On The Song

Three hours into the trip I was up in the command room studying star charts with their relation to recent attacks. Outside the ship's only clear wall (I guess it could be called a window) the blackness that can only be felt and seen in space melted around the ship. Thick and syrupy, that's space. Space is actually a really stupid name for it, since its all full of stuff. Stars, planets, comets, asteroids, creatures, black holes, blips, supernovas—that's just the beginning of the list. It's not a vacuum as much as it is like peanut butter. I missed peanut butter. Anyway. Sticky, that's space. It tries to grab everything away, such as the air in your mouth. Unless you happen to be Lavien. Laviens can breathe in space. It's never been explained, how they do that. Their home planet was destroyed so long ago it's not in “civilized” space records. There's only a couple hundred Laviens left in the universe. Finding one used to be good luck. I say bad luck if they happen to be a Pirate. Bad experience. Then again, not many good things happened to me when I was a kid.
I switched the star charts for an update paper. The headline read, “Missing Pirate Hunters Mystify Employers.” That was good and bad. If hunters were vanishing, that raised my pay, but it didn't bode well for our upcoming hunts.
A diminutive sound, so quiet it could've been dust falling, hit my ears. I snatched up my blazer, spinning faster than a *Winket dies on its home planet. I looked down the viewer at Radin, who stood with a stunned sort of expression on his youthful face at the pressure of my gun on his chest.
“In your hurry, did you forget my occupation, Inspector?” I asked in a husky voice. He exhaled loudly.
“I...did not think—”
“Pirates sneak, Inspector. I cannot afford to be slow. Or miss. You are lucky to be alive.”
He nodded. I retracted my weapon slowly, studying him with new eyes. From the moment he appeared on my quay I had a strange feeling about him. His eyes were veiled and wary, his demeanor not quite at ease. An inspector, huh?
I twirled my chair back to face the numerous dials, gages and, ultimately, the helm. It was easier to think with my back to him. He shifted uncomfortably. I watched him in the tiny mirror that pokes out of the edge of the desk. It could only be seen from my point of view, an insurance in case I didn't move fast enough. Yori came up with it after we were unknowingly boarded and two of our crew were brutally murdered. That was also when we decided to hire just one crewer—less to lose.
“I came to alert you that I need to have a look at the engines,” Radin stated.
“Not at this time you will not.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you know much about this model?”
“I went to airschool.”
“Yippee,” I snorted. I stood and walked around him. He followed me down the stairs to the deck. “You see the film encasing this deck, I presume?” I motioned at the plasma above us. It extended to the short walls of my Voyager, held in place by a laser system. The ever morphing, moving, living material assured us air and protection from the peanut butter blackness around us. It was insanity, really, because if the lasers went out with the rest of the engine we would be dead within minutes. At least, most Voyager crews would be.
“One of the reasons the Voyager was designed with plasma roofs is the convenience of it,” I continued. “If all the crewers are safely inside the command room or the hold, we could go deep space fishing very easily. Or if we had assailants on board we could throw them out into space.” I walked over to the mast, stepping over the largest pile of wirerope.
“This stabilizes the plasma,” I began. “It can also serve as an alternate means of floating, should something happen to the engine. At this stage in the voyage, the engine is stabilizing the plasma through this,” I paused to see if he was catching up.
“If anything should happen to the stabilizer, the plasma would harden and we would have ten seconds to run to the command room before it shattered,” he offered.
Or your new cabin, I added in my head.
“Sort of. The anything is really just one thing,” I corrected. “Human presence. Or really, humanoid.” I turned to look him in the eye. “Wait a day, Inspector. Most things here need a day.” I walked back toward the stairs.
“Radin,” I heard him mutter.
“If you get bored, Inspector,” I called over my shoulder, emphasizing the last word and hearing Yori laugh in my ear. “You can hook up your screen to the database in your cabin.” Suddenly I stopped and turned again.
“I almost forgot entirely. The mess is down below,” I told him. “We dine on the song.”
I grinned to myself. I was at the top of the stairs when I heard him murmur,
“The song?”
~*~
Not long after that our dinner song1 clicked on. Up in space we don't have timed lights like the space ports or sun downs like the planets. We go by our internal sense. Sometimes that comes back to bite us though, because we'll get into a groove of when we sleep and then we'll arrive somewhere that claims it's the middle of the night.
I sang as I put the charts away. I hummed with the music as I jumped down the stairs.
I was comfortable leaving the bridge because everything was on autopilot. Voyagers have the best autopilot out of any ships in the universe. They were designed by a genius human only twenty years ago. The good thing about that is that he's still alive, which gives him the freedom to modify the ships every few months to work the kinks out. The autopilot was a learning program. It watched when the captain made maneuvers and copied them into its system. I typed in a destination at the beginning and it not only knew how to go there, it could sense any new objects in the way and skirt them without complaint or hiccup.
One more attribute set it apart: it bonded to the captain. The real, true captain of the ship was the only one who could steer or initiate autopilot. It could be voice activated, just in case the captain was incapacitated, but if the ship was overrun, the autopilot would automatically return the ship to the nearest law station. It could not be stopped unless the captain commanded it.
I hit the bottom step and my ship beeped at me, her equivalent of goodbye. She would be taking care of us while I was below eating.
I met Radin at the top of the ladder. A half smile played on his face. He allowed me to lead the way, as this was all new to him. I wondered if he traveled much at all. It might be kind of fun to mess with him later. I could execute some crazy maneuvers if I wanted to...
Yori sat at the bottom of the ladder.
“Breyben's done it again, Sapph, he's—” Yori broke off at the sight of Radin. “Oh. Ah.” He leaned close to me and I leaned down at his level. “I forgot about the suit. Do we have a plan to get rid of him yet?”
I straightened with a laugh. I led the way in the opposite direction of the engine room. The mess was small, like everything else. The smell hit us immediately. Thick. Salty. What was that smell?
I ducked through the curtained doorway. Breyben bent over the heating pads on the table. Strange mixtures of vegetables and meats simmered on each plate. It was weird to see four settings. The pungent aroma intensified greatly. I walked around the table to my customary place beside Breyben's plate, perching on my stool as it rose from the floor.
“What is this, Breyben?” I asked bravely.
“Stir fry. Always start a voyage with something new, Hunter,” he replied, applying his finishing spices to the mixes. “Eat up everyone.”
I pointed to the place on my right. Radin squeezed in, conscious that I would lead him right. Yori rolled forward into his place, his chair still poking out the doorway. He crossed his eyes at me. I picked up my fork, hiding my smile.
We ate in silence. The meat was actually quite good. I didn't know what it was, or the vegetables. I never really pay attention to food. Most of it comes in squeeze tubes or ultralight packaging. I knew the green and red stuff were vegetables because they didn't look man-made and they weren't sweet. Fruits were sweet. Most of the time. Like I said, I don't pay any attention to food. I eat everything. Unless it's still alive. Been there, can't do that.
“It's very good,” Radin commented. I saw Yori jump. “I've had it back on Carpediam. One of my superiors loved to serve it for parties. He said it was a crowd-pleaser.”
“Hear that, Yori?” Breyben exclaimed. “I've got a supporter at last.”
“Lovely. Now you've done it, Inspector. Encouraged him,” Yori riled.
Radin shot him a puzzled look, glanced at me (I looked down at my plate), and returned to his food.
The rest of the meal Breyben outlined his recipe for making stir fry. Radin listened politely, just as Yori hummed off-key melodies in a sad attempt to annoy them, ending up annoying me more than them since I was annoyed and embarrassed on their behalf. I vowed as I climbed back up the ladder that we would spend our future meals inundated with raucous rock music.
*Winkets were microscopic glow bugs from the planet Tune. Seeing the light of one speck before they winked out of existence was so rare that most natives thought the bugs weren't real. I know they are because I was attacked once during one of our long repair dockings. Little devils nearly killed me. I plead the fifth on how microscopic insects could possibly kill a grown fighter.
1This was Galaxies Collide, by a very old band called EleventySeven. It was the one I picked. Yori picked the lunch song (In the Dark of the Night, from the musical Anastasia) and Breyben, of course, picked the breakfast song (My Heart Will Go On, by another very old artist, Selene Dion).