Space Patrol!

by Sarah Nicole Nadler

  Lissa tore off her breathing mask and looked around. Octi scuttled down from the rear deck, his large eyes dim in his blue head as he climbed the rail to reach within earshot. She held out a hand, letting him crawl up her shoulder, craving his reassuring weight.

  “Erdon and Krash are gone,” he told her quietly. “They left about twenty minutes ago, Captain.”

  She nodded heavily, knowing the two had undoubtedly been aboard the Patrolship when it ... She couldn’t finish the thought.

  “Any survivors?” Shika asked, gasping for breath, her face an agonized question as she paused, one hand unconsciously still clutching Will’s shoulder.

  Octi paused. “I was too far away to lock onto them with the MTrans ... I’m ... I’m so sorry, Captain Will. I ...”

  Will turned his devastated gaze on the Europan on her shoulder. “Not your fault,” he told the octopus, and his firm voice made Lissa believe he meant to console Octavian in spite of his own anguish. Her heart clenched at his stoic face.

  “I thank you for saving our lives,” Will continued, but his voice broke as he added, “We will ... mourn them later. Now, I must return to the surface.”

  “You can’t!” Lissa cried, stunned. “We just got away from there—now you want to go back?”

  “There is another we left behind.” Aewn had tears streaming unashamedly down his face, but he nodded to his captain.

  “Who?” Octi inquired.

  “My mother.” Will stared off through the cloud-shield as though he could see right through it to the bombardment happening below.

  “We left the Captain's adopted-mother in the art district to shop while we conducted official business,” Aewn whispered in Lissa's ear. She bit her lip.

  “Oh ... But we can’t just put you down any old place,” Lissa tried to reason. “What if you transport right into a bomb going off?”

  “That won’t help your mom much,” Ash added.

  “She was to wait for me in a specific spot ... Octi, can you put me down near the artist district?”

  Octi waited for direction from Lissa.

  She told Will gently, “I understand how you must feel—”

  “No!” Will cut her off, slashing with his arm as though to chop the thought away.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “We should wait until it’s over,” she insisted.

  “She could be dying!” he hissed, turning his blue eyes to glare at her.

  Shika kept her hand on his arm, not in restraint but in a vain attempt to reassure him, and suggested, “They probably have that jamming thing ...”

  “Jamming field,” Krywith murmured.

  “Yeah, whatever. That thing is probably up by now,” she pointed out.

  “They’re beginning to land,” Octi added, monitoring it all from his wireless connection to the Forty-Five’s shipboard computer. “Dragg’k soldiers, looks like—two carriers, 350 men each.”

  “An invasion, then,” Aewn muttered, shaking his head in disgust. “Not just a raid. They’ll take what they want and then set up a garrison to monitor the bazaar, probably induce taxation and try to claim legitimacy through occupation.” He yammered the data mostly to himself, his eyes fixed on the scene unfolding below.

  “Possession is nine-tenths the law,” Stephanie muttered from where she still stood within Shiro’s protective embrace.

  “Wait a few hours, Captain.” Aewn spoke not with pleading but with calm assurance as he gazed down into the younger man’s uncompromising glare. “Kiera is smart. She’ll have gone into hiding as soon as the yellow flashed. She can take care of herself in a pinch, and you know she’ll be furious if you risk yourself or your crew unnecessarily to save her.”

  It was the mention of risking his crew, a low blow but purposely stated to make him think twice, that caused Will to flinch. He nodded.

  “We wait until daybreak. An MTrans glow is too visible at night.”

  Lissa wisely refrained from mentioning that he should not presume to give orders on her ship.

  She directed Stephanie and Shiro to help the two Corians find quarters below. Stepping onto the ladder after them, she paused to watch as Will took up station beside the rail as though he meant to monitor the cloud tufts all night long.

  Octi whispered in her ear, “I’ll stay with him, Captain. You should get some rest.”

  She thanked him softly, a stroke on his cute head earning her a small bubbling laugh from the teenaged octopus, and then she descended.

  Blueberry Solution

  The galley was still a mess from the shoddy state the pirate cook had left it in, although Stephanie, Shika, and Lissa had each spent hours scrubbing it down and jettisoning the inedibles.

  Turning the heating pad to high, Lissa leaned into the coldbox and pulled out a stick of butter, a dozen eggs, and some milk. The butter she melted in the pan as she whipped the other ingredients into pancake mix from the larder, and then plunked a handful of blueberries into the batter before pouring the first one into the waiting pan.

  The smell of hot blueberries and fried batter began to fill the air in the enclosed space, and she watched bubbles form on the top of the small cake, flipped it, and then began hunting around for the maple syrup. Her mother had stocked the galley after a stealthy trip to the supermarket before they left Earth orbit, crouching between parked cars with her purchases as Octi transported her back aboard. And so there was apple juice and OJ, chips, and Lissa’s favorite nacho cheese dip, along with the makings of half a dozen family dinner recipes. Surrounding herself with so many familiar foods and the smell of her favorite breakfast made the fourteen-year-old girl’s eyes water and she tried to blink it away as the full import of what had just happened hit her like a bully’s fist to the stomach.

  All those Space Patrolmen on that ship. Erdon—she had seen him barely two hours ago. All the shoppers in the bazaar. She hadn’t even asked Will how many other crewmen were aboard his ship. How many friends, people he was responsible for, had died today?

  Two fat drops spilled over her lashes to stream down her cheeks in runnels of grief. She sniffed as she used the spatula to slide the first pancake onto a plate. She dropped a new pat of butter onto the hot pan and watched it skitter around, browning at the edges.

  How would she ever rescue Earth from OneWorld if she couldn’t even keep a single Space Patrol ship from being shot out of the sky? Never mind that it hadn’t been her fault, the events of the evening were a reminder of how helpless she felt to protect those she loved.

  Her fist clenched around the spatula and she fought down the urge to throw it against the wall and start shattering glasses. The worst part was there wasn’t any reason for it, except stupid greed. Those Dragg’k, whoever they were, only wanted to control Jeropul so they could rake in the taxes. They didn’t care about the beautiful artwork she had seen on display or the careful planning the proprietor of that bar had put into ensuring every species who walked through his doors could enjoy an edible meal.

  She choked on her fury, vision blurred by the overflow of tears as she nearly burnt the next pancake. Hurriedly she flipped it, mindful of the precious blueberries studded throughout, and thought again of Will.

  He had never known the love of Earth that drove her, Stephanie, and the rest of her crew to the stars. He had been stolen away, had lost his family, lost his world, and now his ship and most of his men. It wasn’t fair.

  And what right did she have to sit and rail against the universe, to mourn, when it was Will who had lost his ship and crew today? That thought finished her self-pity and she took to turning out pancakes in earnest. Her mom always said feeding people was a sort of therapy.

  She flipped another pancake and slid it onto the growing stack to her right. When she had eight of the steaming cakes she shut off the heating pad, set the pan to soak in the sink—already overflowing with dishes—she stuck her finger through the loop at the top of the maple syrup bottle and carried it and the plate out of the galley.

 
; Her five crew members were sitting casually in the corridor—atop, among, and against crates of blueberries, bags of flour and other ingredients for the various recipes they had planned to sell. Aewn sat cross-legged before them, deep in conversation with Ash, while Krywith explained the workings of his earpiece to Octi through the glass of the Europan’s ocean tank.

  Shika turned toward her first, nose twitching.

  “Oh! Are those pancakes?” she cried.

  “Blueberry pancakes,” Lissa replied. That got the others’ attention. Aewn craned his neck to face her, taking a deep breath as the smell of the hot cakes wafted across the narrow hallway.

  “You are as divine as the Moon Mother,” Krywith told her. He stood and made to take one.

  “No way,” Lissa smacked his hand lightly. “Captains get first dibs.”

  “What is ‘dibs’?” Aewn asked Shika, who shrugged her own ignorance without taking her eyes off the pancakes.

  “Where is Will?” Lissa demanded.

  “I tried to convince him to join us, Captain,” Octi’s translator spoke through the speaker above his tank as he was still submerged. “He insisted on being alone topside.”

  “I’ll get him,” Aewn said, cracking a small smile for the first time since they’d reached the Forty-Five. “This was just the thing … thank you.” The warmth in his violet eyes made Lissa’s cheeks pink.

  Before she could answer, Will appeared above them on the ladder. “What is that smell?” He descended.

  Lissa took a look at him. His cheeks were wan and there was a pink tinge at the edges of his eyes as though he had been crying, but he held his shoulders erect and the look he shot Aewn almost dared the Corian to comment.

  “The pirate captain thinks she can replace our crew members with blueberry pancakes,” Aewn told Will deadpan.

  Lissa’s mouth fell open.

  Will eyed his second-in-command, a slight twitch of his lips betraying his humor as he replied, “I don’t think humans turn blue like you do, Aewn.”

  “Nevertheless, the gesture must not go unacknowledged,” the other said. “I believe we ought to embrace this alien form of mourning lest we offend the Earthlings.” His voice made it clear he felt the task was a difficult, perhaps arduous one, yet he would reluctantly bear the burden for his fallen comrades.

  “I can’t believe you are joking about that,” Shika said from the floor where she sat cross-legged, her mouth agape at his ill-chosen humor.

  “Corian wit is known for being dry and without good taste,” Will told her without taking his eyes off his crewmen, both of whom were now smiling at the jest.

  Lissa finally found her tongue. “That is horrible!” she cried. When Aewn made a grab for a pancake off her plate, she snatched it back with a deadly glare in his direction.

  “It is a difference of culture.” Krywith laid a sympathetic hand on the human captain’s shoulder. “Do not be offended. See?” He gestured to Will. “It has shaken his grief.”

  Sure enough, Will had cracked a hint of a smile and the tension in his shoulders had eased. Lissa sighed. She would never make a good space diplomat if she couldn’t even take a little alien humor. Giving in to the prevailing mood in the hallway, she walked among them passing out pancakes until blueberry juice stained the lips and fingers of all her crew and their guests. Aewn began to spin a tale from the folklore of his planet, Shiro whispered something in Shika’s ear that had her punching the Kazakh in the shoulder for his impudence, and when the group dispersed a little later to find rest there was a different sort of tone in the air. Healing the wounds of today might be long and painful, but some of the pain had been eased by friendship and blueberries.

  ***

  The third watch came at dawn, and when Ash shook her awake to relieve him, Lissa blinked several times but otherwise felt rested as she made her way out on to the deck from her cabin. The vast sands below them shone just as brightly as they had the day before, when she had first laid eyes on them, and she remembered what Will had said about needing to retrieve his adoptive mother. There had to be a way to get her safely out with the Dragg’k none the wiser.

  Octi was sleeping, but Krywith had been woken to take his place at the con, and Lissa approached him now, accepting his small smile with a friendly nod. “Good morning.”

  “Fair day to you, Captain.” He gave a military bow to her in return, the small braids among his flowing pale blue hair dipping forward as he greeted her.

  “How goes it down there?”

  “No official word yet from the surface,” he reported. “The Dragg’k are solidifying their victory, cataloging the loot from the look of things, and gathering up the shoppers in the slave barracks to determine who they can extort, who they can ransom, and who they can simply sell.”

  Lissa winced at that last. “Any sign of Will’s mother?”

  “Negative.” Krywith shook his head, his pointed ears poking out from beneath his hair. “But that is all to the good. It would not do for her to attempt to contact us. The signal could be traced back to her location by the invaders. Kiera knows this. My guess is she will remain hidden where she can overlook the assigned meeting place and wait to see if Will comes for her.”

  “Of course he will!” Lissa cried.

  Krywith shrugged. “She cannot know for sure if he is alive. But she will try nevertheless.”

  “Then we have to go soon. Before she gives up hope and moves somewhere else.”

  “I am certain she will remain in place at least a day. If she is well herself,” he added as an afterthought.

  Lissa winced at that. Indeed, hopefully nothing else had happened to someone Will loved. She didn’t know if she could bear to look at him again with that awful grief on his face such as he had felt last night. She could not imagine how she would have felt if anything had happened to her crew aboard the Forty-Five.

  “What we need is a plan of action,” Lissa thought out loud. “How to get Will down there without raising suspicion and how to get them both back here afterwards.”

  “I have been thinking about that.” Krywith’s violet eyes were live with intelligence as he laid forth his plans. “The Dragg’k have been using MTrans all morning to relay supplies and troops down to the surface. It would not be difficult to disguise our own transportation as long as we time it exactly with one of theirs.”

  “How difficult is that?” Lissa asked. An MTrans only took a few seconds, after all.

  Krywith’s eyes gleamed. “I have done it before. It will require minute monitoring and instantaneous precision, but it can be done.”

  “Alright, so that gets us down there. Will may need back up; we should send three of us—Will plus two more to watch his back. We can find Kiera, but what then? How do we contact you without the Dragg’k detecting us?”

  Krywith considered this. “Perhaps it would be best to have a designated time for your return. If you do not find her before the rendezvous point, we can send you down again.”

  She sighed. “Yes, that’s probably our safest bet.” She only hoped Will would agree to return without Kiera a second time.

  Two hours later, the rest of her crew were awake—except Ash who slept on after holding the night watch—and they gathered in the hold between decks to go over the plans Krywith and Lissa had hatched.

  “The key thing will be to avoid Dragg’k patrols,” Will said, staring down at the rough sketch Octi had printed off of the zone where they supposed Kiera would be near her meeting place with him.

  “This is something we cannot predict.” Octi rocked his large head back and forth in denial, his large black eyes concerned. “They are known as pirates and raiders, not invaders. How their patrols of the bazaar will react to you, I haven’t a clue.”

  “If we’re spotted, do we fight or flee?” Lissa asked.

  “Flee where?” Aewn argued. “You’ll be stuck planetside without a way to contact us without giving away our location.”

  “So we fight, then?” But three of them
against Google knows how many armed soldiers sounded totally insane.

  “Use the MTrans trackers,” Octi suggested, “I'll rig an alarm at the helm so if you press the button, Krywith or I will know to immediately bring you back.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Now, what do we do about getting to Kiera?”

  “What we need are disguises,” Stephanie commented. She too was eyeing the sketch propped up on a crate between them.

  “I think we should have two groups, not one,” Shiro suggested, “Will, Lissa, and Ash, make contact with Kiera. Stephanie, Aewn, and I act as a distraction in case there are patrols in the area.”

  “How can you distract them without getting caught yourselves?” Lissa pointed out. She was absolutely not risking any more lives.

  “We dress up as entertainment!” Stephanie said. “Play the part of a silly dancer or singer, a little wild, but harmless. If they spot you, we’ll just start playing really loud and obnoxiously to distract them.”

  “That works only if there’s still any entertainment going on down there,” Lissa pointed out. “They did just get invaded, you know.”

  “Oh, they haven’t stopped all the performances,” Aewn assured her, looking approvingly at Stephanie. “You’ve got a head for this sort of thing, Earthling. I say we do it.”

  “Agreed,” Will nodded “We’ll go armed, but use only as a last resort. A firefight is something we haven’t a chance in a million of winning down there. But a distraction might do the trick.”

  It was four o’clock shipboard time when they assembled on the deck. Luckily, being a pirate ship, the Forty-Five was provisioned for stealthy entrances and had a whole costume room off the main hold, which Stephanie dug into with some input from Krywith … and Octi.

  Kiera of Coria

  The square of Jildask-ka was an ancient meeting place, from long ago before a market had existed on Jeropul. A hundred thousand years of winds had worn the walls to a ruin, but tucked beneath the crumbling stone, dozens of modern stalls had been erected by the merchants who plied their wares. It was one of the few sections of the bazaar that still stood as testament to what had been here before, and as such, was a favorite hangout for artists, singers, and performers of all sorts; it was here that Will had meant to meet Kiera.