Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Performer’s Park was a rather green slice of an otherwise artificial environment, which was Teslovia as a whole. What Kracker knew of civic engineering was little, but he knew enough that green spaces were vital in a city, particularly one of Teslovia’s continental-size, as cities trapped heat. As soon as he stepped foot into the park, he felt a good ten degrees cooler. Beyond that, greenery was vital to the senses. A natural connection. It seemed like hundreds of citizens had made their way to Performer’s Park for that connection. Kracker flipped off his sandals and let his feet sink into the soft, tightly trimmed grass. 

Buskers, bands, and artists filled public spaces or crowded hastily constructed platforms, performing with their various instruments. Kracker moved from small crowd to small crowd, sampling each musician’s style. Nothing seemed to click for him. 

Granted, every musician was talented, but nothing he had heard seemed to convey the mood he was aiming for. Disappointed, he made his way to the edge of the park and took a seat on a bench. It had been painted and tagged over by dozens of artists over the years. Layers of decals, paint, and do-it-yourself printing made the bench’s surface uneven, but still comfortable. He wondered if the years of art worked like a cushion. From here, the individual performers became a discordant mess, their individual refrains coagulating into a tumor of noise.

Then, as he sat, a simple guitar tune drifted by. It was something low-key, sure, but there was some underlying vibrancy in the notes. Kracker rose from the bench and looked in the direction from which he heard the music. He began to follow, and as he did, he felt the strumming quicken and the music grow more confident. His eyes darted around the park and down toward the various tall buildings on the perimeter. 

Then he saw a Gomben, guitar in hand, sitting against a small information kiosk, strumming absentmindedly. Kracker approached and noticed the small placard sitting in front of the guitarist. It featured the intergalactic symbol of patronage, an orange, rounded “P” shape, and a mobile code. Kracker knelt, typed the code into his own mobile, and threw some credits the Gomben’s way.

“Thanks, man,” the Gomben said. He continued to strum out an improvised melody.

“Not a problem, you’re really good.”

Kracker stood back up and continued to listen. The Gomben smiled and began to improvise a new melody, something a little lazier and more wistful. This was the kind of sound Kracker was looking for.

“You wouldn’t happen to be available for a party tonight, would you?”

The Gomben flashed a wry, toothy grin as his fingers plucked the strings.

…

“So, my friends, do you have any idea what your flight plan will be?” Spril asked.

Marken took a sip from his teacup, “Unfortunately, that is decided by GalactiCorp. The minute we know, we’ll send word your way. I wouldn’t mind having another ship grouped up with us for safety.”

Mara self-consciously picked at her salad, only now aware of how awkward her choice of food was given the present company.

A server approached the table and set a small salad before Spril.

“Thank you,” he said, and then immediately stuck several of the leafy greens with his fork, scooping them into his mouth.

Mara and Marken stared at the scene, unsure of what they were seeing. Spril paused for a moment, feeling their eyes on him. He swallowed and smiled.

“I assure you I didn’t just eat my cousin,” he looked directly at Mara, “though I can’t say if your lunch is a distant cousin or not… we all seem so similar sometimes.”

Mara’s eyes widened.

“I’m joking, Mara. Just because I have plant characteristics does not mean that I don’t need food. Vegetables are the most efficient food source there is. Besides, salads are delicious.”

Mara and Marken began to laugh. She took a bite of her own lunch, but then Spril chimed in, “Although your plate does remind me of a growth I once had…”

Mara set her fork down and furrowed her brow toward Marken. He smiled and then turned to Spril, “That’s enough, Spril.”

The Floraran flashed a wicked grin. “I just couldn’t resist.”

“Well, I am certainly regretting my lunch choice now,” Mara pouted.

“When in doubt, stew it out, at least that’s what I’ve always said.”

“You’ve never said that before, Marken.”

He leaned toward her, “I always say that. To myself.”

Spril took another bite of his salad. “Don’t worry, Mara, you’re fine. I may be related to plants, but then again… aren’t we all? I just skew a little closer and can take on their genetic characteristics.”

“That’s always fascinated me,” Mara said, “this galaxy is just full of interesting surprises, isn’t it? If I’m not mistaken, I think our security guard, Guugel, has some characteristics similar to yours… or at least that’s what his eating habits tell me.”

“Guugel? Oh, yes, that cute little Wot security guard of yours. How is he?”

Marken slurped down some stew.

“I think he’s off spending his bonus on some souvenirs or something.”

…

Guugel, at this point, had found himself wandering away from the major thoroughfares of the city into the more cramped corridors between the major buildings that made up the blocks. He was still mostly on the top-level of the city, though away from the central routes, more and more overhangs and walkways blocked out the sunlight. So far, he hadn’t found much of interest beyond his dancing Syrien doll. 

He stumbled into an intersection of two avenues that opened up into a small plaza and sat himself down for a moment on a curb. He pulled out the doll and jiggled it slightly, watching it perform its spring-powered dance.

He peered around the small plaza, particularly at the dried patch of grass in the center. He noticed the sun hit the patch in just the right way to dry out the grass, and he began to think how nice a tree would look in this little spot. Maybe his travels would bring him back here after a while, and he’d find it to be a bustling little spot of weary pedestrians resting in the shade.

Guugel put the doll away in his backpack and hopped to his feet. He decided to see if he could find a tree… but where to begin? Guugel studied the four avenues radiating from the plaza and made his way down the one he was most unsure of. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he thought to himself.

…

The ambassador’s office was cramped and stuffy. Dash could see it from out in the secondary lounge where he found himself waiting, his initial visit approved. A tired-looking Terrekin of about 70 or so, on the cusp of middle age, was taking a meeting.

His eyes nestled into heavy, dark bags, and the sides of his olive-green face looked jowly and unshaven. He seemed to be talking to someone whom Dash couldn’t see. But he could see that the ambassador was growing increasingly agitated.

“Well, that’s certainly going to make my meeting interesting,” Dash said to himself.

He continued to watch until the ambassador rose and extended his hand to the other individual in his office. They shook, almost begrudgingly, and the other Terrekin stepped out. Dash couldn’t place what seemed off about him until he turned around to say something to the ambassador. Dash saw that the Terrekin’s shell was an artificial one – composed of treated plastic. 

Dash rose, knowing he was next in line to meet with the ambassador. The Terrekin with the artificial shell stormed off, dropping several sheets of paper. Dash knelt to pick them up, but by then the gentleman with the artificial shell had already wandered off. Dash shrugged, folded the papers, and tossed them into his bag. He’d find the guy later.

Dash stopped in front of the door and turned to the secretary, who seemed busy. He looked in on the ambassador, who also seemed overworked, already sorting through papers and datapads piled onto his desk. Dash shrugged and knocked lightly on the door frame. The ambassador’s head rose quickly; his look of frustration was readily apparent. He did his best to mask it with a smile and gestured for Dash to take a seat.

“How can I help you, Mister… uh…” the ambassador flicked through appointments on his terminal, “Kameku, yes? I’m Quinlen Sev.”

Dash nodded and took a seat. “Yessir. I was hoping your office could assist me in ferrying some sensitive equipment back to Ocia.”

“That seems like something that could be handled via a shipping company, though?”

Dash shrugged, “Under any other circumstances, I’d agree with you, but given the nature of the equipment and the networking fees involved, I figured I could classify this as a public works project.”

“How so?”

“Well, I want to ship a GIN relay to my home village, and because it is a potential addition to Ocia’s communication network, I figured there were maintenance and installation concerns, not to mention that this is a large, expensive piece of equipment to move over public shipping. Given this, I also know that I can ensure proper, safe delivery if it’s treated as a public works project, so-“

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down, kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What village?”

“Movari. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“You’re right. Never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. We’re on a small island off the coast of Konshu.”

“Konshu, huh? My family was originally from there. Tell me more about this relay.”

“Well, Movari is quite small and doesn’t have great access to Ocia’s communications network. We have to use Konshu’s system, but we’re in a bad spot because we aren’t close enough to the island for a good signal, and we aren’t a large enough population to be granted a relay by the government.”

“So you’re taking it upon yourself to solve the problem?”

“Well, doing what I can. I came into some money I don’t need, so I figure I can put it toward a good cause.”

“That’s admirable. I think I may be able to help you in that regard. At least there’s something I can accomplish today.” Quinlen’s brow furrowed slightly.

“I imagine the pay you get as an ambassador more than makes up for it, though, right?”

“HAH! How much do you think we make?”

“I thought an ambassador would be rich.”

“Do you have any idea what a Federation ambassador makes? Our pockets don’t get lined like ambassadors from the Neutrality.”

“I had no idea, I didn’t mean to assume-“

“It’s no worry, kid, I understand. It’s not a great system we have, but I’ve found it to be worth doing what I can from inside. To be honest, I wish I had your gumption regarding another project.”

“What sort of project?”

“Well, my last visitor was my business partner. We’re trying to fund a prosthetic shell lab here on Teslovia. Most prosthetics have to come from Ocia and we figured a lab here would make a lot of sense because it’d be easier to ship the prosthetics if we grew them here.”

“I noticed his shell was a prosthesis…”

“Oh, no, no, we’re talking about full-grown shells that accept nerve connection, like our birth shells. Genetic matches and everything.”

“That’s a great idea. We can do that, now?”

“Absolutely. We’re at the forefront of this. It’s good work. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Problem is, my position as an ambassador requires that I don’t take a major stake in any businesses that I may potentially have influence over. If this thing can get launched, I was planning on retiring. Then, of course, there is the idea of raising the money-“

“Do you need another investor?”

“Desperately, but… well, I have to end my involvement here. I suggest you talk to Korl about it.”

Dash reached into his bag and pulled out the papers Korl dropped.

“He left these behind.”

“Good, good. Listen, go see him, I’ll give you his address.”

“Sure thing. About my-“

“Oh, of course, of course. I’ll make sure all the paperwork is in order for your relay. That won’t be an issue.”

Quinlen rose from his chair and extended his hooked arm ahead of him. Dash rose and did the same. The two touched forearms – the traditional Terrekin greeting.

“Thank you, Mister Kameku. You’ve certainly made my day a little bit brighter.”

…

The dingy waiting room of the augment clinic smelled like sweat and alcohol. In truth, it was less of a waiting room than a loading dock with sloppily constructed walls meant to provide some illusion of privacy. The seating was, for the most part, limited to crates, except for a threadbare sofa that Alix had claimed when she arrived. A couple of “patients” wandered around the room, idly occupying their time until their turn for surgery.

Getting here had been a challenge requiring some bribery and stealth. There was an inherent disappointment in realizing the operation was happening in such an unhygienic location. She made a note to herself to purchase some antibio patches, just to be on the safe side. She wished her options weren’t as limited as they were, but given her background and the nature of the information she needed to retain, an unregistered storage drive mod was her best option.

A nurse – a haggard gaur Alix could only describe as “lumpy”  –  opened the door and poked her head out, asking, “Kira Vaan?”

Alix rose and made her way over to the door. The nurse held it open in her strong, Gaur arms. Alix noticed the telltale injection scars on her forearms. Apparently, the nurse had some augmentations of her own or a potential drug problem.

Ah well, Alix thought, too late to back out now.

She followed the Gaur down the hallway. The Gaur’s steps were heavy and lumbering across stubby legs, and several times Alix noticed the nurse do the “knuckle-walk” – a result of the sheer amount of weight and the length of the arms of the Gaur as a species.

The nurse gestured to a door, and Alix stepped inside. The Tentachlid surgeon was already sitting at a counter, filling out paperwork.

“Please sit on the examination bed,” he said. He did not look up from his paperwork.

Alix looked at the door behind her, which was now shut, and considered simply walking away. She sighed and hopped onto the examination bed, which seemed tailored to a Blassnaught’s proportions.

“Alright, miss…”

“Kira.”

“Sure. Kira,” the doctor winked with a singular eye, that appeared more to be a drawn-out blink, “what are you looking for?”

“I need a portable drive implant and an access port implanted into my body.”

“Hm. Cosmetically-clean?”

“Yes, preferably to be covered by the fur on my arm.”

“Well, that’s going to run you at least 3000 credits for the drive, and another 450 for the cosmetic work.”

“I have the money.”

“Well then, let’s get started. Anesthetic?”

“T-that’s not included?”

“Surgical-grade anesthetic is expensive and in short supply for pop-ups like this. There’s a premium of 200 credits attached to it. 350 if you want the good stuff.”

Alix gritted her teeth. “Fine. Anesthetic. The good kind… but don’t skimp on it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The doctor tapped a small series of buttons on the side of the bed and forced it to recline, catching Alix off balance.

“Just let me know the drive and adapter you want, and where you want the implant.”

Alix stared at the door one last time and then turned her attention to the inventory list on the tablet the doctor held in front of her.

…

Mara, Marken, and Spril found themselves back on the Greensleeves, talking over the options of the gardening business. Suddenly, Mara felt the mobile in her pocket vibrate. She excused herself and stepped to the side to see that she had received a text from Guugel:

GUUGEL: Are you and Marken seeing that gardener today? Can you ask about a sapling for me? I’m looking for one.

Mara smiled and quickly hammered out a message:

MARA: Come see us on his ship. Dock 16, Section Orange, Budget Docking.

She felt a little devious. She could have easily asked for the sapling on Guugel’s behalf, but Spril had been so keen to learn about the Wot that she felt like maybe Spril was interested in him. It was worth a shot, at least, getting them in the same room. She tucked the mobile back into her pocket and made her way back to the others.

…

Kracker felt optimistic. The guitarist had eagerly accepted the commission to play for the party. He was a nice young Gomben named Jem who was courteous and took copious notes about what exactly Kracker was asking for.

He was on his way now to pick up some snacks and drinks for the party to be delivered to the ship. Nothing extravagant, of course, but something for everyone there. As he made his way down the crowded boulevard, a sign caught his eye. He studied it, recognizing the green diamond of the medical industry. He weaved through the crowd and stepped inside. The air was chilly, and he immediately knew that this was a Grey establishment. Shelves featured boxes of medical supplies and equipment, and behind the counter were locked cases of premium-quality pharmaceuticals. At the counter stood a rather bored-looking Grey.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Kracker approached and looked around. “I’m looking for a medical thing.”

The Grey had no discernible eyebrow, but the muscles above the left eye contorted, indicating confusion.

“This… is a medical supply shop.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m trying to find a gift for a friend, but I can’t… hm.”

The Grey sighed. “A tool?”

“My friend? Yes. Haha…”

The Grey’s brow muscle contorted again.

Kracker coughed, “I mean, yes, the thing I am looking for is a tool. Something to deal with triage…”

The Grey rubbed a temple with a finger in contemplation. “I assume you are referring to a diagnostic probe?”

Kracker nodded, “Uh-huh, uh-huh!”

The Grey briskly stepped around the side of the counter, and Kracker followed him to a shelf displaying different boxes of probes of various brands and specifications.

“Do you know what kind of probe your friend might be looking for?”

“No idea,” Kracker beamed.

The Grey sighed.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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The post Cosmic Dash: Signing Bonus – Part Two appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Altogether, it was the largest sum of money Dash had ever received in one go. Growing up in Movari village, on the moon of Ocia, he had never even entertained so many antecedent zeroes addressed to him and him alone. The rate of 50,000 credits per professional engineering contract was very much above standard, sure, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The additional 50,000 from signing the contractual agreement for Kimney, however, brought the total up to a solid 100,000 credits. It was more than double the collective net worth of his old village, even today.

He was technically worth more than his whole village’s worth of fishers, spears, boats, and homes. It was an odd and uncomfortable realization.

Dash hunched over the workbench of the engineering bay, elbows on the table, chin resting on his palms, studying his bank account on his mobile. It was too much. He pored over the options he had, and boy, did he have options. 100,000 credits could buy him a lot of information.

Maybe he could finally track down his father? No. That was a bad idea.

After Vark, after the incident… he put his father to rest. It was for the best. Life was too short and now too full of opportunities to dwell on the past; too full to dwell on the non-existent figure that had already screwed up most of his life, to begin with. The signing bonus was Kimney’s reward for Dash’s hard work. His hard work. Kimney had said as much himself. Dash had earned this, and no, he wouldn’t let the specter of his father taint this for him, like it had virtually everything else.

His thoughts drifted to his days at the University, and how much time he spent tracking down his father, and how much of life he’d missed. He thought about how he had treated Mara and how that’d nearly ruined their friendship.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The tangle in his chest loosened.

But this was still a lot of money. Too much. Dash continued to stare at the numbers – weighing options.

What use did he have for so much money, really?

…

“50,000 credits could swing one hell of a party, couldn’t it?”

Dorian stared at Kracker, dumbfounded. 

“You’re joking.”

“I’d never joke about a good time.”

Dorian took a bite out of a moist but bland sponge cake and went back to cleaning out and reorganizing his medical bag in the common room. There was so much space in the med-bay that he did not know how to organize it, yet. For now, he kept his bag full of his most-used supplies and instruments. Organizing the larger workspace was going to take a lot more concentration; concentration that would be impossible to reach with Kracker hanging about.

“I bet you’re just gonna shove your share of the credits in some savings account,” Kracker chuckled. “Or are you gonna invest?”

Dorian leaned back. “I wish,” he said as he turned to Kracker. “I still have my student loans to pay off. This will cover it, of course, but I’ll have maybe a couple hundred credits left over.”

“Ouch.”

“Aren’t you still paying off your loans?” 

Kracker took a cursory bite of the sponge cake, grimaced, and set the half-eaten piece back on the table. “The University covered a lot of my costs. Disability aid.”

Dorian interrupted, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Right…the whole wing thing-“

He noticed Kracker glaring at him. His eyes narrowed before he shifted away from Dorian.

“Yeah, the ‘wing thing.’ I also had a computer programming scholarship as well, but nobody thinks about that.”

Kracker stood up to stretch. He ran some fingertips against the grain of his feathers on his wing, enjoying the cool air flowing over the bits of skin that were seldom exposed.

“It’s not a big deal, though. I just do my flying in a cockpit. I figure that I fly more than anyone back home does. Even with Skyhaven being laid out the way it is.”

Dorian smiled before returning to his bag. Kracker continued his stretching.

“I gotta say, this place is growing on me,” the Parrack said as he peered around. “I thought this common room was a bit big at first, but there’s a lot of airflow. It feels nice.”

Kracker turned to look at the small hydroponic gardening station placed next to the stairwell down to the lower deck. “The garden is really cool, too.”

Dorian grunted in response. He was focused on an old-looking diagnostic probe. It made a rattling sound as he rolled it between his fingers. Kracker noticed the sound along with Dorian’s souring expression.

“What the heck is that thing anyway?” Kracker asked.

Dorian grabbed a small multi-tool and began to disassemble the probe.

“Diagnostic probe,” he said in his clipped, concentrating monotone. “It measures electromagnetic energy emanating from key anatomical points. Variations from standard readings compiled from established baselines can serve for quick diagnosis. It’s mostly a triage tool.”

Kracker scratched his head.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” he asked.

Dorian smirked. “If you were a medical student, you would.”

“Yeah, okay. So, that thing’s pretty important…right?”

Dorian was now reassembling the probe with practiced fluidity. “It’s a big help.”

Kracker grabbed his hat from the seat cushion and pulled it over his head.

“Whatever. While you’re busy being a nerd, I’m gonna set up a party.”

Dorian looked up at Kracker. “Jerk.”

However, Kracker was making his way down the stairs and was just out of earshot.

Dorian shook the probe. Somehow, the rattling had gotten worse.

…

“So you’re telling me even the robots got paid?”

Mara stood there in disbelief as Marken nodded.

He then shrugged, “Well, more like a stipend in the budget to ensure proper maintenance for our robot friends. Bucketbot… well… I guess it’s ‘Ship’ now-“

A tinny, robotic voice crackled over the speaker in Marken’s office, “You can still call me Bucketbot, sir. The name is familiar to me, and it should make it easier for you all to interface with me as the ship’s artificial intelligence. Mr. Kameku was quite kind in easing this transition for me. I assure you I will also continue to perform my duties as a bucket as well.”

Marken looked slightly alarmed, still not used to Bucketbot’s ability to communicate from anywhere on the ship. It was like a home haunted by the ghost of a mop bucket.

“Uh, right, thank you, Bucketbot…” Marken shuddered slightly and then continued, “Well, Bucketbot and Blu each have some money set aside in the general fund. I asked to put Dash and Alix in charge of those funds.”

Mara laughed a bit. “That’s pretty progressive. But it makes sense given what happened on Orlindia.”

“Well, it is Kimney we’re talking about. I was under the impression that he was quite rattled by that whole thing.”

Mara slid into the chair across from Marken’s desk as he continued to sort through datachips. He’d pop one into the terminal, verify its contents, pop it out, and toss it into a drawer for later organization.

“So, how are you planning on spending your 70k, Marken?” she asked.

Marken continued sorting through datachips as he considered his options.

“Honestly, I don’t want for much. We’re in such good shape now. I suppose I’ll just buy some nice food-tech and then hoard the rest. Maybe invest in a restaurant one day.”

“Actually, I had an idea I thought might appeal to you.”

Marken paused his sorting and looked up at Mara. In the darkness of his room, his eyes glowed eerily.

Mara continued, “Well, I’ve been talking with Spril after the whole unpleasantness with Vark. Just to make sure he was okay.”

“How is he?”

“He’s doing great, actually. He really bounced back; it’s kind of incredible how fast that was. We’ve been messaging back and forth since then.”

She leaned forward.

“Anyway, I’ve been looking into his business, and I was thinking about investing. The guy knows his plants, and his ship is perfect for that sort of thing. Do you know that some of his plants sell to colonies for thousands of credits?”

“They do?”

“Yeah, they’re hardy, fully-grown plants already in bloom, so colonists love them. He’s thinking about trading in the Greensleeves for a new ship. Something that would allow him to grow more plants and hire a couple more hands.”

“So you think we should invest?”

“Yeah, I figure at the volume he is looking at, a percentage would net us a very tidy profit over time. I’m looking to pool together a 30% stake in the ship, but I’d rather not go in alone.”

Marken paused his sorting and scratched at his chin for a few moments. He then smiled and looked at Mara.

“I’m in, but on one condition…”

…

“Big party tonight, Alix!”

Alix saw the Parrack leaning into her room. He smiled cheekily, which had become somewhat endearing to her over the past few days she had known him.

“Is it now? I assume this isn’t an excuse to get me alone?”

“I have you alone now, technically.”

“Well, I am busy at the moment, but I will make sure I finish up in time for the party. Frankly, I thought you’d had enough after the hangover from the other night.”

“I’m not so sure it was a hangover. I think maybe that assassin clocked me in the head as I was trying to pin him down…”

“Yes, you were very brave.”

Alix stood up and made her way to the door. Kracker backed out as she threw on her jacket that was hanging on a wall hook.

He looked puzzled. “Where are you heading off to?”

“I have a couple of errands to run, but I’ll be back in time. Don’t worry about it.”

“Do you need some help? I was running out for something and-“

“Maybe another time, this is a bit of a… personal issue.”

“O-oh. Okay.”

Alix smiled at the Parrack. “It’s nothing to worry about. Not blowing you off or anything. I am looking forward to tonight. I just have some things I need to get done.”

Kracker grew a little more chipper.

“Oh, sure, of course. See you tonight!”

…

The small Terrekin district that surrounded the embassy had some of the familiarity of Ocia, albeit simulated at best. The walkways, which were traditionally supposed to be a fusion of metal and concrete, like in most cities, were instead replaced by sandy paths that were heated from excess energy from various power lines and cooling system coils. Additionally, many of the buildings in the block also had painted murals or large screens that projected Ocian landscapes. 

The sight of these and the feeling of the sand between his toes made Dash a little wistful, and the feeling only increased as he passed by a small alcove where a vendor was selling fried strips of fatfish on skewers, drizzled in koba sauce. He immediately found himself stuck in place, absorbing the atmosphere and the delicious and pungent odor. He made his way over and ordered two of the skewers, along with a poca-melon juice. He then took his bounty to a wooden bench that was wrapped around a transplanted frond-tree and devoured his snack with a greedy glee.

He observed Terrekin spilling in and out of the embassy, and watching bemused aliens exploring the block, curious about the Terrekin culture and the sandy walkways. He noticed a small party of Grey, huddled together snapping vids and pics. Most of them looked wilted, even though, to Dash at least, the climate controls were actually a little on the cooler side.

He took in a little bit more of the atmosphere as he sucked the koba sauce off the skewers. He chucked the sauce-strained wood into a recycling bin and then proceeded to make his way into the embassy. Inside, he claimed his ticket and sat down in a traditional woven-reed chair, waiting for his turn to talk to one of the ambassador’s few, overworked representatives. He picked up a complimentary magazine and felt the textured plastic between his fingertips. He felt a greasy sensation and was disgusted by it until he realized it was very much the remnants of his snack, still on his fingertips. He peered around, making sure nobody noticed him take the now-greasy plastic mag and tuck it under the pile of mags in the center of the table.

I forgot just how sticky that stuff can be, he thought to himself.

…

Guugel felt various eyes upon him as he wandered the wide boulevards that made up Market Row. His bonus of 30,000 credits was burning a hole in his pockets… that is, if he wore pants. Instead, he had his backpack that carried a few bits and bobs, including some credit chips and some various impulse purchases he had made today. Among them was a small dancing Syrien doll that wiggled on springs. He wasn’t sure why he was compelled to buy it; it just seemed like a curiosity worth keeping with him. How many of the other Wot had dancing Syrien dolls? How many Wot, really, had set foot on Teslovia anyway? These days, they weren’t well-traveled people.

His feet had begun to hurt from the walk, so he decided to go for a rail-ride around the massive super-city to seek some new and interesting location to explore. He stepped onto one of the regular trams as the doors opened, and placed himself at a seat opposite a window so he could see the sights as they flew by. Much to his chagrin, though, a rather obese Gaur took the seat directly opposite him, blocking off the window. Guugel’s brow furrowed in annoyance.

Of course, he thought.

…

The club scene on Teslovia was quite literally on all day at the major clubs. Kracker hit up spot after spot, weaving in and out of the tangles of bodies and soaking up the mood, hoping to find some DJ who, for a reasonable fee, could be coaxed into doing a private show on the Strike. Unfortunately, with the scene the way it was in the city, most DJs were almost entirely booked up or hesitant to give up what little rest time they had. Teslovia was in many ways a party world.

This was frustrating, to say the least. A dinky playlist over the ship’s sound system was not the sort of vibe he was looking for. He wanted a real banger, something that’d get even the super-reserved Dorian up and on the dance floor. It had been a pretty crazy year for everyone, and the last party ended up being pretty reserved and low-key, at least until someone tried to kill Mr. Kimney. Needless to say, it wasn’t that great of a party after all…

Of course, by the time he hit the fifth club, he had begun to reconsider his whole approach. Maybe a banger wasn’t what was needed? Kracker took a sip from his flask and tucked it back into his pocket. He decided that maybe a smaller, more intimate arrangement would be better. He signaled a scooter and hopped on, instructing the driver to take him to a place where some amateurs played.

…

Spril looked pretty good, and by his attitude, it was impossible to tell that a few months earlier, he had been sharing a ship with a complete maniac who had assaulted him, the same maniac who had been stalking Dash and nearly killed him. Spril sat on a pile of bags at the base of the ramp of the Greensleeves, looking calm and unbothered.

“Thanks so much for coming to see me, friends. I was a little afraid you wouldn’t.”

Mara stepped away toward the underside of the ship, analyzing its condition. Marken stepped toward Spril.

“Nonsense,” the Astro-mole said, “you were in no way at fault regarding the unpleasantness a few months ago. You were just as much a victim. I’m glad to see you’re doing so fine.”

Spril laughed airily, “Well, we’re pretty hardy, us Florarans. Speaking of which, I have a gift.”

Spril plucked a seed out of a pouch on his hip, flicked it into the air, and caught it, weighing it in his closed palm. “Mara told me about your garden on the ship. I’m incredibly happy to hear that you have one. Please, take this.”

He held out his fist, and Marken reached out a tentative palm. Spril dropped the seed into Marken’s paw.

“It’s a pepper I’ve been experimenting with. It takes on characteristics based on the other vegetables it’s cooked with. It’s a good way to stretch your real flavorful veggies.”

“I’m not much of a gardener,” Marken said.

“Me neither,” Mara added.

“Oh, no worries, my plants are guaranteed to grow. Just place it in the soil, and you should be fine. There’s a little bit of me in each one.”

Marken pocketed the seed as Mara returned to the pair.

Marken shrugged, “Thank you, Spril. I wish we had brought something for you.”

“Well, if you are interested in my little venture, then I am positive we can arrange for something!” Spril laughed. It took on a flutey tone.

…

Teslovia’s district of “Wastetown” took every opportunity it could to assert its namesake. Wastetown wasn’t the actual, planned name of that section of the city, which was actually originally known as Oldtown, but to everyone on the planet, it was simply Wastetown. For the most part, the upper reaches of the city that branched off from Old Teslovia and Cityheart were acceptable for most residents. Most visitors were less likely to be anywhere near the area, though, as the lower sections were widely considered to be lawless, dangerous, and were generally sealed off for most residents.

Teslovia had long since given up trying to handle Wastetown and its many problems. Now they simply quarantine the rot, but the rot persisted and would one day spread. By then, Teslovia would expand and build shiny new towers on what were today’s visions of progress. It was all wallpaper over brittle wood.

With that said, if you wanted to get into Wastetown, it was totally possible, but it took some work. Work that Alix had been putting in for the past couple of hours.

Getting down to the second level from the third level was simply a matter of bribing the right security officer to use a private elevator, as the public ones had become too dangerous. It was not unusual for some curious travelers to try to head down to the lower levels using a public elevator, only to be immediately mugged or kidnapped when they stepped out. Using the security elevator eliminated that risk. It was a bit disconcerting to step into the second-level security station and be completely ignored. As long as the right palms were greased, anyone seemed to be able to wander in and out as they pleased.

Getting down to the first level, though… that was the real challenge.

“Hey, there pretty thing…”

Alix didn’t turn toward the voice. She could smell the drugs wafting off the Gomben. The chemical odors were powerful and allowed her to position him through a simple sniff.

“Hey, I’m talkin’ to ya!”

The Gomben reached for her arm, but Alix spun around and drew her knife to his throat. He whimpered as she backed him into an alley.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa!” The Gomben was no match for her and trembled violently as Alix backed him into a darkened nook.

She looked him over. He was definitely a waster, through and through, and was of no real use to her. She hissed and threw him to the side. He stumbled forward and caught himself on a wall. He peered back at her and then wiped some residue from his trunk before he hurriedly stumbled out of the alley.

Alix slipped the knife back into its sheath behind the small of her back. The only way to get to the first level safely was to buy passage. Thankfully, she had a recent cash infusion to get her to where she needed to be.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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The post Cosmic Dash: Signing Bonus – Part One appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Day Two: Part One

Surface of The Crush Force: Hour 37

Guugel was onto his second antenna now, technically third, as Blu and Bucketbot had guided him through the process via the first antenna in exchange for a small blow-torch. It was a laborious explanation process, with Guugel frequently needing to use a small tablet to communicate his messages to the robots and for them to communicate with him. The little robots had a far greater grasp on technology than Guugel had, particularly because they spent so much time with Dash, and they understood his various mechanical quirks. With the tutorial completed, the robots borrowed a few tools from Guugel’s kit and wandered off – to what purpose, he had no idea.

Traveling from ship to ship erecting the antennas had made one thing crystal clear… spacers were not particularly observant of the space outside of their ships. That was one thing Guugel would bring up with Dash later on: The Strike needed some kind of surface-based security scanner to prevent the very sort of stuff Guugel was currently engaged in.

He wouldn’t be engaged in it for much longer, of course. He only had a single antenna left to install.

The little Wot made his sweep of his immediate area for any security measures, and content to move on, locked the toolkit in place, unslung the grapple rifle from his shoulder, and took aim at the next ship. He wound the small lever on the gun to charge up the electrical pulse that would shoot through the magnet, repelling the grappling line away from the reel. He pulled the trigger, felt the vibration of the electricity traveling through the magnet, and then was pleased to see the head of the line sailing cleanly to the next ship where it collided with the hull and stuck to it. Guugel jerked the rifle to ensure the line was hooked to the ship and then satisfied, began to pull himself over. Due to his size and weight, the grapple remained in place, and reeling in the line pulled him to the point of contact. As he approached the ship, he threw out his feet, with the magnetic boots’ soles aimed squarely at the surface of the other ship.

Then he noticed the patrol ship, approaching from the nose of his current landing.

The patrol ship was a tiny, two-person vehicle that belonged to the Jump-Gate Authority and Guugel watched it move from ship to ship, creeping ever closer as he helplessly reeled himself to his target. He continually turned to track the ship’s position until now the ship was located behind his point of view. He whipped around to see it, not realizing where he was until he collided with and bounced off of the hull near the grapple point.

He scrambled and tightened his grip on the rifle, swung around, and threw his feet to the hull, feeling the slight buzz in his feet from the magnetic energy making contact. He scrambled to detach the grapple line, swung the rifle over his shoulder, clutched the toolcase, and kept his body as flush to the hull as he could as the patrol ship studied his position.

“Oh man, oh man.”

He considered possibly tapping into his telepathy, but at this point, it was safer to do nothing. That turned out to be the right course of action. The patrol ship swooped past. It wasn’t worth going any further now; this ship would have to do for the final antenna. He reoriented himself and made his way to the communication beacon.

Marken’s Bunk: Hour 38

The kitchen smelled heavily of various cuisines and Marken found himself in his element. It wasn’t readily apparent, but he was an anxious person. He didn’t show it much, though, thank goodness, but there was always a tension in his stomach and the only time that ever really diminished was when he was at a stove, oven, or working a mixing bowl. Of course even now, in his element, the tension was there… all thanks to Dorian.

There was a feeling of annoyance and guilt he’d been dealing with since yesterday. His attempts to forge a bond with the young Grey had failed, spectacularly so, and he had only dug in deeper trying to connect with the kid through food.

Marken loved food. It could be simple, complex, poor, rich… Food could be anything. It was universal. well, maybe not.

Though, Guugel didn’t necessarily eat “food.”

Maybe the analogy was flawed. Maybe the approach was all wrong.

Dash told him about the music. Apparently, nearly everyone on the ship had some sort of crafted playlist they had received from Dorian. Everyone except Mr. Bernell Marken, the humble ship’s cook. No… scratch that… the CEO of the damn company.

Marken realized he had been stirring a little too vigorously when he felt hot water splash his paw, arm, and apron. “Damn.”

He wheeled his stool to the sink and plunged his hand and arm into the running tap water in an attempt to soothe the steamed fur. No burns, thankfully. He dried his fuzzy arm to the best of his ability and wheeled back to the stove to get back to the stewing broth. He didn’t like feeling like this. He always came off as affable because it was an image he actively cultivated around himself. It was what allowed him to afford the Lucky Strike in the first place with less than half of a rather lacking inheritance from his parents after they had died.

He stopped stirring.

All he wanted in life was to cook. That was his passion. His parents never really understood it, and while they never forbade it, they never encouraged it either. Maybe that’s why he created the delivery company. It seemed safe. It seemed like what they would have wanted. That just meant that cooking became his life in a very roundabout way, and was the lens through which he saw his world. He was good at it. Damn good. A good meal should be a way to bond, he figured. But with Dorian…

He sighed and felt that little ball of anxiety tighten up in his stomach.

He thought about the music again. For him, music was just a sort of entertainment… not something he really connected with, but he could understand that people could connect to it. Maybe that was the whole point? Maybe he had never found the right music, just like Dorian had never found the right spices and combinations of flavors.

That would change though.

Marken set the broth to simmer and consulted his notes about Grey flavor profiles. As he reviewed the notes he considered songs that he liked. Maybe Dorian could expand his horizons.

Little by little the ball of anxiety began to lessen.

Surface of The Light Shifter: Hour 39

The final antenna, of course, ended up being the trickiest. The soldering wand had run out and he nearly lost the secondary spool. He had only barely managed to snatch it in time before it floated away into the cosmos. He was tired now and the artificial atmosphere in the suit was beginning to grow stale. Wot respiration was far from taxing on any resource, but regardless he knew he was pushing the suit, and himself, to the limit.

The return to the Strike was uneventful. The process of grappling from ship to ship was laborious, and the constant spinning around the jump-gate began to take its toll on him and he felt his organs shift and tilt over and over. Back on the hull of Strike, he took a moment to center himself. He hadn’t realized until now he was exhausted. When there was a tap on his shoulder he nearly lost his magnetic contact and nearly drifted off, but he managed to stabilize himself.

He turned to see Blu and Bucketbot, scoured with all manner of dirt, grime, and what seemed to be scratches.

The trio stood in silence on the hull. Blu took the tablet that he had borrowed from Guugel, hastily typed out something, and handed it over.

It simply read: “Long day?”

Upper Common Room: Hour 42

Dinner was far too quiet for Bernell Marken’s comfort.

Normally the group meal would be raucous and brimming with life, but everyone at the table now felt listless and distracted, as though the idleness of the last two days had clung to them like some form of miasma. The only sounds heard were breathing, some polite chewing, and the occasional crunch from Kracker as his beak crushed the various nuts he ate. Yet Marken found himself silent as well.

What could he say? He had been in his own ridiculous quagmire for two days, stressed about Dorian’s simple tastes which in the grand scheme of things amounted to nothing of importance. This listless orbit had clearly sapped the vitality from everyone. Resigning himself to it, Marken ate quietly, observing each member of the crew.

Marken observed Guugel standing on his seat to reach for his bowl of water. He watched the Wot dip his fingers into the bowl, withdraw them, and then rub the wet fingertips on his brow. Marken knew little of Wots, nor did the rest of the galaxy, but Guugel seemed happy enough with his light, water, and soil. What Marken saw here, however, was exhaustion he couldn’t understand. He hadn’t seen much of Guugel lately, but he had no idea what could have driven him to exhaustion. It was just another symptom of the malady that was the jump-gate delay.

Dash and Mara, from what Marken could tell, were looking at each other, but not at each other, diverting their glances just in time so as to not make one aware of the other. Marken had admittedly not paid too much attention to what was happening between them but knew them well enough to know they had a fight and that they were each attempting to bridge the divide in their own way, only hesitantly. Having known the two for several years he could see the signs, and he wished them the best. The two fought constantly but always managed to reunite. Perhaps one day they would get to the root of their tension, and then maybe they could finally be together like he had always wanted for them.

Dorian, well… Marken owed him an apology. After dinner, most definitely.

The most curious case at the table was Kracker. Normally he was a bundle of manic energy, bad jokes, racing statistics, or workshopped pranks. Here though he sat in silence, munching on his herbivorous dinner staring at nothing at the center of the table. This was the most unsettling thing about the silence… Kracker himself was compelled to keep quiet. Marken had heard rumblings about the incident with a lost ship here and there, and he was well aware of Kracker working on something that kept him in the nav room for two days, but he had been so involved in his own foibles that he missed something of great importance.

That was maybe the most uncomfortable thing of all.

Upper Common Room: Hour 42

It was time.

Kracker pushed the bowl away from himself and then rose to his feet, his fingertips of both winged hands splayed across the dining table. He coughed for attention, but all eyes were already on him. He looked over to Mara who gave him a reassuring nod.

“I need to ask you guys about something important.”

He paused.

“I am thinking about doing something that can be very bad for us.”

Marken was the first to respond. “What do you want to do?”

Kracker fished into his pockets and pulled out a small holo-projector. He set it to the center of the table and turned it on. A three-dimensional wireframe projection flickered to life, showing the current object of their misery… the damaged jump-gate.

“I started out of boredom. I decided to dig up whatever info I could about the jump-gate, why it stopped, and maybe see what I could figure out.”

“What did you figure out?” Dorian asked.

“Well, based on my calculations, there was a ship called The Sulany that was caught in the jump-gate as a cargo container hit the structure, damaging the gate and interrupting the wormhole travel The Sulany has just started.”

Marken shuddered. “Oh no.”

“Basically, the wormhole dissipated and sent The Sulany spiraling into the other side of the galaxy. There’s no way of getting to them unless, at the very least, the Federation, Empire, and Neutrality work together on making a specialized jump-gate.”

“And the odds of that happening are practically nil,” Dash added.

Marken asked, again, “So, what is it you want to do?”

Kracker took his feathered palm and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Well, the JGA is claiming no such thing happened, that nobody was in transit during the gate malfunction, and they’re hoping to keep it quiet. I don’t think this should be something just swept under the rug.”

Dorian leaned forward. “Kracker… have you considered contacting the authorities about this? Maybe send communication to the Federation directly?”

Kracker shook his head and frowned. “The jump-gates keep our whole civilization thing going. The JGA isn’t something that anyone is going to take on because it’s vital to all three factions. They’re invested too deep to risk anything.” If the Federation pushes to do anything with the JGA then the Empire would just try to sway the JGA more into their favor and who knows what that would do for the Federation. The JGA is basically its own government.”

“Nobody wants to rock the ship,” Dash took a sip of water, and then continued. “So what exactly are you proposing?”

Kracker began to pace back and forth behind Dash and Mara.

“I am going to leak all the data I’ve snagged, and include my calculations concerning where the Sulany may be right now.”

Dorian looked puzzled and asked, “But you just said that nobody is going to do anything, so what is the point of leaking the information?”

Marken smiled. “They won’t do anything of their own accord…”

Kracker snapped his fingers, pointing to Marken, and continued. “Right, if this goes public then all three factions would need to act on it from public pressure. But I guess the most important thing is that, well… they won’t be forgotten.”

Everyone sat in silence. Kracker continued.

“It’s just… I looked at their manifest and… they were us, you know? Seven people just trying to make a living out here and then in an instant just… gone. We’ve had our shit to deal with-” he turned to Dash, who sat in silence, “some of us more than others, but we scraped through.”

He paused and turned to the viewing window at the other end of the common room.

“But that could have been us. We have each other, of course… but I would want others to remember us… to know what happened.”

He turned back to the table and his friends.

“The JGA will look for the source of the leak. I’ll do everything in my power to scramble it so they can’t track me down, but doing this could get all of us in real trouble. I’m not trying to seem paranoid, but if they’re willing to cover up The Sulany who knows how far they’ll go to keep it covered up.”

He sat back down in his chair and leaned back. He crossed his arms.

“So that’s what I want to do.”

Upper Common Room: Hour 42

It was a lot to think about. Marken immediately knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to give Kracker the go-ahead and to leak the data and damn the consequences, but it wasn’t his decision. Yes, the Lucky Strike was his ship, and the Lucky Strike Transport Company was his business, but he always found he valued the opinions of his crew- no, his family.

Mara stood up. “Let’s put it to a vote.”

Marken expected this from the beautiful, pragmatic Mara, who he relied on above all others, who did more than her fair share, beyond being the captain. He could always trust her to do what needed to be done, often before he knew what needed to be done.

Mara turned her head to Guugel. ” What do you think?”

The Wot closed his singular eye in contemplation for a moment and then gave his signature “thumbs-up” gesture. Mara looked to Dash for confirmation.

Dash smirked, “I don’t think you need me to know that was a yes.”

Mara rolled her eyes, “Just being thorough.”

She turned her attention to Dorian, who looked, of course, nervous at the prospect of making any form of decision, much less one of such high stakes. To his credit though she said nothing as he nodded and added: “It’s the right thing to do.”

He was a good kid, maybe a little overly serious, but Marken realized he wouldn’t have the young Grey any other way, really, fussiness issues aside.

She looked over to Dash who was chewing on a piece of fish. He shook his head, eyes closed. “You already know my answer.” Indeed, everyone already did.

Mara nodded. “So Dash is a yes. That leaves me, with a yes vote, naturally. Kracker’s vote is obvious.”

She turned to Marken. He smiled at her. “Let’s make sure nobody forgets The Sulany.”

Mara gave Kracker a curt nod, took her seat, and began to eat her dinner again. There was no more to be said, and Kracker, although he looked exhausted, smiled widely as he popped a large, ripe berry into his beak.

It was now as though a veil had been lifted and the gloom that pervaded the dinner while having not quite diminished, thinned out enough to where everyone seemed to be in a better state than they were.

Dorian was the first to speak. “I am really looking forward to getting off this ship for a while, maybe go for a nice walk where something crazy doesn’t happen to us.”

Dash replied, “With our luck, the planet will probably spontaneously combust the minute you set foot on it.”

Mara snorted and choked slightly, caught off guard by the remark, and soon everyone began to laugh.

Marken was proud of his family, not only for their selflessness but the fact they would always find a way to shake off the doldrums.

Upper Common Room: Hour 42

Uncharacteristically, Dash volunteered to clean up after dinner. Normally he would clear up his plate and then return to the engineering bay to work on whatever technological terrors he was occupied with beforehand, but tonight seemed different. Mara realized she had blown him off a bit and decided to stay with him to clean up as well. He seemed pleased about that.

So far though, the help she was offering consisted of her leaning against the counter while he did the work as he seemed to get a little twitchy whenever she offered to do anything.

“It’s not that I don’t want the help, it’s just that it gets kind of cramped with both of us over the same sink. Besides, what do you suggest, we share the steam wand?”

“Or we could take turns or something?”

Dash scrubbed at a bowl.

“That would just make things take longer. Help makes things go faster. Help does not, typically, make things go slower. That would not be helpful. It’s the exact opposite!”

“Well then what do you suggest?”

“I didn’t need help.” He scrubbed for a few moments and then glanced over at her. “If you wanted to talk you could have said you wanted to talk.”

“Figured I could at least offer to help.”

“Bleh.”

Dash finished the last plate and put the steam wand back into its sheath. He looked at the pile of clean dishes, bowls, and cups.

“I just realized I have no idea where a lot of this goes.”

Mara laughed. “That’s fine, I’ll just sit here and help. The bowls go down there.”

Dash rolled his eyes and started gathering the bowls. Mara silently pointed to a cabinet low to the ground on his left. Sure enough, that was where the bowls were kept.

“Teamwork,” she said.

Dash grabbed a bundle of utensils and moved toward the drawer next to her. He started laying the utensils out into separate niches.

“Those go to the far right,” Mara chimed in.

Dash rolled his eyes and made a show of moving the knives into the far right section. When he was done he grabbed another batch of implements from the sink and began to sort those as well.

His sorting did not stop as he asked Mara, “How is your ankle?”

“You noticed?”

“I did not, actually. Dorian pointed it out. I’ve not seen a lot of you since yesterday, and this isn’t a big ship. I was thinking you were avoiding me.”

“I’m avoiding a lot of things. Not you though. We’re okay.”

Dash smiled, “I’m glad.”

He closed a cabinet that he had loaded some cups into and then made a show of clapping his hands as if he’d accomplished a vital task.

“So, how is your ankle?”

“All in my head, apparently, at least that’s what our resident medic says.”

“Well, he’s a smart kid, he’s probably right. What are you dealing with?”

Mara hopped down from his spot on the counter. “I’m not sure, but he said I need to find a hobby that doesn’t involve injuring myself.”

Dash smiled. “I think I may have just the thing.”

Bunk Room: Hour 42

Dorian stared at the playlist he had made. Fifteen songs were selected with discretion and arranged in a fashion that would evoke the feelings that Dorian couldn’t get across to Marken. Just like everything else that Dorian tried to do, it was meticulous. There was just one more thing he had to do. He called Marken down to the bunk he shared with Dash and Kracker. The small cook knocked on the door a few times, and Dorian let him in. Marken seemed reluctant to speak, so neither did Dorian, for a moment. Marken opened his mouth to speak, but Dorian held up his hand.

“Just listen to this,” he said.

He turned off the lights, walked over to his mixing equipment, and put on his headphones. He took a deep breath and pressed play on his mixing software. The room filled with the sound of a wailing guitar, which he modulated with one of his knobs. The drums came in, as well as another guitar; Dorian altered the sound profile to put more emphasis on the treble and the vocals during the bridge, before turning up the bass and applying an echo filter during the chorus. All the while, a pair of projection lights played upon the ceiling of the bunk, dancing along with the music. His improvisations were messy at first, but he soon got into a flow, making the song not only his own but Marken’s, as well.

Marken stood there, seemingly mesmerized by the lights and sounds. Song after song began and ended, Dorian bobbing his head along with the music, focusing on his knobs and crossfaders, playing between two different songs at points, affecting them to sync up and weave in and out of each other. Time seemed to slow down, becoming a constant state of rhythmic, thrumming pleasure. Before either of them knew it, with one final fade-out, Dorian finished his set. Wiping the sweat off of his forehead, Dorian looked up at Marken. Marken stared at him for a moment, before raising his hands to clap.

“That…was genius, Dorian,” Marken said. “I always knew that you had something like that in you.”

Dorian lowered his head, a little embarrassed.

“T-thanks,” he said. “I just wanted to make it up to you, for being such a stubborn idiot earlier.”

Marken shook his head.

“We can all get like that sometimes,” he said with a chuckle. “But, don’t let that get in the way of friendship.” He went up to Dorian and hugged his leg. “Friends?” Dorian stared down at Marken, feeling flush with embarrassment. But, he ignored that, brushing Marken’s furry head.

“Friends,” Dorian said.

Nav Room: Hour 43

It had taken a couple of hours and a lot of reading up on the back streams of the GIN to cobble together what, Kracker hoped, would be the most secure way to spread The Sulany data without making it traceable to him or his friends. Theoretically, he had managed to create something that would do the job, but one could never truly be sure. If he had an extra layer of encryption… a hardware solution, he’d be set. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the scrambling antennas he and Dash had collaborated on for such a purpose and he agonized over this. Dash hadn’t seen them, and nobody else besides him would have had any idea what they were. There was that fear that maybe that one last level of obscurement would be just enough to keep everyone safe. It was that frequent bargain, one that he had seen his best friend make so many times, pushing people away. Of course, the difference was that Dash was actually justified in pushing people away because of that bastard Vark, but that was just the “Kameku” luck that he had heard about so many times.

But even here Kracker found himself bargaining. He was desperate to do every conceivable thing he could to spare his family even the most remote chance of being caught in the JGA’s gaze. He had even, and making sure he told no one, created a text-doc in his private files, plain as day, as a confession of sorts, indicating he acted alone and that the rest of the crew was unaware of his actions. This of course was paired with a series of encrypted text docs, not only personalized password encoded but additionally burnout protocoled telling his friends to say nothing if the worst should happen. Even though he had done all this, there was still a fear that gnawed at him. If the worst should happen, the trigger would be pulled and he’d take the blame upon himself as best he could.

There is a moment in the throes of tunnel vision where the focus ebbs and one gains a hyper-awareness of the area around them. It is as though the body realizes it may be going too deep and shocks itself to allow for some reprieve from its laser focus. This instant came to Kracker, making him aware of the silent Wot who stood next to him in the nav room, staring at him, waiting to gather his attention.

“Oh hey Guugel,” Kracker said as he obscured his work on the monitor, unsure if the Wot had seen the incriminating letter, “What’s going on?”

The ever-silent security officer moved over to the virtual whiteboard that had been Kracker’s sole focus for two days and found a clear section. He began to scrawl out a message. When he was done Kracker knelt down to read it.

SET UP THE 4 SPOOFING ANTENNAS ON OTHER SHIPS. SEQUENCE # 10191979. USE IT WELL. WE BELIEVE IN YOU.

Kracker looked over at Guugel who stood there, eye closed and arms folded across his body. Kracker swept him up into his arms and began to cry.

“Thank you.”

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 45

“Wait. You’re telling me your parents, the archaeologists, never taught you about Ragna?”

Dash was completely shocked.

He sat on Mara’s bed, his shell off, his back against the wall. His mobile was in his hands, and he was in the process of sending her a Romance of the Three Factions invite. Mara sat at her terminal but had turned to face him.

“They weren’t the most attentive parents a kid could ask for.”

Dash snorted and looked over.

“Alright, select her, and I’ll fill you in as we play.”

“Why do I have to be Ragna?”

Dash dropped the mobile to his lap and leaned forward as his face grew serious.

“Because Ragna is the biggest badass to ever exist. She suits you and your stubbornness.”

“What?”

“Just do me a favor and start her campaign.”

“Okay, okay, fine.”

Dash moved toward the edge of the bed and placed his feet on the floor. He flipped through various messages on his mobile finding little of interest. He looked up at Mara who was focusing on the game. She seemed intrigued.

“So are we going to talk about what was really bugging you?”

Mara was still glued to the screen.

“That depends if you’ll talk to me about the Vark thing for a change.”

Dash sighed and continued to browse through his messages.

“Alright. You first, explain the ankle.”

Mara tapped at the virtual keyboard on the desk surface, each tap was audible.

“It was in my head, I was dealing with some stuff. I thought I twisted it while running.”

“Yes, but what kind of stuff?”

Mara paused the game and turned back to see Dash leaning forward with concern on his face.

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s dumb.”

Dash smiled, “Probably, but I’d like to hear it anyway.”

“Jerk.”

Mara spoke at length for a while as she played the game. Certain moments were accompanied by more frantic clicking in the game, whether from a spike in the challenge or some manifestation of her annoyances, no one could tell. She covered everything from the distance of her parents to the fight she had with him the day before, to the late-night discussion with Senn about the Sulany. But it all seemed to come back to her parents and the fact she hadn’t heard from them in what seemed like ages. All the while Dash listened patiently, and as her story came to its end, Dash put the finishing touches onto a message he had been writing as she spoke. He then switched to the game.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Dash said. “That was wrong of me to do that.”

“I could understand it, I think. I can be… forceful.”

Dash laughed. “That certainly is a diplomatic term for it.”

She paused the game and turned to him.

“So, what was the Vark situation actually like?”

Dash sat in silence for a moment as he planned his next move. On this virtual battlefield, he had a modicum of control. His reply was soft and distant.

“It was the single scariest thing I have ever experienced.”

Dash sent his units to capture a fortress and ended his turn.

“I’ve dealt with my fair share of my father’s enemies and I’ve even space-walked in a helmet that was bleeding air.” He paused as he watched Mara’s units sweep toward the fortress to cut him off from an escape.

“But what I saw in his eyes was hate I can never understand, and it horrified me. The whole time I was strapped down to that table I was sure I was going to die. I kind of accepted that, but what really got to me was not knowing if you guys were okay. Vark was insane and was hunting me down for a decade. I didn’t even know if he had gone through any of you to get to me.”

He looked up from the game at her.

“Then when I saw you I was thankful, but that just frightened me even more.”

“Why? I could handle myself.”

“Yeah, believe me, I know that. I remember what happened to Emvo, Charj, and Korren.”

“Shit… you knew about that?”

“The fact they left me alone and were covered in bruises? Yeah, I knew that was you. My thing was that I knew Vark wouldn’t stop at just beating someone, he’d kill. You’re good, but nobody is that good. Eventually, death catches up.”

He sighed.

“So when I saw you come in, I was relieved you were okay, but then I thought ‘What if she dies right in front of me?’”

“But I didn’t.”

“I know.”

“So there has to be more to it. You saw that we were okay. You know that we can get through anything, together.”

“Yeah, and I realized that maybe I’ve been an idiot for a long time. I spent so much time running away from the people who could help me because I didn’t want to lose anyone.”

He leaned forward, arms resting on his legs and his head dangling down. “I ended up losing you because of some idiotic notion that the right thing to do was to keep you, hell, everyone, at arm’s length, but the problem is that all this shit with Vark cleared up nothing. It didn’t mean I was right or wrong, or that maybe I could ease my guard, or if I should run away from you all. I still have nightmares about everyone dying, even though we all turned out okay in the long run. I’m always going to be afraid and there is nothing I can do about it, all because of my damn father I don’t even know.”

He grabbed his mobile and started his next turn, sending a secondary force to take a mountain pass to serve as a chokepoint. “Whatever it was my dad did or was to all these monsters has left me marked my whole life-” He looked at Mara. “I just feel like a target all the time and there is nothing I can do about it.”

Mara returned his glance for a moment, and then looked back to the screen, trying to counter Dash’s newest strategy.

“That’s no way to live,” she said.

“No way to live at all,” Dash echoed.

Nav Room: Hour 45

Kracker sat in awe at the analytics. Within minutes his packets of information had spread far beyond this system. Sure enough, “The Sulany” was trending across Chatr and some GIN networks were beginning to roll out live commentary about the leak. He quickly located a pirate stream and was happy to find his data easily downloadable. He copied it to his private drive and gave it a cursory glance before he decided to try to crack the data.

He tried several common and custom hacking protocols to see if he could trace it back to himself, but thankfully nothing had worked. He started a running packet-by-packet analysis but had fallen asleep by the time the analysis was completed, showing that the data was untraceable. He turned to a small bottle of ale sitting on his console and began to reach for it, but suddenly felt himself stop. He didn’t need it. Besides, he wasn’t done yet. He was exhausted now but had one last task to attend to. He opened the mail server and re-read the message Dash had sent him.

Kracker set to work.

Bunk Room: Hour 45

Dorian laid on his bunk, feeling relieved. That mix was one of the best he had done in a long time. It seemed to have the power of draining the pressure he had felt out of his body. And he was feeling all of that pressure for an audience of one! It wasn’t like the college parties, where one bad crossfade could ruin the entire vibe of the night and make people leave. This mix made one person happy; it made up for a dozen bad DJ gigs. Dorian felt so relaxed that he could have fallen right asleep. But, he heard the door to the bunks open.

Blu and Bucketbot walked into the room. The two were filthy; it was as if they had been digging underground, or otherwise getting into someplace dirty. Blu’s chassis was scratched up, and Bucketbot walked with a slight stagger. The two caught Dorian’s stare; Blu waved at Dorian while Bucketbot chimed. Dorian raised a limp hand to greet them. He felt too tired to do much else. He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

It seemed like while Blu and Bucketbot were having an adventure outside, Dorian just had an adventure within.

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 46

Dash and Mara were both lying on the bed, and each was staring at the ceiling. Mara’s hands rested on her stomach, while Dash’s were latticed beneath his head.

“I can understand the fear,” she looked over, “I mean, I have not had your experiences, but I understand them. I get the fear. I understand why you ended things with us back on Gnarlruut. I don’t agree with how, but I understand why.”

“A letter by the bed was the absolute worst way to handle it. You would have been fully justified in hating me for it for the rest of my life.”

“But it’s been good, hasn’t it? Being here with me?”

Dash nodded. “It feels right.”

“So I hope you know I mean it when I say I want to help.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not saying you can only understand all the crap by living it, but no matter what there is just always going to be this disconnect you and I have. I just hope that you can see through things when I, y’know, lash out. It’s never at you.”

He paused.

Mara asked, “You know I love you no matter what, right?”

“I know. I love you too.”

He turned his head and looked into her eyes. He laid out his hand between them and felt her hand take it into her own.

“You know we’re always going to fight and argue? Right?” He asked. “We just seem to be wired that way.”

“I’d like to think we’d get better at that as we keep going.”

Dash looked incredulous. “Hah, after the past couple of days, you’re saying we should start dating again?”

“Is that such a bad thing? It’s the best way for me to keep an eye on you.” She leaned over to her side. “Besides, who else can tolerate being with you for more than a week?”

Dash frowned. “You were doing so well, too. Almost had me back.”

They both laughed.

“Are we really doing this again?” he asked.

“We never really stopped,” she replied.

They kissed.

Bunk Room: Hour 47

After a couple of hours of rest, Dorian woke up in the middle of the night. He rubbed his head. While he was glad to be rested, for once, this was going to mess up his sleep cycle. He would be in the middle of important work in a few days and he would need to swallow a few caffeine pills to get through it. Oh, well. That was one of the many consequences of the last few days. His stomach grumbled. He realized that he hadn’t had much to eat in the past half a day. He got himself out of bed in the dark, trying not to step on any clothing or electronics that might be on the ground.

He walked down the dim, grey hallway toward the kitchen. Though it was the middle of the night, he swore that he could hear sizzling and smell food cooking. And the smells were less pungent and aggressive this time around. If anything, they were much more aromatic and calming. The smells drew him closer to the kitchen, where he found Marken cooking. He turned from the pot and faced Dorian.

“Somehow I knew you’d be up now,” Marken said. “I hadn’t seen you since your little concert for me earlier.”

“I…just needed to rest,” Dorian said, still groggy. “Isn’t it a little late to be making food?”

“It’s never the wrong hour to cook,” Marken said. “Whenever your tummy growls or you are just feeling low, a little homemade cooking will always fix your ailments.”

“A little bit of late-night folk wisdom?” Dorian asked.

Marken nodded.

“Indeed,” he said. He lifted up a ladle from the stew. It was full of vegetables, and the color was less strong than the dish that they had made earlier during the pause. “This dish is just for you,” he said. “Sit down and we’ll have some.”

Marken served himself and Dorian bowls of the special stew. Dorian stared at the thick stew. The last soup they had made stung Dorian’s eyes and made his nostrils wrinkle. This one had a hint of the spice from before, but not much else. He tried the soup as Marken watched. Indeed, it tasted slightly spicy, but it was not overwhelming. It settled on his tongue before disappearing. It was just enough to be a little exciting, but not enough to be repugnant. Dorian continued to eat, and Marken joined him.

“You like it?” Marken asked.

“Very much,” Dorian said, his mouth a bit full. “Thank you for toning it down. It’s much better.”

“You’re welcome,” Marken replied. “I’m glad that I was able to find something you’d like. You’re not like Kracker, who eats anything put in front of him. “It’s a miracle he stays so skinny.”

“Trust me,” Dorian said, “If you saw his chart, his weight’s been on the uptick. He needs to lay off the fatty nuts.” Marken chuckled and Dorian smiled.

“I’ll make sure to be a little more accommodative in the future,” Marken said.

“You don’t have to go out of your way, it’d be too much hassle.”

“What kind of a cook would I be if I didn’t make the whole table happy?”

“You can never guarantee that.”

“If I can make at least one person who feels left out happy, then I’m happy. It’s like when you play your music. You can play all of the dancey music all night, but if you don’t put on a slow song, someone who is feeling a little more melancholy would feel isolated. Even if they’re all alone that night, in that moment, they feel like they’ve been recognized. So, you put that extra song in your mix, and I’ll make your special plate.”

Marken smiled at Dorian. After a moment, Dorian found himself smiling, too.

“Sounds good to me,” Dorian said.

“Good,” Marken said. “Now, if you would, I’d like a copy of that mix from earlier…”

Nav Room: Hour 47

In the course of his nightly security sweep, Guugel made his way to the nav room, past the conversing Grey and Astro-Mole, and checked inside. He found Kracker in the chair, snoring rather loudly. Guugel stepped out, and moments later came back with a rogue blanket that had found its way into the upper-common room. With a flourish, he draped it up and over the sleeping Parrack.

On the screen, it seemed he had been doing some sort of analysis, but what stood out most was the trending cloud on Chatr. “The Sulany” dwarfed everything else on the page. Guugel switched the systems off, turned out the nav room lights, and let Kracker sleep.

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 47

Mara closed the bunk’s door behind Dash as he left, still putting on his shirt. They debated whether or not he should just spend the night in her bunk, but to spare her the catcalls and jokes of the rest of the crew he opted to return to the bunk he occupied with the others. No sense in advertising anything. Besides, the secrecy might be fun, as she suggested.

She pulled her blanket tight around her shoulders and realized the bed was a mess. She intended to go back to sleep soon, but her meticulous nature dictated that the bed needed to be fixed. She straightened and tucked in the blanket, and then stacked her pillows as nicely as she could.

She made her way to her desk. She wasn’t sure why, but after the past two days, she felt compelled to check her messages. It was a habit at this point, and maybe even there was the faintest glimmer of hope or good news. She sat down at the desk, booted the terminal, and watched a flood of messages drop in. Surprised, she checked the first of them, seeing a chain of messages from the entire crew.

The first message came from Kracker:

Mara,

We don’t tell you enough how important you are to us, so we each decided to write you a letter. Don’t be mad, but Dash and I were talking about the lack of messages from your parents and I agreed to look into it. I am almost certain it is just a network error, but if I am wrong, I just want to tell you a few things. Dash suggested we all send you something, so I am gonna go first.

Mara grimaced. It was a nice gesture on Dash’s part, but she never felt comfortable being put on the spot in such a way. Regardless though, she knew the place where the decision came from and felt thankful.

You were there for me last night when I was at my worst from the Sulany-thing. I thought about what you said, about how you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing, and about how you feel like you’re in a sort of stasis and I just need you to know that you’re wrong. I thought of you when I decided to release the info about the jump-gate. I thought, “What would Mara do?”

It was a touching notion, sure, but Senn was a good man. He would have done it regardless… but it felt good to know he valued her judgment so highly.

I am a little tired right now, but I am going to check on those messages for you. I also heard you started playing Romance of the Three Factions. I definitely need the challenge. Dorian’s been way too easy to beat and I recall you being quite the strategist in college. So next time you’re up for it, let’s game.

Kracker

Mara laughed to herself. The Romance of the Three Factions-bit was a plant by Dash, but it was appreciated. The game was a lot of fun and scratched at an itch that she had. What was most striking was Senn mentioning he was going to look into the messages. Maybe, she entertained the thought, maybe something happened? Perhaps they had sent me messages and I just never received them? She shook her head, though, unwilling to entertain the theory further.

The second message was from Dorian:

Mara,

How is that ankle treating you? Better? You need to watch yourself because we need you to keep your eye on us.

Thanks, Doc, she thought.

Thank you for talking to me earlier today about everything that is going on. Opening up about personal issues can be really tough… almost impossible at times. I am incredibly honored that you were willing to let me know what was going on. I usually feel like an outsider on the ship, as most of you knew each other before we all came together. I always appreciate how you make me feel welcome even though I am a bit… aloof.

“Aloof?” she asked herself. She thought about it and smiled a bit. That was a pretty good descriptor. She always went with “fussy.” Dorian was a good kid, and he was growing by leaps and bounds every week. She was proud of him. In a lot of ways, he reminded her of Shippena, back on Ocia. Those two would probably have a lot in common…

Honestly, you’re kind of like a big sister I never had growing up.

Shit. She stifled back some tears. She was not ready for that one. She saw the connection to Shippena even more, as she had told her the same thing before. Damn it, kid, she lamented, as she felt moisture trail down her cheeks. She wiped them away and continued to read.

Anyway, I wanted to see if maybe we can talk some time about the situation between me and my brothers. I figure you probably have some good advice there.

Anyway… thanks for always being there for us.

Dorian D’Lazmuh, RM

She didn’t know much about the D’Lazmuhs aside from what Dorian had told her. It was time to change that. Something was on Dorian’s mind, and as the big sister, she smiled again at the thought of this, I need to be there for him.

Then came Marken:

Hello, my Captain,

You already know how much I rely on you to keep our day-to-day operations going. You do more than your fair share and you are honestly the glue that holds this whole business together. I was thinking about the dinner earlier tonight, and about how we all rallied around Senn to support him. I think our path wouldn’t have been so clear if you weren’t here. I think we would have done the right thing, of course, but not so earnestly, if that makes sense.

Mara was flattered. She didn’t understand how doing paperwork made her the “glue” of the ship. Surely Marken was just exaggerating because of how much he hated paperwork. Regardless, the sentiments were sweet and made her feel better. She had to call him out though… everyone on the Strike was a good person and without her there they would have all volunteered the information of that poor, doomed ship.

I think I will bake you some cookies tomorrow. Please let me know what kind you would like.

Marken

Mmmm, pola chips. She was looking forward to diving into those. Her sweet tooth was notorious around the ship. She planned to scoop up the adorable chef into a big hug tomorrow.

Guugel chimed in:

Cap,

We don’t talk much, for obvious reasons,

She smirked. Understatement much?

…but I have a great deal of respect for you.

Oh… She felt bad about her cattiness just then.

I could sense that you were in a lot of pain, and in my own small way, I try to help where I can, though it may not be something you (or anyone) would recognize right away. I know one thing I can do though. We don’t have any secrets between us, and that doesn’t seem fair at all. I wish you could hear my thoughts. It’d make things so much easier sometimes. So here goes, I’m not 2 years old. I’m way, waaaaaaaay older.

Mara wasn’t sure how to respond to this information. She was shocked, of course, but even then it wasn’t like there was a lot of information out there about the Wot in general. She kept reading.

It’s a bit much to explain over a message, but I promise I will explain it one day. Maybe Dash can hook me up with a translator circuit or something. I don’t know, I’ll ask. Anyway, we should totally hit a range next time we make landfall. I am curious to see who is the better shot.

BTW – You don’t need to be psychic to see you and Dash are still crazy about each other. I don’t even *really* know either of you and it’s super obvious. Maybe hash that out a bit?

( O ) b

Mara glanced at the words again; Psychic? Guugel is psychic? That certainly cleared a lot up. But that didn’t explain how Dash was able to converse with Guugel so clearly… unless Dash was psychic? She thought about it for a while. No, no way Dash is psychic. He’s been obtuse way too many times to have any sort of psychic power. She shrugged off the notion. She’d find out someday. Speaking of Dash, though…

Two messages came from him. The first one was in the chain.

Mara,

I hope you get to feeling better about your place in the universe. I think we all agree that your place is with us, and even if you don’t feel appreciated or feel like anyone cares, you can at least count on us. If you want to punch me for letting everyone know about the thing with your parents I totally understand, but I still think that was the right call.

Dashen Razaal Kameku

She most definitely intended on punching him tomorrow. The message admittedly felt a little distant, but she understood why, especially because of the fact there was a second message, that was sent directly to her, outside of the chain.

You ever listen to some of the old Terran music?

The hell? She thought.

Dash’s message continued: When Humans first arrived in the galaxy they brought archives of things from their world. I admit I have dove into it quite a bit, particularly their music and, of course, partially on Dorian’s recommendation. But also I am just curious about what aliens from another galaxy experienced. I ask because I found a song a couple of months ago, a human one, and since then I’ve been a bit obsessed with it. Maybe you heard it playing in the engine room when you walked by.

She had recalled him humming and whistling a tune to himself absentmindedly in passing. Maybe this was the song?

I’m not entirely sure about the meaning, but it’s quite pretty, and I’ve been trying to see about getting a full Terrikinese translation started. I’d love to hear it in our native language. At most, I just have the title and the band.

She wondered where he got his energy sometimes. As if he didn’t already have a ton to do.

It’s called “Don’t Worry Baby” and it was by a group called “The Beach Boys.” I don’t know a lot about them, yet, but this song reminds me of you. I don’t know where I am going with this, but I just wanted to share this with someone I love. I hope you like the song.

Dash

She extracted the song file and threw it into her playlist. The two had always shared many things, but music always came off as an oddly personal thing for both, particularly after the mix disaster of their second year at the university. It turned out they did not have the same taste in music… at all. Besides, why did they need music from each other when Dorian had such a good damn ear for tunes?

Finally was a message from Kracker:

I poked into why you weren’t getting your messages from your parents and found out that you actually were. It’s a little messy but it seems they kept sending them to the wrong GIN address. There seemed to be a hiccup with how your messages were bouncing through different GIN routers and somewhere along the way some of the digits got switched around. I went through and fixed that. I also managed to download all the messages for you into a few text docs, but I am sorry about how messy that will be to sort through. I managed to forward your parents a message about the mixup and they should be sending you something soon. Anyway, I hope this helps.

Kracker

How, after all the exhaustion and chaos of the past two days, was he able to do this? Senn’s computer skills were astounding, and she was amazed at how he trivialized what seemed to her to be such a challenging problem to solve. She loved that Parrack like a brother. She made a note to herself to do something extra nice for him. The poor guy had gone through a nightmare recently. Perhaps she’d take over piloting for a day and just let him sleep. He needed it.

She turned her attention to the stack of messages above. Sure enough, several messages were full of text dumps of messages from her parents. What stood out, however, was the latest one, received about an hour or so before, directly from her mother, Ula, and father, Alva:

Dearest Mara,

You do not need to reply right away. Well, actually, please reply right away, it doesn’t need to be anything substantial, just something to let us know you got our message. It’s me, your mom, by the way. Your father says hello and wants to write you a letter soon. For now, though he asked that I make sure I mention hello from him as well.

So, it seems like all this time our messages never came through. How unusual. Your co-worker, Senn, was kind enough to help us figure this out. I feel horrible about that. So does your father. We were actually rather confused that we kept getting GIN-mail from you saying you hadn’t heard from us in ages. Your friend said something about getting the old messages to you, so I guess we should just treat this as a clean slate.

Your father and I are incredibly proud of you. I know there is some resentment from us sending you off world to live with your aunt Mauria, and I completely understand how much that must have hurt… but we only had your best interests at heart. Avabia wasn’t a good place for a brilliant little girl, and even now I’d send you off world again because it is still awful here. It seems every month or so our dig sites are raided. We’re safe though. We’re well protected, please don’t worry. We have a brilliant little fort we’ve erected around the Tarra-kuun dig site. You know how we’ve been working on that for years? We’re finally making some real progress now. We’re estimating we’ve uncovered about 80% of the city. Your father can’t wait to invite you to tour the site.

Do you think you might be able to come see us this year? I don’t know if your job will take us through our system, but we’ve missed you so, so much. You should definitely drop Mauria a line as well. She misses you quite a bit. We learned about your falling out, but she says that she was unfair. Are you still with that Kameku boy? We know you are working with him now.

It’s a little strange being observers of your life and never being able to say anything to you. Gods, I really hope this one reaches you just so you know that we’ve read everything and honest-to-goodness tried to get back to you every time. We’ve not had the closest relationship. I know that. I understand the frustration.

When you left Avabia for Teslovia after you graduated I realized that we took your being there for granted. That was a mistake. Your father and I love you so very much, and we are so proud of you for living a life in the stars. We want you to be able to travel to whatever worlds you wish and find what makes you happy.

Please, send us a reply right away so we know you got this. Also, we finally have a GINvid receiver, so if you want to video chat we can figure that out, though we may need your friend to help us set that up.

Okay, I’m sorry, I need to get back to work now, but we are excited that we might be hearing from you soon! Please stay safe.

Mom

Mara sat there for a moment, staring at the screen. Warm tears ran down her cheeks and fell onto the desk. It had all been a misunderstanding and a technical error. It was a weight she had carried for a while now, and though it came as a relief, the weight hadn’t quite lifted. There was real anger at the situation, but the anger toward her parents began to melt. It wasn’t them neglecting her… it was a stupid, stupid addressing error. She let out a hoarse sob, and soon the valve opened, and she was openly bawling in the safety of her bunk. Then the sobbing turned to laughter. Soon her cheeks were soaked and sore from the smiling. This was going to be an interesting story to tell everyone.

Mara smiled though her face hurt and began to hammer out a quick reply before she went back to bed. There were a lot of feelings to sort through, but at least now there was a chance of being able to do so. She found the song from Dash’s message and let the harmonious sounds of “The Beach Boys” wash over her.

She did not know what the words meant, but the harmony was wonderful.

Engineering Bay: Hour 48

It had been a long couple of days, and Dash’s body ached. He had been hunched over the data-bands he was working on for the better part of an hour, and now he began to feel his vision blur slightly. We waved a hand across his face and realized that he would need to brave sleep again soon enough. Yet he wasn’t feeling as hesitant as he would have been. Things felt better now than they had in months.

He stood up from the workbench and wobbled a bit as his foot had begun to fall asleep. He winced and stomped his bare foot on the plasteel floor to reintroduce some blood flow.

Blu had been hanging out in the engineering bay when Dash returned after his time with Mara. Now the little robot was pantomiming Dash’s stomping on top of the workbench. Dash laughed a bit.

“Not seen you in a while, little buddy. Hope you’ve not gone too stir-crazy in here.”

Blu gave him a thumbs-up gesture, then scampered off the bench and out the door, off to do whatever he did. Before he was out of sight he waved to Bucketbot, who was now making his way to the engineering bay. Bucketbot nodded and then entered the bay. Dash noticed a slight limp on Bucketbot.

“You two seem to be on better terms. You’re usually fighting.”

“Not worth the trouble, Mr. Kameku. Blu does as he does and I am just the observer.” Bucketbot paused. “I am going to switch to a low-power cycle for a few hours if you don’t need anything.”

Dash nodded, “I’m going to take a look at your leg servos tomorrow. You’ve got a little limp.”

‘Thank you, sir.”

“Sounds good, I was about to power down myself.”

“I was not aware Terrekin had a low-power cycle function.”

Dash laughed. “It was a joke. Goodnight Bucket.”

Bucketbot paused for a moment and then came a tinny, canned laugh. “Oh, what a humorous statement. Goodnight.”

Dash smiled and turned down the lights. He made his way to a corner near the gravity pump. It tended to be a warm corner due to the heat of the equipment. He was feeling particularly drained by now, so he decided to pull over his hammock that hung loose on a wall hook.

He grabbed one end and strung it across the front of the gravity pump. He took off his shell, resting it against the wall behind him, and gingerly placed himself into the hammock. He fished into his pocket and found his mobile. He took one of his playlists: Dorian-crafted but with a few additions of his own. Soon music washed over him. He placed a palm against the warm wall and began to rock the hammock. In moments he was asleep.

…

Dash stood across from Vark on a sandy beach. He felt like a child again, like in their first encounter. The Furnesean loomed large over him. He took a swipe with a heavy fist, but as it came down Dash felt a hand grasp his own. Next to him was Mara, not as a child, but as she looked now. And grasping her hand was Kracker, and in his was Dorian, and with Dorian was Marken, Guugel, to Blu, and even Bucketbot stood with them. The fist came down in slow motion, and Dash turned to it, no longer a child, but a man. He stared right into the eyes of his tormentor.

The massive Furnesean’s balled fist reached Dash’s face but dissipated into a harmless red mist. Vark’s eyes grew wide in powerless shock and now Dash found himself standing alone on the beach, sand between his toes, and the tide creeping forward with each ebb and flow. He smiled and lay down on the ground, enjoying the sun and the surf.

He looked up toward the clear blue and cloudless skies of Ocia and felt truly at peace. Vark crept into view now, a ghost in his mind, intimidating as always. He stood over Dash, and leaned forward, eyes locked in.

“I’ll be seeing you again, Kameku. You know that.”

Dash swiped away the vision with his hand and watched the figure burst into a red mist that got carried away by the ocean breeze.

“Probably,” he replied.

…

In the engineering bay Dash was fast asleep as the ship began to whirr back to life. On a nearby terminal, a status light blinked from red to green.

The jump-gate was open for business. The crew would be free to go in the morning.  

The End

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

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The post Cosmic Dash: Pause & Effect – Part Five appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Day Two: Part One

Upper Common Room: Hour 25

Kracker’s anger was understandable. The pain in his eyes said everything. Mara sat there momentarily, thinking about the scenario he put forth about The Sulany. He was right.

“You should release your findings, Senn. The truth about the Sulany needs to be told.”

“Yeah, I totally intend-“

“But not right now. You’re too hot about it.”

Kracker leaned away from her, taken aback. “Too hot? This is a cover-up. Should I be anything but mad?”

Mara shook her head.

“You’re right to be angry. I’m angry. Nobody would disagree with you and your evidence, but if you do anything now, it’s because of your rage.”

“But we’re being lied to.”

“And I know the truth of the situation now, but right now, you need to gather yourself. You need a plan of action.”

Kracker’s indignance twitched into confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Mara stood up, wincing at the pain in her ankle, and tugged at the hem of her shirt a bit. She rolled her ankle a bit to stretch it, which hurt, but helped to loosen it up. She returned to her seat. She faced Kracker more directly now.

“This is a huge incident with huge ramifications. If you’re going to release this data, you need to be ready for the consequences… and you need to make sure you’re not going to harm the people you care about. I mean…” she took a breath and leaned forward, her fingertips touching her knees, “whistleblowers are important and keep the galaxy in check… but there are consequences. We’ve seen it in history. Sometimes they’re deadly.”

Kracker ran his palm over his head crest and looked at Mara. “So you’re saying I need to insulate myself and figure out a way to get the information out without it leading to us.”

“Exactly.” She smiled slightly. “If anyone could make something untraceable, it’s you. I recall a few mysteriously ‘corrupted’ exams to afford a few classes another day or two of study time.”

Kracker said nothing for a long while. He sipped some of his cold coffee and stared at the jump-gate in the distance. After some time, he turned back to Mara.

“You’re right.”

She smiled and scratched at the nape of his neck. He seemed calmer now. The situation was still awful, but at least now he had some distance from it, at least from what she could tell.

“I better clean up in there.” He rose from the couch. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

Mara rose as well.

“I’d love that. I’ll go ahead and get started in the nav room.”

“No, please, leave it to me.”

Mara shrugged.

“Not like I have much else going on right now. I can at least keep you company.”

Bunk Room: Hour 26

The walls of the room were covered by thick, red curtains that were eerily still, despite the discernable wind that blew sand across the black and white zig-zagging carpet. Grains would swirl, pile, and drift to swirl and pile again across the room. Dash found himself watching the grains passively, only becoming conscious of the black leather chair he sat in when he noticed Vark, to his left, sitting in an identical chair.

The Furnesean stared at Dash. His face looked calm and passive. He wore an orange prison jumpsuit. He smiled slightly and began to talk.

“Hello Kameku, do you want to play?”

Vark swept his hand across the room to a pile of sea shells of all kinds. All seemingly plucked from the sandy beaches of Dash’s home. The action was slow, but periodically the arm would appear to shake violently. Without knowing why Dash rose to his feet only to notice they were bare. He felt sand between his toes, only to realize that the ground was not carpeted, but was white and black sand. Dash dug his toes in and watched the grains tumble into the depression. He pried his foot free, but it was as though the grains had never been disturbed, appearing perfectly smooth.

Vark chimed in, almost soothingly, “The sands of Ocia are black with blood, kid.”

Dash turned to see Vark again. In his lap was a Terrekin’s shell, somewhat familiar, and maybe even Dash’s own. The shell was cracked and crumbling. Vark smiled, shuddered violently, and then turned his eyes to the pile of sea shells. No. Terrekin shells, now.

Dash began to walk toward the pile, but each step took him no closer. He turned back to Vark, but the man was nowhere to be found. Dash turned back to the pile, now to see Vark standing behind it, surveying it. Dash approached again, but still moved no closer. Now with each step, figures began to fade in. The figures were vague, he could not tell who they were, but their body language was clear. Whoever they were, they lay broken on the piles.

Vark smiled again, “Every step you take.”

Dash’s steps continued and the figures became clearer. His friends and family lay on the pile of shells. But Dash pressed onward, only stopping when by some miracle his toes touched the lifeless, outstretched hand of Guugel.

“Spaceship.”

Dash looked up at Vark, who now held up a small, toy model of the Lucky Strike… the blue and purple, box-like structure was instantly recognizable. Dash watched as Vark took the ship between his fingers, swooping it and making lazy drifts through the air, accompanied by whooshing noises though his mouth made no movements.

Vark smiled once more, and pressed the ship between his thumb and forefinger, crushing it.

…

Dash awoke with a start, feeling as though he had fallen into his bed. His eyes were wide open and pointed at the ceiling. He took a moment to steady his breathing – one of his grandfather’s lessons – and took in his surroundings. Kracker was nowhere to be seen in the bunk room, Dorian had crashed out on his mattress, and Guugel was out as well.

He had stayed up late working on the calculations surrounding that missing ship, the Sulany, with Kracker for hours and finally grew tired enough to head to bed. Now though, he was up early and had maybe pulled three hours of sleep at best. He sat up and wrapped himself in his blanket in an attempt to remove the chill of his night sweats, but found that the blanket was soaked through.

Nav Room: Hour 26

The clean-up was mostly silent and uneventful. Against his wishes, Mara wiped off the boozy residue from the map interface while Kracker scooped up mug shards and wiped up the floor.

As Kracker wrapped up degunking a seam in the plasteel floor, he finally spoke.

“You do see the irony in you telling me I was coming at a situation with too much anger, right?”

Mara grimaced. It had not slipped her notice. “Those who deliver advice can rarely follow their own” was her reply.

Kracker sat back against the map screen and pulled his legs to his chest. “How are you doing, Mara? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been in a bit of a funk today. Not to mention that limp.”

“It seems like everybody has something going on. I wasn’t even aware I had a limp but I guess now I can sort of see it.”

“And you? What do you have going on?”

Admittedly, the attention was nice. Maybe her parents couldn’t deliver any interest in her life but at least her friends could.

“I’ve been a bit stressed today. Busted my ankle running laps.”

Kracker snorted. “Those stress laps of yours?”

Mara slumped into the nav chair.

“Do I do those that often?”

Kracker shrugged.

“They’re noticeable.”

Mara grimaced. Kracker gave her a reassuring tap on the foot with a fingertip.

“What got to you?”

“Where do we start? My lack of achievement? Dash being a closed-off idiot? My parental issues?”

“Is this multiple choice?”

Mara sighed and began to regale the Parrack with her day’s disappointments; The parents, the squabble with Dash, and the feeling of accomplishing nothing.

Nav Room: Hour 27

Mara flicked at her bangs. “The truth is… I do have some anger issues.”

Kracker has said nothing for some time now, but Mara was too absorbed in her story to really care.

“When I busted my ankle today, it was just me hurting myself. But honestly, I used to hurt others.”

Kracker glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

“When I was a kid I was a bully in a lot of ways. I used to pick on Dash and force him to compete with me. But we were friends, right? I mean, I can see how I thought it was good-natured. But I was also deeply, deeply jealous of his whole thing. His grandpa was strict, sure, but I could see the love. I got shipped off to Movari to live with my aunt. She was great and everything but…”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

“No matter how cool my aunt was, or what a nice place Movari was… my parents sent me away. The worst part is, I have no idea why. They never talk to me about that time, they never really talk to me in general, you know?”

Kracker looked at his yellow, pointed toes – his claws each a small dagger. “And I am sure I didn’t help things with the messages I received today from my folks.”

Mara laughed a bit. It was choked and coarse, but it was genuine.

“No, you certainly didn’t. I’m not mad at you, I’m just being petty. Your parents reached out. Talking to Dash’s cousin today also just rubbed me the wrong way, too. It’s just being here at this standstill… the crap is just collecting like… a stagnant pond, you know?”

Kracker nodded.

“But yeah, I mean, I was a bully as a kid. I picked on Dash, of course, but I loved – love – him. He was just this odd kid who I spent all my time with, and any time any of the local kids gave him crap I’d jump at them.”

Kracker leaned forward, “But you went too far one time?”

“One time we were in the woods a little further inland from the village. We were… learning some things about each other. It was this kind of goofy, romantic moment like you’d see in some of those silly romance vids.”

“Sounds nicer than my first time.”

“It wasn’t our first time, but it… it almost was, you know?”

Kracker nodded.

“We were there in a little clearing we’d set aside to hang out in. Nothing was intended when he set it up, of course. It was just a place to hang out since we were such good friends. But that moment was just destroyed by a couple of older kids who started messing with us. I was out for blood and attacked them. The fight took us back to the village where the adults broke things up, but all I got was disappointment from my aunt… from Dash and Razaal. Hells, even Shippena. That one hurt. She was like my biggest fan growing up.”

“But that wasn’t it?”

“No. I snuck out of my aunt’s house that night and tracked them down and beat them to the point where they were unconscious. I was in disguise and it was dark, so I don’t think they realized it was me… but after that, they seemed to leave me and Dash alone. It didn’t feel good.”

Mara stood up and walked to the viewing window. She placed a palm on the transparent aluminum and let the coolness wash over her.

“I don’t know where I was really going with this. But I guess it kind of gets back to you being so angry a little bit ago, Senn. Just don’t do something you’ll regret. Never act in anger. Don’t be me. There was this… tenacity of righteous anger. It was dark.”

Kracker made his way to the window and threw a bulky, feathered arm over her shoulders. He brought her in close and leaned his head against hers. They stood there a moment, looking at the ballet of ships orbiting around the jump-gate.

“So what are you going to do about the Sulany?”

Kracker was silent for a moment, and then he smiled.

“I’m gonna blow it wide open like a Toucair does.”

Engineering Bay: Hour 28

With the ship still in forced orbit around the jump-gate, there was little to do aside from check for any Kimney correspondence, of which there was usually plenty, or work on a pet project. As usual, there were a number of messages from Mr. Kimney, most relaying things that his various research teams were working on, and if Dash had anything to add. It was unsurprisingly frequent that Dash did have some form of suggestions or tweaks to the projects, and while not all panned out, a great deal of them did. If Lucky Strike Transport ever went under, Dash was positive he’d have a healthy career waiting for him at Kimney Industries.

Until then, though, he’d monitor the ship, which was currently running in low-power mode. He took a few moments to take in the engineering bay with all of the industrial scents and textures. Dash made a note to himself that he hadn’t seen or heard much from Bucketbot in a while now, nor had he seen Blu either, on that note. He shrugged it off, however, as there was very little trouble the two could cause while the ship was locked in orbit.

Dash opted to return to a pet project he’d been developing since just after his university days. He made his way to a drawer tucked into a workbench on the other side of the chamber and extracted a small plastic bin which he set on the workbench. He activated the overhead lighting, and opened the bin, extracting two wrist-sized rings of coils, magnets, and various mechanical viscera. As he continued to shift the articles in the box he noticed a small magnetic screwdriver was missing.

He thought about when he last saw it for a moment but then figured that Blu had probably run off with it at some point. He’d need to scold the little robot about that.

He set one on a raised grip arm on the bench and adjusted it so he was staring straight down at it. He began to boot up the soldering wand and his tablet. With a few quick taps, the tablet displayed schematics for similar bands, but of a much more polished and practically seamless style.

Soldering wand ready, Dash picked it up and began to work with a small pair of needle-nose pliers.

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 29

Sure, the Parrack could be a goofball, but the chat she had with Kracker was a huge help to her in many ways, at least enough to settle her mood so she could get a scant couple of hours of sleep. No matter how bad she hurt, the events of the Sulany provided a grim sort of reminder that things could be worse.

It didn’t mean she was happy now. No, she was far from that, but she felt a little more at ease. She was far from complacent, but if there was anything she actively rebelled against in her life, it was complacency. It was now well into day two of the jump-gate lockdown, and she was determined to accomplish something… she might try to crack the emotional nut that was Dash Kameku.

For now, though she was sore from the workout yesterday and felt like maybe, just maybe, she could take it easy. Her ankle, in particular, kept nagging at her like a splinter, and even thinking about it just felt like it drove it deeper. It drove her just nuts enough to drop Dorian a line, asking him to take a look at it. His reply was quick, that yes, he could check the ankle out. She just had to meet him in the med-bay when she was ready. She felt bad about her outburst yesterday, so she decided to drop in a little later. After all, rest was probably the best thing for her ankle.

She had grabbed her tablet, downloaded a couple of wardocs, and plopped herself at the dining table with some tea. She thumbed through Dividing War strategy sims and generally occupied her mind with something that wasn’t her GIN messages or the lack thereof. Guugel wandered into the common room and stared at her. Mara smiled.

“I’m doing better today, Guugel.”

His single eye almost twinkled as he gave her a cursory thumbs-up. Still as inscrutable as ever, but at least he seemed pleased for her.

There was an odd notion, though. As though he was telling her something, like a whisper from across a room. She could feel a sensation of his speaking, but there was nothing she could actually interpret.

“I wish I could understand you.”

Guugel gestured toward her tablet, and she handed it to him. With a flurry of finger-swoops, he scrawled out something and handed the pad back.

It read: “We’re out of Loap Milk.”

Mara laughed. So much for the Wot’s supposed wisdom.

Engineering Bay: Hour 31

Dash stood in the lab, facing the tablet that sat on the bench, which was currently recording his actions. Around his wrists were the bands from earlier.

“Alright, test three.”

Dash stood for a moment, took a breath, and then used his right hand to press a small button on his left bracelet. There was a soft whirr of electronics booting to life and then several small clicks as tiny probes launched out from both wrists in a preset formation. Soon enough, the probes began to fire small beams of light which then bounced off of each other into a projection of a low-poly sphere… well, more accurately, a dodecahedron.

Dash took a step back at the miniature probes floated in place, giving the projected shape the appearance that it was rotating on its axis. Dash raised his arms, pleased to see that his motions were not affecting the sphere. Then he began testing pre-programmed gestures, seeing how they would affect the projection. He could push and pull the sphere along with either of his hands and even squash and stretch it with a combination of both hands. So far so good.

However, he had seen all of this before, and today he wanted to test something new.

He paused for a moment and let the sphere return to a resting position. He watched the image flicker as the probes adjusted to the new, static position. He raised his hands as though he was resting his hand on the surface of the sphere, and then he motioned as if he were unfurling a map. The sphere began to flatten, and stretch into a parabolic arc that matched the motion of his arms.

And then a brilliant flash of light blinded him for a moment as the individual probes began to pop, exploding violently. Dash staggered back as the probes exploded into particles and streams of laser light dissolved, destroying the flattened, curved image he had established. Little pops danced across his vision and he was unsure if it was from the initial flash, or the probes giving into their fiery destruction.

He blinked his eyes a few times, waiting for the rings and flashes to expire. When his vision was restored he removed the bands and set them onto the workbench.

Sure, it was a failure, but with luck, the bands recorded the information and he’d be able to analyze that failure. He already had an idea of what went wrong, but until then he’d need to run the analysis.

It was engineering at its most comforting.

Bunk Room: Hour 31

Marken’s playlist was almost complete. Dorian limited the length of the playlist to about fifteen songs, so as not to overload Marken with new sounds. Dorian learned from awkward parties and ‘you should listen to this, dude!’ sessions at college that not all people liked what he liked. Heck, he thought that he didn’t like most of the artists on this playlist. It was the kind of music that you’d hear from an older spacer’s comm unit or one of those GIN sites that pretended the last thirty years of music history had never happened.

He kept his ears focused on the music through his studio monitor headphones. As much as there was a temporal distance between Dorian and the music meant for Marken, there was something that made his skin shudder and a wave of feeling course through his body from his ears. The instruments were upbeat, downtempo, triumphant, and mournful, and spoke to times that Dorian had not experienced, yet the essence of the artist’s expression reached right through to him. This was the best part of being so close to music, getting so much out of one sense, or maybe two if you preferred to listen to your music on larger speakers, feeling the driving bass or kick-kick-kick-kick. Or maybe three, if you swear that you can smell the frontier of a new colony, or four if you taste the salt from the inside of your mouth, which became dry all of a sudden. Or five, if you could see the shapes flow out from the music, warbling and shifting and dancing all around your vision as the song plays. As he listened, he felt his eyes draw closed, his body exhausted by the cabin fever.

If Dorian couldn’t get Marken to hear him out, maybe he could get him to feel all that he felt right now.

Upper Common Room: Hour 32

Dash wandered into the kitchen where Marken was hard at work.

“I’m making dinner now,” Marken said, “so don’t eat anything too heavy.”

“Just grabbing a drink.”

“Fair enough.”

Dash opened the refrigerator and set his glass against the spout of the beverage mixer. He pressed the menu buttons, cycling to pom-extract, and then pressed the dispenser button. A fruity, dark-red mixture poured into his glass. Dash took a sip and closed the door of the refrigerator, leaning against it.

“Did you and Dorian sort out your issues?”

“Our issues? You mean did he sort out his issues?”

Dash furrowed his brow and gave Marken a look that screamed really? Marken grew slightly sheepish and wiped his paws on his apron. Dash took a large gulp of the juice.

Dash took a moment to consider his words and then spoke slowly. “Look, I know Dorian can be a little childish, but his concerns about what he eats are pretty valid. His people don’t really concern themselves with flavor. I’m not even sure if they ever had a concept of that… like, culturally.”

Marken sighed. “Well, it’s more than that.”

Dash leaned against the galley’s island. “How do you figure?”

“He’s been with us for months and I just don’t feel like I’ve connected to him. It feels wrong. I knew you, Mara, and Kracker from the university, but Dorian is just still so much of a blank slate to me.”

“What about Guugel?”

Marken laughed. “If I can’t connect with Dorian how do I connect to him? That’s a bridge I need to cross later.”

Dash smiled. “Grey are kind of odd like that. It’s a cultural thing.”

Marken continued to chop at some vegetables, his measured technique lightning-fast and efficient. He worked his way through some onions, quickly scooping them into a stew pot.

“All I really feel like I know is food. That’s my interest. I can’t really talk medicine with the kid…”

Dash began to wash his cup in the sink.

“You are aware that Dorian is super interested in music, right?”

“What? Really?”

“Oh yeah, he’s made just about everyone a playlist of music. You should see the little directory he made for everyone on the ship’s computer.”

“I wasn’t aware he was such an audiophile.”

“Wait, where have you been getting your music from?”

“I’m paying for a GINTunes account.”

Dash began to put his glass away but paused, thrown off by what he heard.

“Wow. That’s… huh? Yeah, you should talk to Dorian.”

Dash began to wander toward the nav room. He overheard Marken’s drawn-out “huh” as he crossed the threshold into the nav room itself.

The nav room was dark, lit only by a single glowing monitor that sat in front of the pilot’s chair. Dash did not see much at first but noticed his friend’s teal feathers rim-lit slightly by the monitor.

“Hey buddy, are you doing okay?”

Kracker’s only reply was a broad, limp, feathered hand that passively waved the question away.

Dash made his way to the control bank so he could get a good look at his friend in the chair. Kracker was there, but not as distraught as he was the night before. Rather there was an aura of cool resolve surrounding him. His eyes, curiously enough, were equally wide and fearful, but heavy-lidded and exhausted.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“No. Not really. Working on something.”

Dash looked over the data on the monitor. It was all computer code, but a few of the variables were familiar from the mathematical jam session hours ago. Kracker was still working on the Sulany situation.

“Did you figure out what happened to the ship?”

Kracker peered over his shoulder and put a feathered finger-tip to the screen, onto one particular variable: 12 KPC.

“Twelve kiloparsecs,” Kracker paused for a moment to let the number sink in, “basically, they’re on the other side of the galaxy at this point. Technically an improvement. My original results put them at fourteen.”

“Holy fark…”

“Even at top sub-light speed, they are centuries away from getting back to civilization.”

“That’s… grim.”

“With any luck, they carried some schematics for a jump-gate, but considering the fact that the JGA keeps that stuff locked down, I am not optimistic.”

Dash leaned on the chair.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Kracker gave Dash a half-smile. It wasn’t very reassuring.

“I’ll tell you a little later.”

Dash began to step away, but he heard a glimmer of optimism from his best friend when he asked for some coffee. At least he wasn’t asking for something seeped in alcohol. That was as good a sign as any.

Dash left the nav room and made his way to the kitchen. He spied Mara sitting down at the table, surrounded by data-chips and drinking her tea. Had she been there earlier? Had she heard his discussion with Marken?

“Uh, hey.”

Mara looked up from her tablet and noticed that he looked a little embarrassed.

“Hello, Dash.”

Dash started the brewer as he surveyed Mara from the kitchen.

“Sorry about yesterday,” he craned his neck to see what was on her screen. He saw the telltale signs of strategic documentaries.

“Battle simulations? Not surprised.”

He wondered if she might enjoy Romance of the Three Factions, but the ding of the brewer interrupted his thoughts. He poured an extra-large mug, and threw in some fruit splash for flavor, after Kracker’s habit. Piping-hot coffee in hand, he began to make his way to the nav room. Then, he paused, turning toward the table.

“Hey, a little later I want to show you something that I think you would really like.”

Mara looked up and gave Dash a lovely smile that made him feel better after the events of the day before.

“Sure thing.”

Back in the nav room, he found Kracker hard at work in a room that was brighter. More of the monitors were on, and now the Parrack was standing in front of the massive nav screen, charting some galactic positional points on an unmapped arm of the Silver Spiral. Kracker took the coffee and sipped at it. He was pleased with the flavor and gave Dash a hearty thumbs up.

Coming out of the nav room with soaring confidence, Dash discovered Mara was no longer at the table. He felt deflated. Maybe he had screwed up quite badly after all…

Med Bay: Hour 32

“Look, Mara. I see some bruising but there is no sign of a torn ligament on your ankle.”

Mara grimaced and Dorian continued to push and pull on her foot. The pain was excruciating.

“It’s just killing me.”

“Of course it does. I mean, you surely banged it up, but it’s just a bruise.”

Dorian sat down on the stool.

“I think it’s probably something else.”

“What do you mean?”

Dorian began to collect the analysis tools from the counter while he was still seated.

“Well, you’ve been on edge a bit lately.”

He pushed against the floor with his feet, sending the stool rolling across the med bay to a series of cabinets on the other end of the counter that wrapped around one corner of the room.

“I mean, you did sort of snap at me last night. That doesn’t come out of nowhere.”

Mara’s face flushed crimson and she remembered yelling at the young Grey the night before. In many ways, he was still very much a kid, but not even he deserved getting yelled at by her.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset that you yelled at me, I know my problems are minor considering everything that’s happened. I’m upset that you won’t come to talk to me.”

Having finished sorting the instruments, Dorian slid the cabinet closed and turned back to her.

“I’m the resident medic. It’s not just about physical stuff. I’m a counselor too. Why do you think I interview you guys every week?”

Mara remained quiet, absentmindedly rubbing her ankle with her toes.

Dorian continued, “Space travel is rough on anyone, especially when it’s for such long periods of time, and you and I both know it’s been even rougher for everyone on this ship considering everything we’ve dealt with.”

Dorian rolled back to Mara. She looked up at him.

“I mean, there was that incident with all the robots,” she began. “Then, the whole thing with Dash’s stalker. Heck, our first night as a crew at that restaurant ended up with a hostage crisis, and then a couple of days later those pirates tried to take our ship. That’s not normal.”

Dorian placed a hand on his knee and leaned forward.

“But you were there every time, leading us to safety,” Dorian assured her. “You’re a hero.”

Her eyes welled up with tears.

“I notice things, not just as a medic, but as your friend. I know something has you upset. I know something on the GIN has you down.”

Suddenly, she fell forward and scooped him into a hug, sobbing. At first, he stood frozen, unsure of what to do, but then felt compelled to hug her, his three-digited hands tapping the surface of her shell in an attempt to reassure her.

She sniffed a bit and let go, sitting back up and trying to compose herself.

“Don’t tap on the shell like that. It’s a little uncomfortable for Terrekin.”

Dorian’s face froze into an expression of slacked horror, and Mara began to laugh.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She wiped at her eyes with her forearm. “You’re a very astute kid, Dorian.”

Dorian bit at his cheek and furrowed his brow as he responded, “I’m 21 years old. I’m not a kid. Guugel is younger than I am by 18 years!” He shrugged, though, being honest with himself. “I mean, I am an adult, but I know I have my issues. It’s just that D’Lazmuh genomic error causing trouble again.”

“What’s the ‘D’Lazmuh genomic error?’”

Dorian shook his head and replied. “It’s not important right now. I’ll tell you later. Tell me what has you so upset.”

“It’s a couple of things.”

“Dash-related?”

“Not really. I love him and everything, but I can solve those problems with him.” She hopped off the examination bed onto the floor. She felt a brief jolt of pain in her ankle that quickly subsided and felt the cool plastisteel tile on her feet. “Something else has bothered me for a long, long time, and I’m just not dealing with it the right way.”

“And what is that?”

Mara turned away from Dorian for a second, eyeing the door and contemplating simply leaving. She took a deep breath and turned back to him.

“How often do you talk to your family?” she asked.

Dorian paused for a moment, not really understanding the question. He thought about it for a few moments and looked at her.

“I spoke to Angn recently. He just got some sort of job on the Serreven, but I wasn’t really paying attention at the time.” He scratched his chin. “I’ve not heard from Fellian in months now. We D’Lazmuh kids kind of drifted when each of us was old enough to leave Uncle Cham’s place. We weren’t a close family unit, even for, well, us Grey.”

“That sounds awfully familiar.”

“So you’ve not heard from your family in a while?”

Mara’s snout wrinkled.

“When you put it that way it sounds silly-“

“No, it doesn’t.”

“It’s more of a chronic sort of disinterest on their end that drives me to do stupid shit.”

Dorian leaned forward expectantly. Mara huffed and leaned against the examination bed. She stared at her ankle as she spoke, “Well, Doctor, let me tell you about my childhood.”

Med Bay: Hour 32

Having taken in everything she had said, Dorian’s only response after a while was, “I see.”

“You see what?” Mara asked.

Dorian flicked at her ankle and she winced.

“What the hell?”

“Your injury is all in your head, Mara. You said it yourself; your parents seemingly not caring causes you to act out and do stupid things. You went for a particularly intense workout and screwed up by twisting your ankle, making yourself feel even worse. “

Dorian stood up and walked to a counter, and fished into a drawer.

“You are mad at yourself for being upset, and you are using the ankle injury as something to focus on when in fact there is no real injury there.”

“So, what do I do about this?”

“What can anyone do but try to deal? Solve the problems you can control and just try not to dwell on those you can’t.”

Mara stood against the examination bed, her arms crossed. “And what if I can’t stop dwelling on these things?”

Dorian sighed and walked towards her. He held out his palm. In it was a small, wrapped candy. She stared for a moment and gingerly took it out of his hand.

“Then you run the risk of actually breaking your ankle next time.” He gave her a hug and then began to direct her out of the med-bay. “Go find something to do. You need a hobby that isn’t just self-destructive exercise. Look for a strategy game or something.”

Before she knew it she was back in the hallway. She turned back to him.

“We need you in better shape than this, Mara. I know you can handle it.”

She nodded and began to walk back toward her bunk. She remembered the candy wrapped tightly in her palm and opened it, popping it into her mouth.

It was very good.

Med Bay: Hour 32

Dorian was left alone in the med bay for a few minutes. He felt a little numb, but also a little relieved. It had been almost a year on the Lucky Strike and yet that was the first real personal moment he had experienced. And the moment came from the captain, of all people. She always seemed to keep to herself when not on a delivery mission, and now he knew why. And he had opened up to her, too. He felt vulnerable and numb as he tried to distract himself with work. Then, he turned his head to see Kracker in the doorway. His eyelids were lidded and he seemed to be half awake. He held onto the doorway as he stared at Dorian.

“Dorian,” he said. “Can you give me some stims?”

As Kracker approached, Dorian observed Kracker’s appearance. His shirt was open and his chest feathers smelled somewhat of sweat, alcohol, and coffee. His eyes were red and veined like he had been staring at a monitor for a long time. His winged fingers twitched at his sides. He walked with a slight stagger. He leaned against the examination table, his eyes darting around. “Where do you keep ’em?”

“Why do you need them? Dorian asked.

“I’m working on something important and I can’t lose my train of thought,” he said, tapping his fingers on his wrists. “I’m on the verge of something major.” He folded his arms in a self-hug while tapping his foot. “Really big.”

“Have you slept at all since the ship stopped?” Dorian asked.

Kracker shook his head.

“Not really,” he said. “I haven’t felt like I needed to.” He stared out at the ceiling with a blank expression. Dorian folded his arms.

“What have you ate and drank in the last thirty hours?”

“I had dinner, then I had some…of my usual pick-me-up, and then some coffee, and then…nothing.”

“So, you’ve been on almost nothing but liquids during a prolonged period of being awake.”

“Does it matter?” Kracker snapped back. “Holy Kaata, you’re always so analytical. Just gimmie the stims and you can diagnose me with whatever you want later.”

“You have no right to order me around,” Dorian said firmly. “And I’m not going to have our pilot collapse when we’re in the middle of a tense situation.”

“You don’t get it,” Kracker said, his fists clenched. “I know exactly why we’re sitting around like this. Trust me, if I just get some stims, I can finish my work, and we can move on with our lives.”

“If you stay up for any longer, you’re going to have a seizure, or worse,” Dorian said, raising his voice. “I have the mind to give you a tranquilizer, never mind a stimulant.”

“Fine,” Kracker said, slamming his hands down. “If I knock myself out, it’ll be my own fault. It won’t be on your precious conscience.”

He left the room in a huff, almost tripping over his own feet. Dorian folded his arms and put his palm in his face. Of all the people to give him trouble today, it was the usual suspect. He spent a few minutes reorganizing the med bay, just to do something to keep his mind off of his frustration. Then, he saw Dash.

“Huh, Kracker poured out of here in a huff. What happened?”

Lower Common Room: Hour 33

Kracker came stumbling down the hall toward the stairs just as Guugel was making his way down. Kracker said nothing and practically shot up the stairs like a rocket. Guugel watched him make his way up and gave a long, slow blink. He’d heard the discussion among the crew, and had, admittedly probed the Parrack’s mind a bit, curious about what had him on edge. Of course, it was Dash’s concerns that were particularly tangible. He made his way to the cargo bay.

The Parrack’s story was indeed one worth spreading, and Guugel volunteered himself to facilitate the telling. Guugel’s experiences over the past several centuries hadn’t really exposed him to computers as much as one would think. He made a note to learn more about them in the future, but from what he had gathered, Kracker’s concerns were more about being able to tell the story of the lost ship from the safety of anonymity. This line of thinking, of course, is what led Guugel to his current course of action, which was to wear a pressure suit and walk from ship to ship orbiting the jump-gate, setting up “spoofing” antennas that Dash and Kracker had designed for some likely highly illegal purpose.

From what he had gathered as they worked on them, each antenna was a portable computer that could retrieve data from a designated source, and then latch onto an existing communication system and forge an official communication from the attached system. At least that was what was theorized it would do. Guugel had no real idea what any of this actually meant and wasn’t aware of any testing of the antennas, but it was worth a try.

Guugel’s pressure suit was little more than a modified Terran helmet with some armholes and installed pants and boots of his own design. Wot spacing gear was a rarity even on Ottiwa and being the roamer he was he needed to be proactive. The suit was effective enough, but it was stiff and awkward and pinched at his armpits. It also had the side-effect of making his ambulation into a form of waddle. Thankfully though nobody would be out and about to witness it.

The life-support systems checked out and he began the depressurization procedures in the room. The chamber lights dimmed and then the flashing red depressurization lights blinked on and off, accompanied by an alarming klaxon. Guugel wasn’t particularly keen on anyone knowing about his spacewalk, particularly concerning potential illegalities, so his hope was that nobody noticed the depressurization. If worse came to worse he could say it was a simple perimeter sweep. After all, he was the security officer.

With the chamber completely depressurized the door to the void opened and Guugel took in the sight of dozens of ships orbiting the hoop-like structure of the jump-gate, as though they were all players in some cosmic ballet. There was an effortless elegance to it.

Outside the Lucky Strike: Hour 33

Spacewalks always filled Guugel with a sense of dread, and his first tentative steps outside of the safety of the pressure room were highly experimental. It was not like he hadn’t done this sort of thing before, but being in space with little but some anchor lines and a pressurized suit between him and the infinite black tended to make him a little more alert and wary.

Of course, he was also equally mortified and annoyed that he had to go back to regather his equipment which required pressurizing and depressurizing the chamber again. His equipment was safely arranged, various tools bundled into a pocket and rolled up and securely fastened to his suit. He hadn’t been able to track down Dash’s magnetic screwdriver, but he figured he could improvise.

For now, though, he put his focus on the first of what would be several “jumps” from ship to ship. “Jump” of course was a euphemism for the process of using a magnetic grapple line to pull himself from one ship to the next to install the antennas. It had the potential to be utterly terrifying and incredibly deadly. However, what he had in his favor was the fact he was a crack shot… and his race’s gift of telekinesis.

All of that fell by the wayside, of course, when he saw Blu and Bucketbot on the ship ahead of him, walking the surface to their mysterious ends.

Med Bay: Hour 34

“Your scar seems to have healed up nicely. Well…” Dorian muttered a bit, “Besides the fact that it is a scar.” The Grey was profusely apologetic. “It was entirely my fault I wasn’t able to get the synthoderm applied until we made port.”

Dorian sighed. Dash simply smiled and gave Dorian a light punch on his arm that the kid seemed to flinch at.

“Honestly, you did fine. You have noticed the other scars, right?”

Dorian shrugged.

“I’m just not thrilled about your body being a record of my failings as a medic.”

Dash rubbed his fingers over the scar just over his collarbone.

“You failed nobody, Dorian. You’re annoyingly good at this medical stuff. You’re making me healthy whether I want to be or not.”

“Even when I had Guugel tranq you? I mean when you woke up from it and that monster was there…”

“You made the right call.” Dash hopped off the examination bed. “I was a danger to everyone at the time. You did what was right.”

Dorian scrawled some notes on his tablet.

“And how are the nightmares, Dash?”

“Frequent.”

Dorian set down the tablet on the counter next to some mysterious machine Dash never saw him use. Medical equipment tended to be beyond the Terrekin’s paygrade.

“I don’t want to look for a chemical solution. So I’ve been studying some more… holistic techniques.”

Dash laughed as he put his shirt back on. “Why doctor, I never thought I’d hear you suggest meditation.”

Dorian scowled.

“Terrekin often use meditation to provide emotional stabilization. There is quite a bit of data to indicate-“

Dash put a reassuring hand on Dorian’s shoulder. “Relax, I know what you mean. I’ve been trying. I just feel like something is blocking me from getting to where I need to go. Usually, tinkering centers me, but that’s not exactly doing the trick.”

Dorian puzzled for a moment and then looked up at Dash.

“Has there been anything lately that you felt has gone unfinished?” Dorian asked.

Dash instantly thought of Mara but said nothing. Dorian continued talking.

“As far as I see it, you and Mara are entirely too stressed out. You with your nightmares, for example.”

“What’s up with Mara?”

Dorian appeared genuinely surprised, his already large eyes seemingly growing wider. “You haven’t noticed her limp?”

He chuckled to himself a bit as he scrawled something on his tablet.

“You two should definitely have a chat.”

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

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The post Cosmic Dash: Pause & Effect – Part Four appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Day One: Part Three

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 8

Sleep is elusive at the absolute worst times.

Mara found herself lying in her bunk, staring at the plasti-steel tiles that made up the ceiling. The plates were solid and safe, but they were aged regardless, and various impurities in the plastic and metal combination had asserted themselves over the course of decades. This made them absolutely fascinating at just the wrong time. Instead of drifting off, she now darted her eyes from tile to tile, monitoring them for any patterns or shapes — any indication of some greater purpose to them.

She turned over, but the blinking light on her computer terminal was slowly pulsing its way into her brain. Her room was hostile to any attempt at getting some sleep, so she resolved to become exhausted and let sleep overtake her. She rose out of bed, threw on some running shoes, and exited the bunk’s door to the cargo bay.

Nav Room: Hour 8

The “ships” in question turned out to be one ship, called the Sulany, a small tug transport that could drag unpowered cargo structures. The Sulany was one of a fleet of trans-factional courier vessels that would latch onto the massive cargo platforms and pull them along to the next stop in the system. This was a rapidly declining method of material transport, mostly for large, cumbersome cargo. But they were still a relatively stable economy of their own. As a kid, Kracker had seen one in orbit around Skyhaven, a virtual speck detaching from a massive refinery that had been brought to the planet to be disassembled and reassembled on the surface. He was too young to really understand the physics of it all.

He was just amazed that something so tiny was in charge of something huge. It was one of the few things that made him feel positive about anything since the previous summer accident where he broke his wings and radically altered the trajectory of his life.

Of course, now he knew the physics and understood how each space flight, in many ways a routine, was always a hedged bet against any number of catastrophes and disasters. Most assuredly the Sulany‘s jump was a bet that led to ruin.

Here is how he understood it: The Sulany was an old tug that was most definitely past its prime. More than likely adding to this grim situation was the fact that the ship was on a rushed schedule, and the large cargo containers were not secured at an appropriate level, causing one container to buckle off and hit the gate, triggering some form of catastrophic failure. Kracker was able to piece this together through direct observation of a loose cargo container, now secured by a jump-gate authority skiff, minor damage to a section of the jump-gate itself, and several oblique textual references in data referring to a “jostle” that he had hacked from a few different G.I.N. streams radiating from various ships and the jump-gate itself.

This was not public record at this point.

In his mind, whatever parts of his brain would have handled flight was eclipsed by the part of his brain interested in computer coding. Kracker had a knack for looking at the most basic expressions of data and pulling knowledge from it. Sometimes the data had to be coerced, and his nickname, “Kracker,” originated from that very tendency of hacking.

Take all the data you want, but never exploit it was his mantra; generally, he was pretty good about that. Of course, that was barring a couple of sneaky scheduling hacks at Gnarlruut which he would always argue were for the greater good of his fellow students. This, though, was on another level… It was solving a mystery for the greater good of spacer everywhere.

It made sense why the Jump-Gate Authority was silent about everything. Galactic travel revolved around hyperspace tunnels, so creating a panic would be bad for the galactic economy. Without jump-gate travel, most systems would be inaccessible, and travel between planets could sometimes take months or even years. All day so far, Kracker had been listening to the chatter, switching to the particularly juicy streams that arrived with scouts ships for the Federation, Empire, and Neutrality; little, clipped bursts of military terminology indicating some new discovery somewhere that would vanish in a burst of static as the communications scramble to other military G.I.N. streams. These small military ships could not generate their own jump-gates from this or that colony. Now too, those who were nominally in charge were forced to slum it with the normies.

The disdain and annoyance in Imperial and Federation requests for clearance and updates were palpable. To their credit, the Neutrality was somewhat less impatient, though they took the opportunity to blast surveys and propaganda to almost every ship in orbit around the gate. Why not apply for citizenship at one of three of the Neutrality’s luxury colonies? After all, who says brave explorers do not deserve the comforts of home?

What he needed now, though, was information about the Sulany itself, including the route it was taking and whatever dimensions and specifications were available. Every number mattered in hyperspace physics. Kracker opened a textdoc and threw it up on the digital map for running notes. He turned his attention back to his primary monitor, slowly switching G.I.N. streams to find the best route for an assault on the jump-gate’s servers. After a few minutes of letting his sniffer program find the right path, he received an alert and immediately sprang to action. The fact that the jump-gate was so easy to invade was, admittedly, a worrisome proposition, but he put that aside as he acquired the Sulany‘s G.I.N. profile.

Every ship had a public profile and served as a mobile G.I.N. relay. Any ship was required to be able to transmit data as a relay due to the requirements of an intergalactic network. Naturally, some ship manufacturers would create safeguards for maximizing bandwidth based on their needs and corporate relationships. Still, the fact remained that every ship would serve as a relay for data. Because of this, every ship needed to be accountable for scraps of data, and each ship’s profile served not only as an operational license but as a sort of home page and travel log. Buried into these logs, too, were records of data transmission in the form of packets.

Now Kracker found himself backtracking any packets he could that exist between the jump-gate and the remaining ships orbiting it. Any scrap of information was important to his next task; he would figure out where the Sulany was.

Bunk Room: Hour 7

No immediate crisis or stress on the ship made for very little to do in the engineering bay. Dash was a creature of habit and thrived on juggling several things at once, and at the moment, whatever balls there were in the air were now simply floating in the void, stalled and incredibly boring. Incredibly boring was not what Dash wanted after his entanglement with Mara.

He synced the ship status to his mobile, as always did whenever he left the engineering bay and made his way out into the Lucky Strike’s narrow corridors. He returned to the bunk he shared with Dorian, Guugel, and Kracker. He peered around every corner of the hallway, wary of encountering Mara again. He opened the door to the bunk and jumped, finding a rather frantic Dorian on the other side.

Dorian peered out the door and looked up at Dash.

“Mara’s not around, is she?” the Grey asked.

Dash squeezed around Dorian, who was still peeking out the door. “I’ve not seen her for a few minutes,” Dash said.

He continued to the desk at the other end of the room. Dorian sighed.

“She seemed really upset about something,” he said.

Dash froze. He looked back at Dorian, who looked at Dash with wide eyes.

“Any ideas?” Dorian asked.

Dash shrugged as he activated the terminal and slid into his desk chair. Dorian was now lying on his stomach across his bed, his arms hanging over the side and fingertips brushing the thin carpet.

“What are you working on, Dash? Besides the captain’s nerves.”

Dash turned around and gave Dorian a sharp look. He turned back to the terminal, rolling his eyes. “I’m working on something I started in college. It’s been coming along for a while now.”

“What is it?”

“The future, I hope. Did you ever read that paper I sent you? My thesis project?”

Dorian stared at him before sitting up. “To tell the truth, it was a bit dense. Plus, the writing was a little disjointed-“

“All the good parts were mine,” Dash said as he relaxed in his chair. “Professor Nova assigned me a horrible little troll of a partner named Aquin who couldn’t write his way out of a karrum sack.”

Dash turned back to his terminal and started sorting through his files. “Wanna see what I’ve been working on?”

With a couple of quick gestures, he dragged the files from the terminal screen to a hand-held holographic projector. He activated the device as he turned back to Dorian, and it flickered to life, showing two small rings projected into the air. Dorian tilted his head.

“It’s a bracelet,” Dorian said.

“Technically, it’s two bracelets, and that’s not the point. The bracelets are an interface.”

“Some sort of gesture-based computer system?”

“There are gestures and a computer system, yes, but-“

Static crackled in the ship’s recirculated air. They turned their heads toward the intercom near Dash’s desk. There was a click, followed by Marken’s gentle but firm voice.

“Dorian, I need you back up here!” Marken said. “I think I solved your taste problem! It’s an issue of subtlety-“

Dorian rolled his eyes as he walked towards the intercom and hit the comm button. “I’ll be right up,” he said.

Dorian began to leave but turned back to Dash. “I’ve gotta go, but I’d like to know more. What you have there sounds really interesting.”

Dash smiled and gave Dorian a little wave. He looked back to the terminal and began to think about Aquin. He felt a sour spot grow at the pit of his stomach. He sighed and closed out the project folder.

Dash leaned back in his desk chair. He was alone now, which was probably for the best.

Cargo Bay: Hour 8

Mara had always considered herself to be intensely physical. When she felt off in any capacity, she would move around. Even as a kid, she would deal with her annoyances by going for a run, climbing, or exploring Movari village with Dash. Back at Gnarlruut, there were many meetings of the strategy club that ended with her eager to leave and run a couple of laps around the quad of the history block. It was a distraction from whatever issues bothered her, but exercises served as a relatively healthy outlet as she saw it. Each lap felt good. It felt right to get the blood pumping and turn off her brain for a bit. The running would only do so much, though.

Doubt nipped at her heels, and the anger inside began to rise as she picked up her speed. By now, she was pushing herself faster and faster, hurdling the occasional crate that was secured to the floor by straps. Those hurdles eventually became leaps from crate to crate, pushing her agility as far as it could go. She had underestimated her sweating, though, and moisture from her legs rolled down onto the floor and under her shoe, causing her to slip and crash down to the cold, metallic surface of the cargo bay and collide with a crate.

She lay on her stomach and felt a slight twinge in her ankle. She lifted herself over onto her side and stared down at her leg. It hurt a bit but did not look serious.

Good, she thought, I deserved that.

She pulled herself toward the crate she slipped from and rested against it, pressing her bare arm against the metal and feeling the cold wash over her system. Once again, anger had risen up and backfired on her spectacularly.

“I’m a mess.”

Bunk Room: Hour 9

Dash searched through his GIN messages but found little of interest. His cousin Shippena was reaching out to him, but he wasn’t in the best frame of mind at the moment to convey much of anything to her. To his surprise, just one hate-filled diatribe was addressed to him, sent from some merc or another trying to flush him out in the most tactless way possible. A smile crept up on Dash’s face as he trashed the message and flagged the domain to his ever-expanding source list for threats on his life.

It was a long list at this point.

He closed out the messages and opened the game-drive Kracker had partitioned into the Strike‘s database. Most of the games were twitchy racers or overwhelming shoot-em-ups that Kracker favored. There was also the perennial Bandit’s Quest that everyone on the ship seemed to be into. For Dash, it all came down to one game series, and he was adamant about having his own sliver of the game drive set aside for the complete collection. Dash opened his personal game drive and booted up Romance of the Three Factions. He would get something done today, even if it was just conquering the known galaxy.

He poured over his suspended campaigns and realized it had been a while since he had played them. It was hard to remember what advancement paths and min-maxing he had been doing. He studied each save file a few times and then began anew. It would be better to have a fresh start.

The character select screen opened, and tiles flew from the sides of the interface and arranged themselves into organized rows. The characters themselves were not organized in any particular manner; Dash scrolled through the tiles, seeking a character he could get into. His cursor hovered on Empress Ragna for a brief second. At that moment, he decided he would be the queen mother of the Blassnaught people.

Dash recalled the stories of Ragna from an Imperial history course; She always fascinated him and reminded him of Mara in many ways. Of course, she had Ragna’s tenacity and strength, but her stubbornness, too. Would she take that as a compliment? He smirked at the idea.

He quickly parsed through menus and settings and went right into the lobby. Right away, he was bombarded by challenges from other players. He set his status to “away” and worked his way through the campaign mode.

Romance of the Three Factions was a crazed beast of a game. The game allowed players to play as historical figures across dozens of races, cultures, and eras and work with and against other players to win massive strategic battles. At a basic level, it took the biggest badasses of the galaxy, the biggest battles, and stories and mixed them all together, making a bloody, bewildering virtual battleground. He had yet to buy the Terra expansion, based on human lore, but it was on his wish list. The “Abe Lincoln” character with the ax-throwing skills looked very fun, as did “Peter the Great,” though he wondered if Peter would indeed live up to that reputation.

It took Dash almost no time to beat the first campaign. There was a simple introductory skirmish, and Ragna proved her worth. Her daggers, more like swords for a being half her size like Dash would have been, made short work of enemy forces. He smiled and continued to play. He felt comfortable in the dark, illuminated by the escape of a videogame.

Nav Room: Hour 9

Hyperspace calculations are tricky, even at their most straightforward. When it comes to folding space, at least in the most colloquial of terms, one has to calculate massive interstellar distances and pinpoint the openings of wormholes in different sets of space-time. Kracker had a head for numbers, but he had the Lucky Strike‘s computer for anything too complex. So far, though, the prospects for the Sulany were not looking good.

Kracker pulled a fingertip across the touch screen, scrawling an equation for the ship’s handwriting system to convert. Thankfully, his mathematical symbols translated perfectly, and he could arrange a whole series of simulations while checking up on the rest of the ship. He’d been trapped in the nav room for a while now. What had it been, hours? He had lost track, but he most definitely knew he needed to stretch his legs a bit.

Dorian was no longer in the common room, and there was no sign of Marken either. It was too early for dinner, so the Astro-mole was probably off in his office, running the business. Dorian was likely stewing in the med bay, and Kracker considered heading down there himself to talk music with the young medic, but he felt too distracted with the events surrounding the Sulany. Besides, he was only stretching his legs. He’d need to get right back into the thick of the calculations when the simulations finished.

“Ship, alert me when simulations have run their course.”

A soft chime echoed in the common room to confirm the request. The ship’s A.I. was rather old at this point and lacking in personality. However, the required usage of “ship” and the conformational tones gave it sort of a servile personality.

Kracker made his way to the nose of the common room and stood at the window that looked out at the tumbling spiral of ships surrounding the jump gate. Soon enough, he’d have all the facts. He’ll have done a good deed. Not a bad accomplishment during a little downtime.

Bunk Room: Hour 9

It had been another two hours of cooking carnage between Dorian and Marken. Marken had attempted to make peace in his usual way, which involved little diplomacy and a lot of sweetness dumped on top of the problem. Dorian wondered, who was he kidding with that friendly older guy act? Anyone who spent over five minutes shaking his hand and agreeing to ship cargo through his dinky little company could see that he was three feet of fur and indecision. At least the experience had been wearing. Dorian had experienced just the right amount of stress to force his body into shutdown mode.

And he slept. If a regular spacer’s dreams were like blobs of events, thoughts, and memories that congealed and separated, faded and reinforced, like a cheap bubble lamp you’d buy at a space station fuel stop, a Grey’s dreams were different. Squares formed themselves into rectangles and rectangles into neat tetrominoes stacked to the top of a grey’s headspace until they made a line. The short-term memories were filed into long-term memory, and the process began again. It was elegant, simple, and easy to control with a fraction of sleeping lucidity. At least, that’s what the studies suggested.

But Dorian’s dreams were collapsing. Every square that dropped onto each other fragmented, glitched, or didn’t line up as intended. They piled up onto one another, getting faster and faster. Dorian thrashed in his disturbed sleep. The grey background of his dreamscape flashed with images of fighting, running, and hiding. The silent dreamscape was filled with unintelligible, distorted yelling and static sounds. The tower of memory squares piled higher and higher and more grotesque, like a spire of bad dreams. And when the last block touched upon the tower, it collapsed.

Dorian woke up with a start. He breathed heavily as he glanced around the bunk room. Dash was absorbed in a game. Dorian might as well have been alone. It was just him again. It was him and the sudden silence that surrounded him. He reached out to get up from his bed, but his fatigue forced his body back to the bed to repeat his fitful sleeping and waking pattern. He couldn’t even reach his headphones.

Nav Room: Hour 10

Shit.

Kracker combed over the projections again.

Shit.

There was no indication that the ship’s onboard computers were wrong. If they were, he and his friends would have been long dead due to some miscalculation in the trajectory adjustments in even the most humble star systems. When spacers tap into any ship’s computer to calculate, accuracy is expected, no matter if the results are good or bad. Even with these straightforward facts, there is always a stage of bargaining when the results of the calculations are bad, particularly when they were very, very bad.

Based on the calculations, the Sulany was no longer on the galactic map. Nor was it present in any of the galaxies of the local group. According to the ship’s computer calculations, the Sulany was dumped nearly 14 kiloparsecs away from the Silver Spiral… nearly a seventh of the diameter of the Silver Spiral Galaxy.

Kracker fell into his chair, stunned by the possibility. Assuming the jump-gate malfunction had not destroyed the Sulany, of which there was no evidence to indicate it had, the ship at some point had destabilized in the wormhole linking it to its destination. With that being the case, the Sulany would have drifted out of the hyperspace tunnel and spiraled off into an uncharted region of the galaxy only ever observed by a telescope.

Kracker sat there, alarmed. He reviewed his notes, comparing his results to the few official statements. There had been little said by the jump-gate authority. Still, there were rumors now, sourced back to the Neutrality, who were heavily invested in jump-gate manufacturing, that the Sulany had tumbled out into a system in the far edge of wild space and was otherwise unharmed. The sourcing was a particularly tricky job to undertake, but clarity was what was most important here.

This report was about as close to official as they needed for the average spacer. As long as the ship was fine, there was no risk to life and limb, and then the gate should be repaired immediately to let the engines of commerce continue uninterrupted. They had shipments to run, after all. They’d been delayed, and now, with that planted report, the pressure would build, and a mandate would be forged. Why was the investigation taking so long if the ship was fine? The public outcry would push everyone to move on, the truth would be swept under the rug, and the Jump-Gate Authority would happily repair the gate to ensure the galactic economy continued with as few fractures as possible.

Kracker ruffled the feathers on his head and felt a headache coming on. Maybe he was leaping to conclusions. Maybe his bored mind was crafting a conspiracy to entertain him.

He saved his data and pages of calculations. He opened a new file and began anew. The computer may have calculated flawlessly, but it could have just as easily been an error on his part.

He had to be sure.

Bunk Room: Hour 11

Dash’s mobile rattled on the desk’s surface, and he scrambled to pick it up. He flipped it open to find a text from Kracker.

Time for dinner! We’re having some kind of weird stew Marken wants us to try. Well, time to clear out my sinuses!

– Kracker

Dash checked the time. It’d been a few hours, and he had already unlocked the lunatic campaign; few features were left to discover. He suspended his current game. Dash made his way up the narrow spiral staircase that linked the primary two decks of the Strike.

Dining Table: Hour 14

Mara’s knife practically melted through the cabbage roll. She stuck the slice with her fork and raised it up, noticing the layers of meat, sauce, and vegetables before putting the whole slice into her mouth. Unsurprisingly, it was deliciously composed, with a sweet and spicy sauce that seemed to give her some pleasure today. She had a weakness for food, but thankfully running kept that in check.

Kracker smiled as he was munching on his nuts and berries, and he motioned toward Dorian and Marken, who were still consumed with whatever asinine conflict they had been on all day. Kracker sniggered slightly, and Mara gave a halfhearted shrug in response. Dash had wandered in by now, and though he seemed more relaxed now, he didn’t meet her eyes. He took his seat next to Kracker.

Dash could smell the food already. With one whiff, he felt like he was back home on Ocia until he heard the din of conversation and utensils at the table. He heard Dorian annoyed at something, probably Marken, from earlier. Dash sat on one of the outer stools next to Kracker. Mara sat on the edge of the booth to Kracker’s left. She didn’t acknowledge Dash. It seemed like she was still upset. He didn’t blame her. He took a deep breath. He felt cooler now – calmer. His time alone brought clarity.

Mara continued to take small slices from the roll and began to take amusement from the heated conversation between Marken and Dorian, despite herself. Of all the problems revolving around the ship, theirs were the most minimal yet, ironically, the loudest.

Dash looked at the small bowl before him, filled to the brim with a piping hot stew of noodles. Three planks of rosy pink fatfish flesh were resting on the noodles that had started to cook from the hot water. There was also a garnish of dried, crushed fennem leaves. Dash took in the aroma of the bowl, letting the scent of the spicy broth, cooking fish flesh, and the fennem waft into his nostrils. He grabbed his chopsticks from the side of the bowl and picked up one of the planks. He took a small bite from it and let the fish melt on his tongue before eating the remaining plank in one bite. He shivered with pleasure and pointed his chopsticks at Marken.

“That is some of the best fish you’ve ever made, Marken. And the broth is amazing.”

Marken took a moment from glaring at Dorian. “Thank you, Dash; I know that you appreciate bold flavors.”

Dorian looked indignant. He turned to Mara, eyes wide, gesturing for her, asking if she would contribute anything. Mara took another bite from her roll.

Marken took a bite out of a pungent pepper that could be smelled from across the table. He wiped his mouth afterward.

“There are three more planks on the coldplate in the kitchen,” Marken said. “I’m hoping we can hold onto them since we’re running low on some stuff.”

Dash slurped up a couple of noodles and licked some of the broth from the side of his mouth.

“No promises,” he said.

Guugel stood on the booth’s seat, leaning over the table with his fingers drifting across the surface of a clay bowl of water. He shifted a bit to catch more of the light filtering down from the ceiling tiles onto the top of his body. The Wot’s psychic voice drifted through Dash’s mind.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a digestive system, you know?

Dash nodded and raised a glass to Guugel, who in turn raised his bowl.

Dash slurped a few more noodles but noticed Kracker was far too quiet. At the moment, he was leaning over his bowl of berries and nuts. Dash leaned over. “Hey man, you okay?”

Kracker picked up a berry between two feathered fingers, crushed it, and then wiped the juice on the table. “I don’t know. It’s this shutdown… I’ve been poking around-“

Dash’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you hacked the transit authority,” Dash said.

“Not at first.”

Dash smirked.

Mara stood up and excused herself from the table, thanking Marken and Dorian for the food. She intended to run more laps despite the slight throb in her ankle.

Dash continued, “So, what did you find?”

“Well…” Kracker took a nut from his bowl, popped it into his beak, and crunched down hard. He chewed a few times before continuing. “Local chatter says this is just a minor phasing error with hyperspace sync, and the lost ship got warped back out somewhere in the local area. But, I crunched the numbers…”

Dash leaned closer.

“According to my calculations, they’re somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. Better than my first calculations, at least… I originally had them somewhere outside of the galaxy.”

Dash leaned back, resting a hooked finger below his chin. “Huh. Your math tends to be spot on. That’s… troublesome.”

“Yeah, man. I don’t know what to think.”

Dash took a long, loud slurp of his noodles. Kracker leaned towards him. “Can you check my equation?” he asked.

Dash nodded. “Let’s take our food.”

Dining Table: Hour 15

Dorian finished the uncomfortable dinner as fast as he could. Despite the tension between him and Marken, Dorian found the food they had prepared deliciously. The vegetables might have been cut too thick in places, and some pieces of fish seemed a bit over or undercooked, but it was pleasurable overall. The broth was savory and mild, and there was plenty of nutrition offered in the variety of vegetables involved. Instant noodles could never match up to homemade food.

“Home,” though, was a bit of a stretch. The Lucky Strike was only Dorian’s home for the remainder of his internship. When the assigned residency was up, he would return to Oonoo, where everything and everybody was cold and predictable. He’d return to class, raise his hand to contribute thoughtful analysis to the other students, and leave his classes a more respected authority on the subjects. And years from then, he’d even teach a class. That was the dream of any Grey, to be respected as an authority of knowledge and to advance their field of choice to better all of their planet and the Federation.

But Dorian could hear something else at the corner of his ear. He wasn’t sure where the pulsing was coming from until he realized he had left his music on his mobile. Great. His battery was drained, and so was he. The only thing that had ever been able to recharge Dorian was his music. He spent hours fine-tuning playlists for every occasion; relaxation, focusing, studying, all-important modes for a grey. And he had tried to apply this method to the rest of the crew’s benefit; though he was here to mend their bodies, he might as well try to mend their souls, too.

Kracker got more of the dance-pop and indie rock he trended towards, Mara got kem house and club music, Dash got ambient and soft electronic music, and Guugel got hard-driving techno and blass-metal music. There was one person who was missing, though.

Marken had no playlist; somehow, he slipped Dorian’s audio craftsmanship. Dorian thought hard to determine what he would listen to. He probably liked older rock music and indie bands, though that was a very loose guess. Dorian rolled to his side and plugged in his mobile to the charger. He began to page through artist profiles and ‘you might like this’ playlists. He heard crooning vocals, string instruments, and spacer blues. As he explored these soundscapes, he began to create the foundations of Marken’s first playlist.

Dorian opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out his mixing station. It had been long since he had any time to use it. It got the most use in college, where he got the chance to mix playlists during a couple of house parties before finals. There weren’t many parties to be had aboard the Strike; it was mostly work, work, work, punctuated by danger and adventure. He missed it when he could make the whole room flow and when he felt like he was one with something that he shared with the whole room.

Dorian set up his mixing equipment. Though they might not share the same tastes in food, perhaps he and Marken could find common ground in music.

Nav Room: Hour 15

Kracker stood at the large galactic map in the back of the nav room. The vibrant display was overlaid by a drawing app that allowed spacers to chart routes. At the moment, it served as a makeshift whiteboard with hours of scrawls and calculations covering the galaxy. Dash approached the map, slurping the last of his noodles. As he observed Kracker’s handiwork, Kracker stood there, checking his calculations under his breath. At last, he turned his head to Dash.

“So, do you need a refresher on jump-gate physics?” Kracker said.

Dash drank some broth and set the bowl on a console. “You know, I am kind of a physicist,” Dash said.

“I know, but when did you last do something like this? I mean, this is a day-to-day thing for me, but—”

“I’m fine,” Dash interjected. “So far, everything checks out. Is there a second page?”

Kracker placed his feathered fingertips on the giant screen and flicked upward. A geyser of numbers and symbols rose from the bottom of the screen. There were many more than two pages. Dash whistled.

“Hm, let’s do the equation from scratch,” he said. “Together.”

Kracker nodded and placed his palm on the screen, swiping right. The interface flickered and generated a new blank page. Dash rolled up his sleeves. Kracker slicked back his crest.

It was time to wrangle some numbers.

After a couple of hours, the two found themselves again in front of the nav screen, which now served as a makeshift whiteboard.

The Terrekin checked off a pair of variables, stepped back, and spoke. “As far as I can tell, everything seems right. I still feel it might be worth factoring in ionic feedback when the wormhole malfunctions.”

Kracker considered for a moment. “Considering how pronounced movement is in hyperspace would be even a slight hiccup in ionic thrust would result in several A.U.s-worth of variation.”

“Exactly.” Dash began to draw two spheres on the whiteboard and wrote a variable in each. The leftmost had the variable “I,” while the rightmost had “non-I.”

“In this case,” he tapped on I-sphere, “within the jump-gate, any ionic discharge would have an amplified effect within the wormhole, so any variation in standard propulsion in the jump-gate could potentially cover kiloparsecs of distance.” He tapped on the non-I-sphere, “this case is what we run with if the ionic drive did not have an error.”

Kracker smoothed the feathers on his cheeks against the side of his head. “So the key is to figure out what the status of the ionic drive was during the travel through the jump-gate.”

Dash yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, which held the pen. “… and with that, I think I need to get some sleep,” he said as he put a reassuring hand on Kracker’s shoulder. “Let’s put a pin in this and return to it in the morning.”

Kracker studied the two spheres as though each eye focused on an individual sphere.

“I’m just going to stay up just a little bit longer.”

Nav Room: Hour 18

No matter the variable, the result was the same; Those people were doomed. Kracker, at this point, had narrowed out the range that the Sulany potentially occupied on the other side of the galaxy, somewhere, roughly, between the Celestia and Markala regions, which of course, were completely unexplored. Based on the calculations, he had narrowed the “landing” of the Sulany, this, of course, being a relative term, to an area of three by three kiloparsecs. Potentially even to a one by one if he had access to a supercomputer, which he regrettably, did not.

Compiling his data into a succinct report with copious footnotes featuring the calculations, Kracker felt a surge of energy even though his body and mind ached. He packeted the data through an anonymous connection and delivered it directly to the JGA. He left the AnoniBox open. His connection cycling from stream to stream to maintain an open status without being trackable. The AnoniBox was, technically, highly illegal, but it was pretty much untraceable. Rather than receiving direct responses, the AnoniBox would search several dummy data repositories for messages addressed to the source and slowly tease them out in smaller packets to the box itself. The process was a little slower but safe, particularly in Kracker’s practiced hands.

Kracker took a sip from his flask and began to worry slightly that the reply was slow to arrive. Slower than it should have been. He took a large swig and felt the ale burn down his throat and settle hard into his gut.

Suddenly the piece-by-piece response began. The random letters flashed like a slot machine, settling once in a while to a locked-in letter in the overall message, but they did not come in sentence order, rather, random words and pieces of words would cycle in. It was slightly maddening, and Kracker threw himself out of the nav chair to wait for the message to finish.

When the console finally beeped, Kracker returned to his seat, eager to see what the results of his number-crunching had brought. Maybe there could be a rescue operation? Maybe they could replicate the jump-gate error in an attempt to send through a probe with plans for a jump-gate. Then they could send an AI-driven construction system to construct the gate for the Sulany.

The response of the JGA was short and direct:

THE JUMP GATE AUTHORITY IMMEDIATELY DEMANDS IDENTIFICATION AND ALL DATA INVOLVED WITH THIS ILLEGAL DATA BREACH. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN INVESTIGATION AND IMPRISONMENT AS DICTATED BY THE INTERFACTIONAL TRANSIT TREATY. COMPLYING WITH THIS ORDER WILL RESULT IN MINIMAL REHABILITATION TIME.

Kracker polished off his flask in one long gulp and disabled the AnoniBox. He verified that his digital footprints were untraceable. Tears began to well up in his eyes. His mind began to spin wildly, calculating the sheer interstellar distances. He began to have trouble breathing, his breath growing shallow and rapid, and his vision began to blur. He grabbed one of his reserve ale bottles he had brought in earlier and began to down it, cup after cup, out of his favorite mug.

Cargo Bay: Hour 19

Mara was exhausted but continually stretched. Her legs ached, her arms felt heavy, and her ankle practically throbbed from the earlier incident with the crate. It wasn’t broken or even sprained, or at least it didn’t feel like either case… but it was a reminder of how she let her temper get the better of her and that she needed to work on that.

It didn’t help that the ship was still stuck in traffic. As far as she had gathered, there had been no movement with the jump-gate, and in turn, there was nothing for her to really work on. Kracker had remained curiously silent about it, and she hadn’t really seen anyone else since dinner, barring Blu, who showed up just long enough to try to snag one of her towels and abscond with it into the ship’s array of vents. She stopped that, snatching the towel from the robot, who then scampered off into a nearby vent.

The halls that connected all the bunks were curiously quiet. By now, some of the crew had likely headed to bed, which seemed fine to her. She went into her bunk just long enough to grab a towel, a change of clothes, and a music chip. It was a mixtape she had been curating since she was in college, though lately, it had changed quite a bit with Dorian’s recommendations of what he thought she would like. More often than not, though, he was right about these sorts of things. Maybe he had missed his true calling as a producer. She laughed about the potential club life of the kid who was fussing about spices in his foods.

Inside the fresher, she placed the chip into the computer system, queued the music, and undressed. Immediately steam began to blow into the chamber, and she placed her soiled clothes into a drawer to be laundered. All the while, one of Dorian’s selections began to echo in the fresher. After a good quarter-hour, she began to cycle down the system. She dressed in her evening clothes, pulled the newly laundered workout clothes from the drawer, and moved to the built-in sink to brush her teeth.

She made her way out of the fresher and down the hall to her bunk, stepping past Guugel, who was headed the opposite direction. He waved his small purple hand and gave a heavy blink across his huge torso eye. She nodded, arrived at her door, and turned back to see Guugel at the other end of the hall. He stared at her for a second and shook his body, almost in a show of pity or disappointment. She shrugged and stepped into her room.

Inside she took her clothes, gave them a vigorous flap, and then rolled them tightly, slotting them into her drawers mounted just near the door. Her storage habits were very military, and though she never was a member of the Federation Forces, like she had wanted to be since childhood; really, she appreciated the discipline and applied it to her life when she could. In this case, rolled clothes are stored better than the typical civilian fold.

She pulled the music chip from her pajama pocket and tossed it in front of her terminal, which clattered on the desk’s surface. She found herself staring at the computer, which had currently idled. It had been hours around this jump-gate, so perhaps something was new in her inbox for her. She hesitantly took a seat, tapped at the projected keys on the desk surface, and started combing through the data.

Unsurprisingly there was nothing. Mara fell asleep soon afterward but was restless.

Upper Common Room: Hour 23

At this hour, the common room was empty. She was sure everyone had gone to bed and that she was the only one unable to get any rest. Odd how the most boring of days often became the most exhausting, she thought to herself. She went to the viewing window and stared out toward the gate. Her ankle ached with each step. The ship’s tumbling orbit around the gate made for a curious, if not slightly nauseating, sight. She quickly turned her view toward many Federation, Neutrality, and Imperial scout vessels that floated around near the gate’s management hub. It was a flurry of activity that had yet to stop since the lockdown, and she wondered… she really couldn’t help but wonder… what the deal actually was.

She wasn’t expecting an incident to occur, but there was always a kind of nervousness that sprouted from seeing the Federation and Empire in the same section of space. This was a neutral gate, of course, and it had been decades since the Soltan Skirmish, but the unease crept in regardless. The sooner the gate was fixed, the sooner the two factions could be on their way, drifting far away from one another.

She was lost in her thoughts until she heard a curious crash coming from the nav room. Then, of course, the series of Parrakini curses came, and she knew that Kracker was still up. She made her way to the nav room and knocked on the frame.

“You okay there, Senn?”

She looked inside and saw the Parrack on her rolling chair at the nav computer. He was hunched over, his forehead down and resting in his two broad, feathered palms. A shattered mug was on the floor near the door, and a splash of what smelled like an alcoholic slurry oozed down the giant screen used for charting routes.

“They’re lying about the whole thing.”

Mara stepped in and crouched in front of her friend. His breathing was hoarse, like he had just been in a fight, and he smelled positively drunk. She took his hands and pulled them from his face. He stared at her, his eyes red, and tears in small drops on his feathered face. His nostrils were slightly runny as well, but from crying or from drinking, she could not tell.

“Who is lying?” she asked.

Kracker pulled his hands away, rubbed at his face, slicked back his crest, and puffed out the growths of feathers just behind the beak that had begun to droop from exhaustion. He licked the edges of his beak a bit and stared at the array of calculations on the wall.

“All of ’em. Feds, Imps, Cycs… the farkin’ jump-gate people. The Sulany is long gone. Dead.”

Mara wasn’t sure what he was on about. She helped him stand up. He was hammered and almost collapsed twice in place, but she managed to support him enough to get him to walk out to the couch in front of the viewing window. He flopped into it, his body limp. She stepped away, hustled to the kitchen, and poured a quick caf of instant koba from the brewer. She brought it back, holding it out to him. He stared at it momentarily and then grabbed the cup for a tentative sip.

Mara sat down next to him. Kracker stared out the window, his eyes almost dead. She reached her fingers out to just behind his head and smoothed down the feathers that had been ruffled at the back of his skull. He shuddered slightly but began to grow a little more at ease.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she murmured.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

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The post Cosmic Dash: Pause & Effect – Part Three appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Day One: Part Two

Lower Common Room: Hour 5

With the ship stuck in a queue, the diagnostics for the day would be extremely reduced, and it seemed as good an opportunity as any to delay the work a bit. Dash passed by Guugel in the lower common room, who was engrossed in a tablet.

Guugel looked up at him. You’re looking better.

Dash shrugged. “Caffeine helps.”

Back in the bunk, he changed into some workout clothes: Light pants, a light shirt, and body tape for his hands, fingers, and ankles. He had figured an hour on the sparring bag sounded perfect, and he practically had a spring in his step as he made his way back down the hall to the lower common room.

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 5

Mara had already wandered around the ship to see if anything needed her attention, which nothing did. The idleness in such closed quarters made her antsy. She was back in her bunk to change into her workout clothes. Before leaving, she went to her terminal and attempted to sort through her messages but found nothing new.

She sighed as she shut down her terminal and left the room, the lights turning off as she stepped through the sliding door. Within minutes, she was in the lower common room, pummeling the training bag. Nearby, Guugel was sitting in a small chair, doing whatever it was that he did.

She could never quite figure the little guy out. He was loyal to a fault and had saved her butt in many dangerous spots, but there was always the nagging problem of not really being able to talk to the guy. At best, he typed out messages or gestured. She didn’t distrust him, but there was much to be said for actual conversation in any relationship.

He understood everyone else and reacted in all the right ways, but it seemed like he operated on a different wavelength, one that only he had access to. Except for Dash, of course. Those two clicked for some reason, and it drove her nuts.

Mara’s rapid-fire jabs pummeled the bag with heavy thunks. Her mind felt frayed, but each speedy strike soothed her nerves by a slight margin. The more she attacked the bag, the more it felt like the tension was leaving her body. The transference of the negative at the expense of a little sweat worked just fine for her.

She had been at the bag for only a few minutes when she noticed Dash walk in. Maybe he’d spar with her? She hadn’t had any real combat practice in ages. Mara put on her friendliest voice.

Lower Common Room: Hour 6

“Hey, good morning!” Mara continued to punch at the bag. “Wanna spar?”

Dash remained silent. Mara noticed him glare at Guugel.

Yes, Dash, “wanna spar” with your ex?

Dash glared at Guugel, sitting quite contently on the seat facing the sparring bag, tablet cast aside for potentially greater entertainment. Dash grimaced and thought of a succinct, albeit profanity-laden response.

Guugel’s singular eye grew wide. How rude.

Dash focused his attention back on Mara. His hair was messy, his eyes were baggy, and he seemed pensive. Mara continued punching at the bag, and her blows were aggressive, like always. She always seemed frustrated by something, and frankly, this morning, that was something he didn’t need to be dealing with.

“Actually, I just wanted to use the bag alone,” he replied. His voice seemed to drift, and he avoided her glance, staring toward the floor. “I’ll just wait until you’re done.”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “The bag is no substitute for an actual partner. It’s not like you’ve really practiced in a while.”

She stopped hitting the bag and turned to him. As she approached him, he couldn’t help but notice her slight sashay – how could he not? She stopped just short of him and leaned in. “Unless you’re worried about getting your ass kicked again.”

Dash’s shoulders slumped, and he glanced away from her. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Mara responded to his frown with a pleading look. He rolled his eyes as he spoke, “Fine. Just a few rounds.”

He knew that she knew he would relent. For as long as she had known him, she always won out. Mara raised her arms above her head to stretch and promptly whirled away from Dash to make her way to the other end of the practice area. The slight skip of her steps made certain parts of her body bounce, causing him to think… just for a moment.

“You ready?” she asked.

He shook his head and snapped back to attention.

Guugel’s psychic commentary drifted across Dash’s brain. You can cut the sexual tension with a knife.

Dash ignored it to the best of his ability and turned back to Mara, who was already packing the sparring bag into the corner. He sighed. It was likely that to Mara that he seemed to be on edge. Then again, a part of him has been on edge since he was a kid with a chip on his shell.

It didn’t help that she knew how to needle him, either. It was sometimes a nightmare, having someone know you so intimately they could press the right buttons.

“Fine, let’s go a few rounds,” he said. Ge instantly grimaced as he heard Guugel’s telepathic laughter.

Mara smiled at his offer, though, and Dash felt slightly better. Sure, she was overly competitive, and he wasn’t, but seeing her happy felt good. After all, he knew she had much to be mad at him about. It wore on him, really.

Mara threw back a foot and put herself into a barrel stance that she picked up from some Blassnaught self-defense videos she had downloaded. She favored them over the traditional Terrekin kai-eh stances. It’d been this way for years now. Aggressive stances for an aggressive woman, Dash reasoned. Some things just made sense.

Her body was slightly hunched over her forward-facing knee. Her arms were in front of her like she carried something, with one hand just below her chin and the other stretched outward. The stance was simple enough, designated for quick grapples and strikes. She liked the Blassnaught style, as it allowed her to control every fighter’s position during battle, something she had focused on since she was young. Sure, she didn’t have the dimensions or proportions of a Blassnaught, but she could still use their combat principles. It worked on Dash enough, he reasoned.

She studied Dash as he took his stance. He felt her eyes on him. He stretched his left foot forward, his weight resting on his other foot and his leg bent below his body. His left arm was hovering just over his outstretched left leg, the back of the hand facing the ceiling. His right arm was bent, not stiff, with his fingertips bent toward his hip. The stance of his grandfather Razaal’s lessons. A solid, if not reactionary, stance. Mara knew the stance well but always appeared too defensive for her tastes. Dash and his grandfather always focused on reacting to attacks rather than dictating the flow of combat themselves.

Mara’s eyes narrowed.

“Count of three,” she said. “Your count.”

Dash nodded.

“One…two…three!”

Mara darted forward, her arms locked into position. Dash held firm, as expected, and she was almost on top of him when she released her upper arm into a backhanded strike. Dash leaned back to avoid the blow and curled his left arm upward. He struck her in the chest with his elbow. He could hear the air escape her lungs and saw her stumble backward. Mara rubbed at her chest and winced.

“Well played,” she said. It was clear she hadn’t taken a hit like that in a while, and it caught her off-guard.

Dash smiled slightly. “Thank you,” he said.

He returned to his stance but substituted his left side for his right. Mara returned to her barrel stance, prepared to make his victory temporary.

“Your count,” he said.

Mara counted and began her approach as before but chose to strike at him with both fists. Dash whirled and turned his shell back to her. Mara’s fists collided with the hard surface of the shell, and she felt her fingers crack. She grunted and shook the pain from her hands as she glared at him.

“Damn it,” she said.

She stomped her foot on the mat. She took a deep breath and looked back at him with annoyance. He seemed to be dominating her. It was certainly a change from the norm – she was usually the more effective fighter between them. Now, she had a new obstacle to overcome and appeared happy. It was a good distraction.

“Not bad,” her features softened considerably. “You definitely caught me off-guard for a change.”

Guugel’s voice drifted into Dash’s mind. Kiss her. Kiss her.

Lower Common Room: Hour 6

Dash shook his head and glared at Guugel.

“No, shut up. That’s a bad idea,” he said.

Mara flinched. After a second, her surprise faded, and she put a hand on her hip.

“Wait, what?” she asked. Was he talking to her or Guugel? It was hard to tell when Dash and Guugel were in the same room.

Dash’s eyes widened in panic.

“Crap,” he said, looking away from her. “No, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Guugel.”

Mara laughed.

“Oh right, that weird thing you two have. How does that even work?”

Dash tilted his head towards Guugel and shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’d love to turn it off.” He stared directly at Guugel, who picked up his tablet and wandered away.

Dash seemed to mutter something under his breath as the Wot wandered off; it sounded like “your advice is terrible anyway.” Mara winced at the generally one-sided conversation the two shared through glances. Most times, those two were just beyond her.

“One more round,” Mara said.

Dash sighed, “If you say so.”

Dash and Mara returned to their positions. Mara entered another Blassnaught stance, the lock-horn, stretching as she took her position. Despite the thrashing just now, she felt her anxiety about her parents retreat to the back of her mind. She smiled. Dash seemed a little more chipper as well, perhaps taking in the energy she was putting out.

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she said. “I’ve been a bit worried since…”

Dash’s eyes widened.

She held her words for a second but continued. “…since the Vark incident a couple of months ago. You seem to be a little more… well… you.”

Dash kept a stoic face. She could tell he was trying to prevent her from reading him.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

She frowned, left her stance, and started to approach him.

“You almost died, though. I mean, that’s gotta weigh on you.”

Dash scowled and turned away from her. “I’m fine. Drop it.”

“I’m just worried—”

Dash shuddered and turned away from her. “Look, I don’t need anyone worrying over me right now. Vark’s rotting in prison. You saved my life. Thank you.”

“It’s just that you never really talked to anyone about it. That, and you look so exhausted all the time. Everyone’s noticed it.” Mara raised a tentative hand in his direction, reaching out to him. “I mean, you ended up attacking me—”

“And I apologized for that profusely. Dorian said it was clearly stress.” Dash left his stance and began walking away from the mat.

“I’m not trying to guilt-trip you. It’s clear you’re not you right now, and everyone is worried and wants to help—”

Dash walked off and threw his hand back over his shoulder dismissively. “No need to gossip with anyone about my next breakdown. Next time some psychopath decides to stalk me, I’ll shoot you all a message.”

“It’s not gossip, jerk!”

He turned back to her. “I’m just going to go stew in my obvious insanity. I’ll try to warn you if I snap again.”

She watched him leave the room. She gave a short, frustrated yelp that carried down the hall.

Standing alone in the room, she made a fist. She stomped to the punching bag, giving it a single, furious punch. She just had to bring up the Vark incident to the man who shuts himself off from people who try to help him.

She made her way to a wall and slumped onto the floor. She was alone again. First, her parents, now Dash. She curled up, bringing her knees below her chin, and felt even more alone as the bag wobbled in the silent room.

Nav Room: Hour 6

As fun as Bandit’s Quest was, Kracker had been at it for a solid hour and was beginning to get bored. He punched out of the program and slipped through his messages again. Nothing new but the unopened missives from his parental units – genetic donors – assholes. He hovered over one momentarily and then dragged them to the trash bin, one by one.

Messages gone, he found himself alone in the silence of the nav room. He switched on the local comm band but heard nothing but local spacer chatter. He heard something about port fees and documentation between factions. Many voices chimed in about blacked-out routes between Federation and Imperial territories. Kracker turned down the volume. All noise and no substance.

Marken entered the nav room. His face betrayed a level of frustration, but that softened slightly as he held up a cup of coffee to Kracker.

“I figure you could use this. These shutdowns are a nightmare.”

Kracker took the cup and sipped at the bitter drink. “Thanks.”

“Any news?”

“Nothing. Just some sort of accident.”

“I hope it wasn’t anything too serious.”

Kracker took another sip and stared out the multitude of ships near the large ring-like structure of the gate. Each ship rotated in place to preserve power by generating gravity through centrifugal motion. Even then, it was a very much weakened state of gravitation, and Kracker watched the coffee in his cup slosh around slowly as he moved his wrist. He could easily toss the liquid into the air and have time to catch it.

“I don’t know; from what I’ve gathered, there was a break in the gate, and some ships were stranded mid-jump.”

“That’s terrible. Where could they be?”

“I’m not sure. I’d have to do some calculations.”

“Well, keep up the good work, Senn. I can’t imagine sitting here is very exciting right now.”

Marken wandered out of the nav room, and Kracker was left alone with his coffee, staring at the ships dancing outside the durable window. His thoughts remained on the possibility of ships caught up in an accident serious enough to cause a shutdown.

If the wormhole dissipated mid-travel, given the nature of space-time, they would be stranded far outside of the Silver Spiral. An unappealing thought, to say the least. Depending on where the space-time tunnel snapped, a ship could potentially be anywhere, maybe even on the other side of the known universe, if the folding of space-time was particularly intense. He gulped down the last mouthful of coffee and sat in his chair, pulling up the monitors and scrounging through what data he could find on the situation.

It was time to do some math.

Common Room Stairs: Hour 6

Dorian, fueled by rage, came down the stairs as Dash crossed his path. The Terrekin was stewing as per usual as he wandered into the engineering bay and didn’t even seem to acknowledge him. Dorian stopped and sneered at Dash.

“Nice to see you too, Dash…” Dorian said.

The Terrekin ignored him. Dorian was further incensed.

Lower Common Room: Hour 6

Dorian stepped into the common room, where Mara was curled up with her back against the wall, staring at the floor. She looked up at Dorian and glared at him, making him step back. They stared at each other briefly before she went back to ignoring him. He stood next to the punching bag, which swung in a slow arc. He leaned himself against it trying his best to appear casual.

“You wouldn’t believe what Marken had me do just now,” he said. Dorian folded his arms to illustrate his level of indignance.

“I got pulled into helping him make dinner, and he was trying to impose these weird exotic ingredients on me. It’s ridiculous.”

Mara sat calmly and let the Grey vent. To him, Mara seemed more interested in the floor than his problems. He continued anyway.

“I can’t have any crazy food, and he should know that. It’s not my fault; it’s just my genetics and upbringing. You know what I mean?”

Mara shrugged, but all that seemed to do was encourage Dorian to pace around the room.

“You wouldn’t make a Parrack grill a loapburger, and you don’t make a Grey waste his time preparing something he won’t eat. It’s simple. Back on Gnarlruut, I would go a whole week just on noodles during finals week. And let me tell you—”

Mara exploded, “Dorian, enough!“

He froze and saw Mara gritting her teeth at him. Her nostrils flared as her eyes bored directly into his own. “I’ve had to listen to you complain about everything for almost half a year now. I don’t know what to tell you anymore. If you don’t learn how to live with other people, I’m sending you back to your stupid university, where you can have all the noodles you want for the rest of your life. Are we clear?”

She huffed, visibly shocked by her outburst.

The two stared at each other again. Dorian clenched his fist, trying to come up with a rebuttal, but he could not find the words. He couldn’t figure out the puzzled expression on her face. Dorian threw his hands up and grumbled as he left the room.

Bunk Room: Hour 6

Dorian went back to the bunk room and closed the door behind him. He turned off the lights and threw himself back into bed, where he buried himself in his covers. He sat there in silence for a few minutes. He went through his sleep preparation routine. Even if he was in his bed, even if the lights were dark and he was warm and comfortable, even if he felt tired a few minutes ago, he still found himself awake.

He was tired, he was awake, and he was livid. He was also embarrassed – the hot flash of blood on his face told him as much.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

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The post Cosmic Dash: Pause & Effect – Part Two appeared first on hpkomics.com.

Successive novella segments will be linked in this header and at the bottom of each post.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Day One: Part One

Bunk Room: Hour 2

The diagrams flew across the touch screen as Dash Kameku flicked through them absent-mindedly. He skimmed each one looking for a place to start, some nugget of insight or flashing text that more or less spelled “start here.”

So far, his arrangement with Mr. Kimney had been entirely one-sided, though not from a lack of effort on Dash’s part. Bucketbot had become a big help in Dash’s duties aboard the ship. Still, recent events and the general workload had kept him from providing any real suggestions to the multitude of project files Kimney had transferred to him… and continued to transfer almost daily. Dash’s eyelids drooped. The days had begun to run together. He resigned to giving the project files a serious once-over since he didn’t feel comfortable sleeping lately.

He continued browsing on auto-pilot. Throughout the documents, one recurring term offered him some small glimmer of interest. Nanotech. Even though he studied applied energies, ion and particle accelerators, propulsion, and energy shielding in college, he was always intrigued by robotics. He had been working on his own robotic project for months, and, despite needing to teach himself the basics, progress was steady. He was in no way knowledgeable enough to figure out just what the deal with Blu was, but then he doubted anyone could explain that little stowaway robot.

Dash set a flag for all documents marked “nanotech” and reclined in his chair at the terminal. He felt his eyelids grow heavier, but he knew he didn’t want to sleep. It had been this way since the Vark-incident; his eyes would ache, and he’d fight against them. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and let out a groan. The Terrekin adjusted his vision, watching splotchy colors drift away from his field of view, and then fixed his stare at the monitor, looking at nothing in particular.

He knew everyone would wake up soon, so he shut off the terminal and crawled into his bunk. He wrapped himself in a blanket as he stared at the plastisteel-tile ceiling. Dash continued staring for what seemed like an eternity until he finally heard Guugel, the diminutive, one-eyed security guard, get up from his own bunk to begin his day.

A few minutes later, Dash found himself drifting off. Sleep overtook him.

Bunk Room: Hour 3

Dorian woke up two hours before his alarm. Again.

His eyes were wide open as he stared at the time displayed on the front of his data wallet, which rested on the nightstand next to his bunk.

Dorian turned over and tried to go back to sleep. He enveloped himself in his covers, folding and tucking them under his body. He went into a fetal position, closed his eyes as tight as possible, and tried breathing steadily.

In and out. In… and out.

He threw the covers off his body and grabbed his data wallet, picking it up and waking it with a tap on the screen. The lock screen was blank for now. If the ship was within galactic information network range, there would be all sorts of notifications on it. With such limited network reception out in space, it seemed as if it was more of a glorified watch and music player than anything useful to him. He unlocked his mobile data wallet, went to the network settings, and turned on the wireless radio.

He waited, staring at his static home screen in the dim room.

Dorian’s mobile began to vibrate in short bursts, buzzing over and over. Icons upon icons appeared. Windows popped up, and tabs popped out in every screen direction. He made deft swipes and quick taps, clearing the notifications and pop-up windows. After a minute, the home screen was clear.

Dorian opened the social media folder and held his finger over the Spacebook icon. He hesitated for a second… before tapping it.

He waited a moment as his news feed refreshed itself. His feed was now full of posts where his friends and university colleagues did their best to show off to one another. There was a picture of his sophomore friend Songo taking a selfie with an award for excellence in research from the Salderi Project. If Songo could help them find the cure for spacer-rot, he could cure himself of narcissism, too. Niloa, from Dorian’s xenoimmunology class, posed with her Parrack friends in front of a climate-controlled display of tropical trees at the Skyhaven Parrack National Embassy on Oonoo. Dorian wondered how such a cold woman found so many friends in warm places.

The rest of the feed consisted of ads for products he did not need and for concerts he wished he could attend. As he suspected, he had no messages.

He switched to the Hearpoint music app and checked his notifications for new music. His eyes widened as he saw the new release from Triflock, a popular voidtrance group. Two Parrack twins and one Hauke posed in trendy clothes with eyes shut and somber expressions between the sun rising on a dark planet and the word “Migration”. This must have been their latest annual album.

He placed a finger on the album art and heard a sample. Multiple synthesizer arpeggios murmured over a lead piano melody. The notes reverberated in Dorian’s ears before fading into silence. Dorian closed his eyes as he listened, feeling a chill run up his neck. The Grey began to download the album and forwarded a notification to Senn. Since Senn would listen to the singles from an album and then go back to his favorite music from college, this notification might have been pointless. Still, if he was a fan of Triflock’s old material, he might like this new album.

Dorian queued up several more album and playlist downloads before exiting the application. He stifled a yawn and smacked his lips as he stared straight ahead into the dark, quiet room – almost too quiet. When the ship was in transit, the silence was always underscored by a low hum that could be heard throughout the ship. He got out of bed and stood up, stretching himself out. The soft vibrations at his feet were missing, too. Did the ship stop moving? Great.

He put his mobile down on the nightstand and trudged towards the washroom. After a cold shower, he wore comfortable pants, a neutral-colored shirt, and slip-on shoes. He had nobody to impress unless they were having a heart attack, and he had to use a defibrillator on their chest. When they returned to life, they would see him in his professional, no-nonsense clothes and be impressed, marveling at the smart, quick-thinking medical intern who saved their life.

As he walked to the galley for breakfast, no one marveled at him.

Bunk Room: Hour 3

The black void was stifling. Dash struggled against it, but it seemed to enclose around him. It grew tighter and tighter around the contours of his body. He kicked and thrashed as hard as he could, but the sludgy darkness swirled and coalesced around him, and as he opened his mouth to scream, the void flowed into him. He couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t die either. In panicked silence, he choked, almost drowning in black but then, suddenly, a reprieve. As the pressure subsided, he found himself floating in nothingness. His breaths were gasping and desperate. He was no longer drowning, but the inky darkness still lingered in and around him.

Then, he heard the tearing of fabric and saw a gleaming light rip through the darkness. A dagger tore through the void, leaving a gash of frayed black edges. The light was blinding, but Dash looked toward it to see what existed beyond the veil.

Vark came into view; his throat ripped out in gruesome detail… his gash throbbing with each labored breath and the red and pink insides of his neck slick and moist. Worst yet was the smile, as though he had knives where his teeth should have been.

Dash had only been asleep for a little over an hour when he found himself waking up from his latest nightmare. Everyone else was out of the bunk room by now except Guugel, who was reclining on his bed with little else to do today. Guugel’s single eye opened and turned to him.

Another nightmare?

Dash felt the question echo in his skull. He sat up and brushed some wet hair from his forehead.

Want to talk about it? The voice bounced.

Dash grunted as he threw his legs over the side of his bed. He threw his head into his palms and replied: “I’m fine.”

Guugel shrugged and lay back down, eye closed.

You really should open up about these sorts of things.

“I’m not a fan of your voice bouncing around in my head like that.”

Heh. Maybe you shouldn’t leave the door open so wide.

Bunk Room: Hour 4

Dorian turned his face from the bright lights of the galley. The room smelled of coffee and protein paste, so someone must have had breakfast and left before he got there. The Grey went into the fridge and got out a plastic tumbler. He closed the fridge and opened a nearby compartment, digging around for his freeze-dried oat packets. Dorian looked at the design on the packaging, which displayed a cartoon Grey smiling with the words “Original Flavor” below.

He stretched his back as he poured the powder into the tumbler, which he filled with water, shook up, and stuck into the microwave. He checked his data wallet again while waiting for the oats to cook. Senn’s icon on the Spacebook messenger app was green, so he was awake. No one else on the ship seemed to be online, though.

The microwave pinged, and Dorian handled the tumbler with care. He stirred the oats and took a whiff. Nice and inoffensive, just how he liked it. It would fill him up until he could have instant noodles for lunch. Dinner was another situation, though. It was unclear if the ship’s current lack of forward momentum would spur Marken to make something special. Dorian shuddered at the thought.

He walked down the hallway to the medical bay and turned on the lights. They flickered on one by one as he set the tumbler down on a counter. He stirred the oats more before scooping out some of the sludge and tasting it. Perfect. The cold tumbler had caused the hot oats to cool down faster than normal. This had been the most science he had applied in a long while, and it was not even related to his area of study.

He swallowed the oats as he booted up his medical console and logged into the operating system. He went over to his calendar application and checked his due dates. Dorian sighed as he saw that his next psychological profile was due to be sent to his internship supervisor soon.

With all of the recent drama, he had almost no time to begin the profile. It was on Bernell Marken, who usually just went by Marken. It had been almost half a year, and while their paths crossed often, Dorian did not have much reason to chat casually with him. If he wanted to finish this work on time, he would have to find a reason to talk to him.

In the meantime, there were many emails to answer and many articles to catch up on. He took a key ring from his pocket and unlocked a nearby drawer, taking out a pair of headphones. If he just left them around, a certain Parrack might choose to borrow them, and he would never see them again. He plugged the headphones into his mobile and slipped them onto his aural patches, pressing play on the chillwave playlist.

For the next few hours, all Dorian saw was his monitor and his data wallet. He found himself lost in journals, emails, and various online distractions.

Bunk Room: Hour 4

Kracker woke up with his feet on his pillow and his head buried under his blankets. As usual, for a few embarrassing moments, he wondered why it was so dark in the bunk room.

He raised himself from his bed, tore the blanket off from over his head, and peered around. Guugel was absent, as was Dorian, and Dash was shivering under his covers. Kracker listened to his friend whimper slightly. He frowned but suddenly grew alarmed.

The ship was running silent. Even as a war-era antique, the ship was relatively quiet, but the lack of noise now meant something was up with the auto-pilot.

He threw himself toward the nightstand, grabbed his data wallet from the charger, and thumbed through the interface. He had synced his wallet to the ship’s A.I. and was relieved to see the ship’s computer code reply to his inquiry: Everything was fine, and the ship was in a queue for the jump-gate. Ships ran idle in queues to preserve resources, but the odd part about this was that the queue had begun a couple of hours prior.

Kracker made his way to his drawer in the wall, pulled out some clothes, threw them on, and made his way to the helm.

Mara’s Bunk: Hour 4

Mara stared up at the ceiling of her room, hesitant to leave the comfort of her bed. She sighed, threw her legs over her bunk, slid into a robe, and made her way to the utilitarian desk across from her bed. She took a seat and activated the computer interface.

A display screen rose from the desk’s surface and flickered to life, a portion of the desk’s smooth surface morphing into an array of lit keys. She yawned and began to type:

pingnav

There was no response. She rubbed her eyes with her palms and spotted the typo. She typed again:

ping.nav

There was a short delay before a series of data flashed across her monitor, per usual. All of a sudden, it came to a stop. She saw a simple message.

JUMP-GATE DELAY.

Upper Common Room: Hour 4

As the first one in the kitchen, it seemed fair that Kracker got to decide the breakfast situation for the crew this morning, and, like always, he fixed some coffee with the nutriment paste. The fruity flavor of the paste played well with the acidity of the coffee and was pretty much exactly what he needed. Well, with just a dash of ale from his pocket-flask. Just a nip, really.

Coffee in hand, Kracker entered the helm room and took his place in the pilot’s seat. With a few quick gestures, he activated the displays and began combing through the data about the queue. He occasionally glanced up and out the primary window, observing dozens of other ships orbiting the jump-gate, which, oddly enough, seemed to be deactivated.

Senn “Kracker” Toucair did a double-take and returned to the data, eager to find out why the jump-gate was down. He continued to pour through the data with one finger as he took a sip of his coffee with his free hand. He trilled slightly after a delicious gulp, loving the fruity note that lingered afterward.

The logs were fairly standard so far, but then he found what he was looking for: a general warning from the Jump-Gate Authority concerning an emergency shutdown. He raised a quizzical, feathery eyebrow and studied the message thoroughly. Admittedly, the details were light, but a gate shutdown was serious business. Data could still be transferred between gates. The gates were vital to communication networks, but it seemed that ships were not permitted to travel through for now.

That was worrisome, and Kracker dove right into local broadband chatter to get a feel for the situation.

“This is pilot Toucair of the Lucky Strike. Anyone have more up-to-date info on the closure? Over.”

Kracker took another sip of his coffee.

A guttural voice bellowed across the broadband, “This is pilot Vobang of the Boulder Dasher. No updates yet. Over.”

“This is pilot Toucair of the Lucky Strike. Thanks for the update. Over.”

Current methods of investigation exhausted, Kracker leaned back in his seat, coffee in hand, waiting for whatever news would find its way to him.

Upper Common Room: Hour 4

Mara stifled yet another yawn as she entered the nav room. Kracker was already there, focused on his array of monitors. Mara’s entrance was a welcome reprieve from the idle chatter of spacers on the broadband. She had a couple of slices of pom fruit from the galley tucked into a disposable towel and gently placed the package on her terminal. She dug into the package and popped a small, ruby-red slice into her mouth, savoring the mild, sour tang.

“Morning, Senn,” she said, wiping away some pom juice from the corner of her mouth.

Kracker didn’t turn away from his monitors but instead pulled down an arm-mounted monitor and opened up some relevant data.

“You may have noticed that the ship is in orbit around the jump-gate,” he said. “Turns out it’s been shut down for a bit.”

Mara’s eyes widened.

“Really? Why?”

Kracker shrugged.

“Beats me. They certainly haven’t told us anything. I’ve been tuning in on broadband, but nobody has any idea what’s going on.”

Mara sat down at her nav terminal with the creeping realization that there would be very little to do today. She stared at her monitor as she mulled over this, figuring it was not true after all. It was just a period of rest. Sometimes priorities shift.

“Is the gate still letting us transfer data?” she asked.

Kracker leaned back in the pilot’s seat.

“Yeah. I’ve been downloading Triflock’s new album all morning while I wait for more info. From what I’ve heard so far, it’s pretty good.”

Mara smiled. “I know of them, but I haven’t heard their latest stuff.”

“Same, but Dorian turned me onto their new stuff. He’s a nerd, but he knows good music. I’ll throw it in the ship’s music locker.”

“Thanks.” She jabbed at the touch screen with her fingertips. “I’m gonna go ahead and download everyone’s mail since we have a stable connection.”

“Good idea.” Kracker swiped the screen and brought up his inbox. “It’s been a while since we were in decent network range.”

He took a sip from his flask and watched his inbox update. Dozens of messages pinged on the screen one after the other. By the time they had downloaded, he had already trashed a handful. Mostly ads for feather-lice removal, artisan liquors, and a few outdated Zero-G race statistics updates.

Mara took a few bites from a juicy slice of pom as she watched the download box fill with hundreds of messages. Unsurprising. They had been out for a few weeks with spotty Galactic Information Network reception and had been unable to update their message boxes. She took another bite and opened her freshly-updated inbox.

Kracker’s autopilot inbox culling halted, however, when he stumbled on his own surname. Sure enough, it was followed up by the name Darena. His mother. Kracker groaned loudly.

Mara turned away from her terminal.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Kracker rested his head on his feathery hand; his voice was practically muffled by the tightly drawn beak he spoke through.

“Mail from my parents.”

Mara didn’t know much about Kracker’s parents beyond the fact he didn’t get along well with them. She knew the feeling; she hadn’t heard from her own in months.

“Maybe they’re just wishing you well?” she said comfortingly.

There was a pause.

“Parents are overrated…” The venom in his voice was unmistakable.

He went back to paging through his inbox as Mara started to scroll through her own, eager to see what else was happening in the galaxy. She had developed tunnel vision as of late and figured she needed to refresh herself on a broader scale. Her first refresher came when she found a message from an old university friend, Qarleen Kuil.

Hey, Mara. It’s been a while since we talked. How are you?

I wanted to tell you about this newsgroup for the Gnarlruut Strategist Club that just started up. Want me to see if I can add you to the subscription list? I recall you had a real knack for strategy games when we were at uni.

The GSC club members seemed to spread out across the Silver Spiral after uni, but it’s cool that this could bring us back together. I heard that a few of our former members got picked up by the Federation as consultants since our graduation. It might be cool to network with them!

Keep in touch,

Qarleen

For a few moments, she focused on that last line. She had her hands prone over the keyboard but could not compel them to type a response. She closed the message window for now. Consultants? Those dorks who weren’t even good at the games they played? She scratched her neck a little harder than she intended. She thought it best to move on to another message.

It turned out that the next message was from Dash’s cousin Shippena:

Maramaramaramaramara.

Hey girl! Haven’t heard from you in a while, or my ‘bro’ much either for that matter. Grandpa says hi too. Anyways can you do me a fave? I got a gift for Dash for his birthday and stuff and I don’t quite know when you are gonna be in range of a Cosmart. If you are in range, can you get his gift? I have the invoice attached to the message so you can just give them the number and they’ll give you the package. If you could get it wrapped and stuff and hold onto it for a few months that would be great too. Please give Dash me and grandpa’s love.

Seen any cuties lately? Tell me all about what is going on with you!

Later!

Shippy

Talk about too much coffee. Mara made a mental note about Shippena’s request.

Mara swept her fingertips past a dozen advertisements, form-driven messages, and phishing schemes and grew anxious. She picked up the last slice of pom fruit and tucked it into her mouth, chewing on it as she scrolled through the last dozen or so messages. The Terrekin reached the last of her new messages and paused, keeping her finger on the screen. She lowered her head toward the keyboard and sighed. As always, there was no word from Mom and Dad. She checked her outgoing messages. At least her last few messages to her parents had been delivered.

She took a deep breath and began writing a new message:

Hi Mom and Dad, It’s your daughter again.

I haven’t heard from either of you in a while and I am REALLY ANNOYED ABOUT THAT. (Okay maybe change that.) Last I heard, you had an article published in an archaeology newsgroup. I was wondering if you could send me a link?

Anyway, I bet you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to…

At least, she hoped they had been wondering. She stared at the unfinished message, which seemed to be going nowhere. Her fingers felt stiff again, and she felt exhausted by simply closing the message window.

Mara had lied about not having read the article – she had actually read it six times after stumbling upon it. She opened her bookmark again.

RUINS OF ANCIENT TERREKIN COLONY FOUND ON AVABIA

Scientists have long suspected a common ancestor between the Terrekin and Repton, but recent evidence discovered by local archaeologists brings to light new evidence of ancient Terrekin having settled Avabia even prior to recorded Repton history on the planet…

She scrolled down the page, past images of the findings, conjectures, and theories, and she narrowed her eyes. Mara drew her face closer and closer to the screen, analyzing every word of the article. As she reached the end, there was a brief biography of her parents, the same one in every one of their articles: Alva and Ula Senten are experts in their fields in blah blah and live in the desert studying their knick-knacks…

There was no mention of Mara or any of her accomplishments. Then again, what accomplishments were there to mention? She didn’t join the military academy, and now she was the captain of nothing more than some delivery ship. There had been some notable incidents, such as the terrorists at the amusement park, but why would anyone with a single-minded fetish for ancient cultures care about that? She would admit their work was important and maybe even cool.

But it was not her path; as their daughter, she was important too.

They didn’t seem to have any strong feelings about whether or not she would join the Federation military when she was considering it. It didn’t even seem like they had any concerns about her feelings when her ex, Baen, turned out to be a smuggler. They seemed more upset that they lost a member of their excavation team and the setbacks that arose from it.

She stared at the screen with her legs crossed and a frown on her face. She sat there in silence for a while, neither her nor Kracker saying a word. After ten minutes, she forced herself up from her chair and left the nav room in a huff.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

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