his head spun.

  Lorav cleared her throat. “Yes, Ambelu Valley.”

  The plum aliens did not give any physical or verbal cues of gratitude; however, Lorav found one more EGRL had been added to her account. She transferred four into Steve’s account. A tip for a tip.

  Steve cocked his head at Patav. “Do you do that too?”

  Patav gave a nod of ‘more or less.’

  “Let’s do that again,” said Steve. “What do I call you two?”

  “Lorav and Patav.”

  “That won’t do. We’ll call you The Mystic Sisters.”

  “That sounds stupid,” replied Lorav.

  “Sure, it makes you less intimidating. Your audience is entertained by the name. They don’t look for the truth so quickly.” Steve poured a mixed drink of blue and yellow liquors into a dusty goblet glass and dropped in a piece of dry ice. He also poured them another couple of cold ones.

  With the mystical drink appearing mystical in front of the mystics, the sisters were open for business. Mind reading as a party trick or skeezy scam was a huge cultural no-no, as mental abilities were always a tricky thing for a species to navigate. A species with different abilities had to give an air of higher moral standing, else perhaps the other species would wipe them out ‘just in case.’ Fear was widely universal, so only
using abilities for noble purposes was more for the self-preservation of a species than it was a cultural faux pas.

  However, if they were ever going to get their ship back into space, they’d need money, and lots of it.

  “Lots of people here?” asked Lorav.

  “All looking for something,” said Steve.

  “Anyone here on purpose?” she asked.

  “Not a one.” He smiled.

  TEN

  Left to her own devices, Tarke slunk through the corridors of her grounded ship. How was she supposed to have known the warning signals were serious? They went off all the dang time. It was supposed to make things dramatic, not make things stop working. Even though Lorav didn’t know how to fly a ship and Quaja couldn’t shield the ship from radiation—Newsflash! It’s Space. There’s Lots of Radiation Out There—Tarke was not going to fail as captain. She had a plan, but she’d need something from her second bedroom.

  Since the Rapcorhs had chosen to bunk together, Tarke had gradually taken over what would have been Patav’s room. It started with some off-season clothes (a bit of a misnomer with trans-planetary travel), a regrettable foot spa, and the compact disc portion of her music collection which had been owned by her great-great- generation that had compact discs. However, the room quickly filled as Tarke accumulated more things with each planet she visited. Tarke wasn’t completely unorganized though. Most of her things were in this room or her personal room. And here, they were stacked in several piles with room to slink between them.

  Tarke had assured everyone Frankie would be OK with Cat the Bounty Hunter. And she had no doubts. Frankie would be OK with Cat the Bounty Hunter, probably. Corporate involvement definitely added another layer of complication. Frankie always said that planets owned by Microlutions were held in place by red tape, and even if their star burned out, the planets would remain—at least until all the paperwork had been completed.