by Jay Toney
Elaunae wants to visit the market one last time before leaving. She is adamant about wanting to cook for her new mate. She gave Doc a list of fruits and vegetables to purchase. She trusted him to pick out the meats. Her people mainly ate a vegetarian diet, not by choice, but by need. There isn't enough animal life left on her planet to harvest for food consumption. The Iniguar believe in eating only things that came from the living. They do not use meat vats too produce food and trade is limited beyond their borders. What few animals that are left on their worlds are protected, except for certain rodents.
As for the seasoning, Elaunae didn't trust anyone other than herself to test the quality of the spices. Some of the spices of her homeworld are native to her planet and unavailable. It didn't matter. Elaunae has enough experience with edible plants and cooking that she could tell if the spice that she uses will give the food the flavor that she is after by the feel of its texture when it was crushed it between her fingers, the odor of the freshly ground spice, and its flavor.
Doc is curious about the way she is testing the herbs and selecting the ones that she wants. A little salt and ground peppercorn is all that he needs to satisfy him.
Elaunae isn't just interested in spices. She is also looking for herbs with medicinal properties; she was a healer among her people. Doc observes her as she selects different plants for their healing qualities. She is delighted to find Distiny Powder which she claims stops bleeding and heals infections. She also found a dealer who sells fresh Maugroots. They are an ugly, yellowish tuber that stinks. Elaunae explained, "The juice extracted from the roots is a potent painkiller. When dried or dehydrated, the tubers can be ground into a powder that retains its potency for years."
Doc is fascinated by her knowledge of healing herbs and their properties. "When we get back home and have more time, you must write a handbook to preserve your knowledge of healing plants, minerals, and other natural remedies," He told his wife.
They were on the way out of the market when the unthinkable happens. Someone tries snatching Elaunae's purse. The cutpurse didn't get more than three steps with it. Doc instinctively grabs the grip of his blaster, and in a smooth, practiced motion he pulls it from its holster and fires. The blaster bolt hit the thief in the center of his back. His blaster is set on kill. The snatcher is dead before he hits the ground.
Doc quickly scans the market area. The thief wasn't alone. He had two accomplices. Doc took note of where they are heading and memorized their descriptions. It only took a second and came naturally to him. Before anyone could react, Doc retrieved his wife's purse, took Elaunae's hand, and pulled her with him. He isn't following directly after the thieves. He had a good idea where they are going to and headed there.
Doc got to the dark and hidden alley that is one of the entrances to the black market, just seconds behind the two thieves. He is in time to see them knock a pattern on the door that the person on the other side of it will recognize. They saw Doc and removed long knives from their belt. Doc wanted the people who assaulted his wife to suffer. Shooting them will end their suffering too fast. He isn't in a merciful mood. Doc slid his blaster into its holster. "Elaunae, give me your knife."
She pleads, "Don't fight them. There are two of them." She didn't want her mate to get hurt over such a trivial thing as her purse. She hands him her knife anyway. It is her duty to obey and serve her mate. She stood and watches in horror as her husband closes in on the people in the alley. They are holding their knives vertically with their blades held in front of their faces. Doc is using a different stance. His feet are spread wider. His left hand is held high in a defensive position, and his the blade of her knife is close to his body, held horizontally.
One of the thieves lunges towards Doc. He blocked the blow with his left arm and made two quick horizontal slashes. The thug steps back. His intestines spill out onto the alley floor. He tries to say something, but only gurgling noises escape from his mouth. Then a red line of blood appears on his neck, and it begins to flow from the wound. Then he falls to the ground. The cutpurse isn't dead yet. He is drowning in his own blood and will be dead soon enough.
The second thief strikes in that same moment, slashing deep into Doc's right bicep. Doc switches hands taking his wife's knife in his left hand. He uses his right hand, ignoring the pain and blood to hold the thug. Doc didn't use his wife's knife to slash this time. He stabs the person in his gut, pushing Elaunae's knife deep into him, as far its hilt would allow. Then he twists the knife severing the aorta artery and the inferior vena cava. The thief fell to his knees bleeding to death internally. Doc didn't pull the knife from the thug's body until he is sure that the thief is dead. He wiped the obsidian blade clean on the dead man's shirt. Then he handed it back to his wife.
The door that the two thieves knocked on cracked opened. Doc quickly grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it fully open before the person on the inside could close and lock it. He pulled the individual standing inside of the entrance into the alley. The man pulled an energy sword from his belt and activates it.
Doc pulled his energy sword from his belt and turned it on. He smiles. He is an expert in the use of his sword. His father, Bartholomew Roberts, made him practice with it daily. The blade glows with blue energy lighting the alley. His opponent sees the blood flowing from Doc's wound and returns the smile. He lunges at Doc. Doc parries his opponent's blade and responds with an attack of his own, slashing at the thugs head. He barely blocks the blow with his sword creating a shower of blue sparks from their two energy blades crossing. The thief realizes his mistake. He is outclassed. His only route of escape lies past Doc Roberts. He swings his sword wildly. Doc blocks it and hacks with his sword hard overpowering the thief's sword and landing a stinging blow on his arm. The thug is desperate and slashes at Doc's head. Doc ducks under the blade and spins, cutting low. His blade slices through his attacker's legs. The thief falls to the ground. His sword flies from his hand, out of his reach.
Doc deactivated his energy sword. Then he picks up the thief's energy sword and turns it off. Taking the legs out from under his opponent is one of Doc's signature moves. Typically he leaves the loser to his fate. Rats and other scavengers will finish the job for him. Being eaten alive is a fitting death for the thief.
"Don't leave me like this. Have some mercy. Finish it!" The thug demanded.
"You and the rest of your den of thieves deserve worse." Doc turned to leave, abandoning the crippled man to his fate.
"I will survive this. When I am healed and have new legs, I will hunt you and your whore down and make you suffer for this!"
Doc stops in his tracks. He activated the blade he recovered from his opponent. He turns and places the tip on the man's abdomen letting its energy blade burn into his gut just enough to open the abdominal wall. The man screams as Doc slowly slices his way upward, disemboweling the thug. He doesn't stop there. He continues slicing open the thief's chest, cutting upward through the sternum until the tip of the blade is directly over the dying man's heart. Then he pushes the glowing blade downward. The sword burns its way through the heart, and the dying man's screams stop. Doc deactivated the energy sword, and then he clipped it to his belt. He left the body as it is for a warning to anyone who has thoughts about attacking him or his wife.
"You are bleeding. I must stop the blood flow," Elaunae tells her mate. She uses her knife to cut her husband's shirt sleeve away from the gash on his arm. She sprinkles some white powder on the wound. Its bleeding slows. After a few minutes, it stops. "When we get back to the hotel, I will need to stitch it closed and bandage it." His wife is about to cut the hem of her skirt away to use as a temporary bandage. Doc stops her. He takes off his shirt and tells her, "Use my shirt. It is already ruined."
The cart they rented for their purchases is parked where they left it. No one touched it. The body of th
e cutpurse that tried taking his wife's purse was already picked up and taken away. Doc reactivated the cart, and it dutifully followed them to their land car. After Doc and Elaunae collected their purchases, the shopping cart returned to the market area.
A police officer is waiting for Doc at the entrance to their suite. He asks, "Mr. Roberts, Would you care to make a statement?"
Doc answers, "Yeah, there are four fewer assholes on this planet now."
"There are more bodies?"
"Yes, I took care of all of the thieves. If you hurry, you might find the rest of the bodies in an alley near one of the eastern entrances to the black market. If not, the rats and other scavengers will take care of them." Doc opens the door to his suite and follows his wife inside ending the conversation with the police officer.
Once they are in their room, Elaunae says," I must close the wound, so that it heals without scaring." Doc isn't worried about scaring. A nanite treatment will take care of that. But, something needs to be done to his arm so that he could continue to use it until they got back to the Queen Anne's Revenge. Elaunae rummages through her purse and removes two vials of powder, a needle, and a small spool of thread.
Doc already knows what the white powder is. His wife calls it Distiny. She sprinkles more of the healing powder onto Doc's wounded arm. The red swelling is fading, but the gash is deep and needs to be closed. Merely bandaging the wound won't work unless Doc wants to keep his injured arm in a sling until he can get the nanite treatments necessary to finish mending the injury.
Elaunae opens the second vile. "What is that?" Doc asked.
"We do not have enough time to process the Maugroot I purchased. This is Snoglaut. Trust me, you do not want to know what it is or where it comes from, but it will help with the pain. Elaunae dabbed some of the pale green paste in the vile onto her fingertips. Then she used her fingers to rub the ointment into the wound. Doc expects it to hurt like hell. It doesn't. He feels a cold sensation, and the pain fades from the injury. Other than that, all he feels is gentle pressure from Elaunae's fingers spreading the paste.
His wife selected a needle. While threading the needle she explains, "This thread comes from one of the many large spiders that live in the swamps back home. It is strong enough to hold the wound closed until it has had enough time to heal. Then the thread will dissolve on its own." She squeezed the wound closed and had Doc hold the skin in place while she laced the incision closed with the spider silk.
Early the next morning, they checked out of their hotel suite. The hotel manager personally drove Doc and his wife to the spaceport and his waiting transport ship. He helped them unload the ground car and store their luggage in the launch before wishing them a safe trip and leaving.
Doc quickly ran through the preflight diagnostics and powers up the small ship. He contacts the control tower, and they are given priority clearance for takeoff. Doc lifts the transport off of the ground with its repulsorlift engines. Then he fires the main engines and climbs to orbit.
Doc flew towards his starship on the way to the third moon. He wants to take a quick look at the repairs that are being done to his cruiser. He assumes that everything is going according to schedule. If it wasn't, he would have heard something from either Randolph or Jane his engineers, or Natasha his starship's AI.
There are still a half dozen support ships surrounding the Queen Anne's Revenge; several large repair pods are docked to the cruiser, and two salvage barges are moored alongside the starship filled with the hull plating and armor that were used to patch the cruiser.
Doc couldn't tell where the damage occurred from the missile hit. It looked like his starship was never damaged. He is satisfied with how things looked on the outside. Now he only needs to walk the decks and inspect the repairs from inside of the starship.
Doc flew past his cruiser and changed course slightly to take him and his wife to the moon. It is a fair sized moon with a gravity of 0.15g. Its gravity and lack of magnetic field prevent it from having more than a very thin atmosphere covering its surface. Its smooth ground is covered with rock and dust.
The moon and the planet's other moons have to be artificial. All of the satellites are similar to this one. They all lack features like mountain ranges that most moons have and they all lack impact craters from the meteor that would have happened over time. Not to mention, they are all spaced 60 degrees apart using the planet's core as a reference point.
Doc landed his launch on a small landing pad. After he shut its engines down, the pad lowered into a docking bay. Its overhead doors closed, lights came on, and the small hangar began pressurizing.
Neither of the two needed to take their luggage. Doc only planned on staying here for two days and departing on the morning of the third day. They packed what they needed into a small overnight bag. Then they left the ship together.
Doc had been to this resort before, but this area of it is a new addition that didn't exist the last time he visited. They went through the shuttle bay's airlock into the next chamber. A tube car is there waiting to take them to the resort's hotel.
The subterranean tunnels and caverns in this area of the moon are artificial, left over from the creation of the celestial body. It made building the resort easy. The unused tunnels were sealed off, and the tunnel walls were coated with a silicone based sealant to make them airtight. Permafrost and ice found inside the underground tunnels and caverns are collected, melted, and processed to provide oxygen to breathe, hydrogen for fuel, and water to drink. The supply of ice found, so far, gave the moon's inhabitants a nearly inexhaustible and replenishable supply of water.
Doc and Elaunae boarded the maglev car and sat on its empty seats. The driver fed power to the transports induction coils, and the car rose above its track before speeding down the tunnel. There are no stops between the shuttle bay and the resort entrance. The vehicle is used solely to transport the resort's guests to and from their shuttlecraft.
The car came to a stop, and its door opened its doors at the resort's entrance. Doc and his wife stood and exited the tube car. A booth was set up near the entrance of the resort. It is for the moon's residents who work at the resort. Once a month the people who lived and worked in the moon every resident and worker have to pay a tax for the water they drank and the air that they breathe. Doc went to the booth and paid the hundred credit tax for both himself and his wife. The man behind the booth handed them each an ID bracelet that serves as proof that they paid their taxes. The moons residents had until the third day of each month to pay their tax. Anyone caught after that date without a current ID bracelet is shown out the nearest airlock without a spacesuit. Spacers take air and water taxes seriously. Doc didn't have to pay the fee. It is included with the price of their hotel room. The hotel's clerks issue their guests' temporary bracelets to prove that their taxes are current. Doc paid anyhow. He felt obligated to make sure that his share of the air he and his wife are breathing and the water they would be using are paid for. There is an abundant supply of water ice, but it still had to be mined, processed, and the workers paid.
Doc and Elaunae checked into their room. They didn't stay long. Doc was in a hurry to take his wife flying. The cavern that is used for microgravity flying is a part of the resort. It isn't far from their suite. They took another tram from the hotel to the market area next to the cavern that is used for flying.
Doc passed by the rental booths and led his wife to a dealer that sold wings and flying suits. Elaunae stared at the prices that were being asked for the wings. "These are much too expensive. We can rent wings for much less."
"The rented wings are for beginners and people with only a little flying experience," Doc told his wife.
"I am a beginner. I have never flown before," She argued.
"You are a natural flier. You won't
be happy with the rented wings. They let you do a gentle climb or dive, turn and soar, but that is about it. With advanced wings, you can truly fly." Doc had his wife fitted for a proper flying suit. It has a built-in harness that helps to hold the wings in place and braces the back and shoulders. It also has fabric sewn between the legs that serves as a tail. The tail is controlled by spreading the legs and bending them at the knees and hips. Doc already knew what size he needed and chose a suit for himself from the rack.
Next, came the wings. Elaunae was measured and weighed to get the aerobatic wings best suited for her. The controls were adjusted so that she could control the flight controls with her fingertips. Then Doc chose a pair of wings for himself. Then he added two helmets with built-in comlinks to their purchase so they could talk to each other without shouting.
They left the dealership and entered the cavern used for microgravity flying. The entrance is located nearly at the top of an underground chamber. It is a natural cavern two miles across and seven miles deep. It is perfect for flying. Doc extended his wings and checked the controls to make sure that they are working correctly. Then he swept his wings back. He explained the flight controls and their functions to his wife. She checked them as her husband did. Then she folded her wings as in a similar fashion.
The wings they are wearing are painted to resemble bird wings. That is where the similarity ends. They are designed in function and style to wings used on aerobatic aircraft. When Doc is sure that his wife understands how they work; he dove off of the landing platform that they are standing on. He fell building up speed before sweeping his wings forward and extending their flaps. He climbed out of the dive and soared across the cavern.
Elaunae jumped from the ledge. She didn't dive as far as her husband and quickly extended her wings. She is flying, not unlike the sky devils that she used to watch on her homeworld of Trek'eet. Elaunae experimented with the controls getting familiar with their function. She extended the flaps, moved the ailerons and spoilers in conjunction with her tail/legs. She experimented with the flaps and the air brakes. Within an hour she is flying like a professional and doing barrel rolls around her husband. She never felt so excited and happy as she felt today.